Husband’s wildfire anxiety makes wife anxious

Dear Carolyn: My husband has recently become very anxious, specifically about fire danger. Yes, we live in a fire-prone area, and there have been several big fires in the past few years. But our house is 100 years old and has survived in this environment for that long. He refuses to consider that he should address his anxiety rather than making a plan to move away. 

I don’t want to move! Our friends and family are here. But the difficult part for me is that being around his anxiety seems to be making me anxious. I find it very difficult to feel calm and happy when he is keyed up and super-tense. Can anxiety be contagious? — Contagious?

Answer: Moods of all kinds are contagious, for sure. There’s science on this.

There’s also science to support the abandonment of 100-year precedent as your sole insurance policy against bad things happening to your house.

It has survived, yes, but has it done so in this environment, under current conditions? We’re seeing some record-breaking stuff out there.

You don’t want to move — okay, that’s valid. But your husband’s concern that you’re at an unprecedented fire risk might also be valid.

So instead of each of you trying to sway the other toward your own side, why not find a middle? One where you admit that climate trends are telling you to prepare yourselves for an emergency in a way you never needed to in the past — and where he admits that moving might not be necessary at this point if you and he can have rational, fact-based emergency plans in place.

In general it’s a good thing to keep in mind: All that energy you’ve directed to a (so far fruitless) persuasion effort could be applied toward identifying and achieving mutual goals.