<human>: Give me the gist of the text in a nutshell

Hi /r/relationships, created this throw away because I don't want personal friends to know about my marital issues.  My wife is 24 and I am 26. Been married for 3 years, together for 6.

My wife is a wonderful woman who is creative, funny and absolute pleasure to be around and have been married for nearly 3 years. We have had a few fights throughout the 3 years on a range of topics. The most common is a lack of ambition. An event occurred that is not easily solved because of letting it to on for so long. So our normal routine happened, I get upset, she apologizes profusely, and I don't respond because I don't want to say anything I don't mean. I always let something stew for a little and think about what I want to say carefully. I had to think long and hard about it, and let myself calm down. I was irritated with her, and the situation that we were both in. I fell asleep and then got up for work. 

I was headed out and she was still awake playing on her computer. I didn't know what to say, but just wanted to leave for the day. This is where she just broke down and told me she was sorry for who she was, and the problem she caused me. I have never felt lower then I do today reddit. I know I need to change how i deal with situations like this, and looking for guidance. After she told me this sobbing, I called into work and took a personal day to discuss this with her. We took a few hours to talk about how we felt and what we could do to solve it all. 

She is feeling better, but know there is something personal I need to work on with communication and how to handle situation when not ideal. Is this common? Do we sometimes hurt the ones we love this bad? /r/relationships husbands, what do you do when getting upset about a situation? Is there anything I can do differently to never put my SO through this? Or is this just an expected result? I know our marriage prep said we would we fight, and get upset, but seeing her crying like that and apologizing for who she was really really hurt me.
<bot>: Had a bad fight, think its mostly my fault, need to know how to handle these situations better without taking to long to think about what to say.