Just Talking To Him Is Draining And Painful

[Anise]

I moved out last month. Predictably, my husband viewed it as my abandoning him.

A week before I moved out, he brought up going to couples therapy, and said he would be willing to try it again if I picked the therapist. (He picked the therapist we had been seeing earlier in the year, painted him black, and then quit going)

We haven't been talking much since I moved out, although I have said if he wanted to that he could call me to talk.  He invited me out for a date over the weekend, and even though we were civil to each other and it was the nicest encounter we've had in a while, I still felt very drained when I got home and it took the rest of the weekend to recover.  While on our date he made several comments around Christmas and how because I abandoned him he wasn't going to get a Christmas this year.  I tried to validate him but the way he says things are so hurtful towards me that it's easier for me to just not respond.

He called me tonight; I had asked him after our last therapy appointment that it would be nice to hear from him.  Almost right away he started being hurtful with his language.  He was rubbing it in how much he enjoyed watching all the football he wanted without me being around, and how great that was (one of our conflicts was that I felt I was literally wasting my life because he was never interested in anything but watching tv. He would reject me because tv was more engaging to him).  He mentioned how after I moved out he deleted the late night shows I enjoy watching from the DVR, because they were "bad" and "not funny".  I tried to validate him, but at one point the negativity just got to be too much for me, so I told him that the conversation had turned to a painful place for me, that the conversation was no longer productive for me and that I would let him go back to enjoying the football game he was watching.  He started talking about how I abandoned him again, and I said "goodnight" and hung up the phone. 

A couple hours later he texted me saying he wished our conversation had gone better.  I agreed with him and mentioned specifically the language he chooses is painful for me to appreciate his perspective, and when he continues a topic after I said it's hurtful that it becomes extra hurtful for me.  I said that I would like our conversations in the future to be more positive and productive.  Then he said he wanted to go back to just communicating with each other under the guidance of the counselor, which surprised me because he calls them all "head shrinks", even though it seems like he is taking this new round of therapy seriously.  I said I understood.

I honestly don't know that I can develop the skills I need in time to help the relationship.  I have my own issues to work through and dealing with a toxic person on top of that is not helping me get to the healthy place I need to be in.  I am afraid that even if I divorce my husband that I will just end up in the same mess but worse later. And weirdly enough I really do think my husband loves me, even though his behavior and words are not very loving.  When I stopped at the house for our date he had put up photos of me from our wedding in the house, which he didn't do when I was living there.  Maybe it was just for show, but I don't really think so.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

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[DreamGirl]

Do you think he was malicious in how he was expressing his interests/non interests in television?

[Anise]

Hmm. This is hard for me to say.  I think from his perspective he didn't start out being malicious, but he has on occasion pushed my buttons to get me to react, because then he can say that I am the unreasonable, crazy one.  That's how that script goes for us.  When I am coming from a good place, I can see what is going on and avoid it.  But if I am stressed, or am distracted, it's easy for me to get sucked into the script and by the time I know what is going on it's too late.

I know that he enjoys watching football very much, and I even appreciate that he views that my moving out was abandoning him.  I don't know that he is self aware enough to see his contribution to our problems, or see that his behavior caused me to view moving out as my only healthy option.  I suspect that once I brought up the show I enjoyed, that was when it got malicious for him, because then he thought it could be a button he could press to get a reaction from me.

Our new therapist is very straight-to-the-point, and once asked my husband if he purposefully tried to get me angry with him.  He said "yes", and then the therapist asked him, "how is that working for you?"  He responded "not very well".  So it could be a behavior that he is starting to become aware of.  I do think he is truly perplexed that I do not respond well when he gets like this.

[DreamGirl]

Do you think he was being passive aggressive?

Or is this a sour subject for you, not him?

If the subject is a sour one, while you're in this rebuilding place, maybe not discuss it?

I wonder if he's just sad that you're gone. Maybe trying to make light of it (I get to watch all the tv I want!).

I know that my husband and I have some really off-limit places that we avoided (when we were in therapy). As we were trying to rebuild our marriage, certain subjects were left to talking about in therapy --- because they caused the other person too much grief and us to argue.

We wanted to connect -- not disconnect. Talking about sour subjects doesn't do that.

"Prefer" was our safe word. It wasn't a slam on the other person ("I don't want to talk about what you like" but more of a common ground to what it is that we wanted to do ("I prefer not to talk about football". We actually would kid around about it after we got the feel of it. "I prefer that you do the dishes, not me."   

[Anise]

By the end of our phone conversation he was definitely being passive aggressive, and he has mentioned passive aggressive behavior to the new therapist as well.

I do think he is sad that I am gone. He has been consistently 50-50 missing me and feeling relieved since I moved out.  At least that is what he tells the therapist.  Most weeks I am more 75-25 where I am 75% relieved and 25% missing him.

I don't think the topic of TV or football is necessarily a sore one, but the language he uses become sore/painful for me.  I don't know that it's conscious when he does this.  By the time we started talking about the show I liked that we used to record, I was OK with him saying he didn't record it anymore, and even said that it left more room on the dvr for the shows he likes.  It was when he started saying, "yeah, that show just isn't very good or funny" when he already knows I enjoy watching it (and I don't watch much tv to begin with) that I felt things had gone to a painful place.

It probably is healthier to have TV be an off-limit topic for now, just because I don't know that he can consistently be nice/respectful of my preferences.  It's ok we don't like the same shows, but it's not ok to make the other feel bad about liking the shows we like.

I am not sure that he would respect a safe word.  He tends to use boundaries as another way to press my buttons, so it can be difficult to set them up.  I would like to think I did an okay job with the phone conversation, even though I was not explicit with what would happen if he continued. It's something I can bring up with the therapist tomorrow at our next appointment.

Thank you for your perspective and insight!