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I swear I'm losing my mind. I don't know if the problem is him or me at this point. It has become both. He overreacts to every.freaking.thing! And between letting him get to me, dealing with my own grief and trauma issues, and raising a toddler, I'm so stressed out and anxious that I end up giving him ever more to overreact to (ie I'm forgetful and unfocused a lot). And then I'm more stressed out and anxious, plus angry and resentful. I read about setting boundaries and emotional detachment and validation, but I can't make it work. What am I missing?

can you tell us more?

what are you fighting about? what boundaries are you trying to set, what are you trying to validate? the more we know, the more we can help.

you do sound exhausted and stressed (raising a toddler is no easy feat in its own right). are you seeing a therapist?

I have always been a bit forgetful and flaky, and we've always had issues about that. Admittedly it has been worse in the past year. I had a traumatic pregnancy loss a year ago, and it has been a huge struggle for me. However, in his opinion, I should be able to just let it go and move on; yet he has made it so much worse. For months, he accused me of cheating on him. I saw a therapist for a little while, but ended up quitting because DH would fight with after every session. He even accused me of having an affair with my therapist! The reality, though, was that DH was having an affair. But of course that was my fault because I wasn't "doing my job" and giving him enough attention or something. Many fights ensued around all of that.

Fast forward to the last few months. He gave up the "side chick", and he uses that fact as ammo for anything that I do wrong. I have many things on my plate right now between work and kid, without dealing with everything else. I forget things and I flake out too much. I have no problem admitting that I'm not doing everything right all the time. I'll forget some part of a conversation or something he asked me to do. Most of the time it's really little things (e.g. I was going to make a couple of sandwiches; I pulled out 2 slices of bread instead of 4). But in his mind, I don't care about him. He fixed his thing I didn't like, so I'm basically telling him FU by not having mine fixed.

When he tells me this, I end up dumbfounded, which makes him more mad. But anything I say makes it worse, even when I try to validate the emotions. I don't know what to say or do at this point.

I have made an appointment to start therapy again, with a different therapist.
 

I'm so sorry for your loss, scaredrobot.

You deserve to grieve for as long as you need. There is no timeline to these things, and it's unfair for anyone to expect you to move on before you are good and ready.

It's also ok to forget things and flake out -- you're a new mom who is working and trying to juggle a home with a dysregulating partner. He seems to know that you feel guilty about this, and for reasons that are probably not entirely clear to him, he will want to focus the attention on your shortcomings rather than his own. Sometimes we have to close those holes so that our partners don't have such easy marks.

I was very forgetful and flaky when my son was a toddler. Be kind to yourself -- this is something that might take a tremendous amount of strength. Seeing a new therapist and creating some boundaries around those sessions might be a good first start. If he cannot be kind to you after your sessions, then he has lost the privilege of knowing that information and it must be earned back when you feel ready to share, and only then.

 

LnL