Since my husband's return, the criticism is so severe I'm anxious about doing anything for fear of triggering his anger. Has he "split" me or is he pushing me away to make me "prove" myself? If he's split, can he cycle back? In my experience, he changes his opinion of people frequently, but I've read that a "split" is often permanent. He's blocking out huge chunks of our relationship and villainizing me, as though I am solely to blame for his affair
Unfortunately I'm going through something very similar, our overall situations are probably different, we're not married, there hasn't been a break aside from 5 days I blocked him at the end of August because his pushing became extreme and I couldn't take it. However I can tell you this much, he stopped using the nickname he gave me early on and he barely even says my name anymore. He does it when he's vulnerable and he hasn't been much lately, he has a ton of extra external stressors right now so that might be a factor, does your husband have any over the top stress at work or other places right now? Mind you processing everything regarding you is also a stressor, I'm going to assume you do have FP status in addition to being married, he will have extreme reactions to anything because of it and you're going to feel the consequences of this which is incredibly sad.
About the affair thing and aside from the typical projection that might come in these cases, which I've experienced in droves lately, you have to consider that shame and guilt also a powerful driving force. I posted something about this earlier last month but I was hit with 3 weeks of incredibly intense distancing. This came after a period in which I thought we were making massive progress... and we were, after one very emotional day and really an entire week, he went into complete ice mode.He didn't even let me take care of him when he had Covid. I couldn't understand for the life of me what was happening, especially when we were already making some real progress. One day he made a tiny revelation that led me to put together his entire lie, everything I had been puzzled about was explained by this. I hated the lie but one understandable lie was better than the horrors that were going through my mind so I wasn't even upset. His small revelation led to a series of other revelations that made him come clean about the entire thing. Overnight he was back to texting me all morning, for a week I was again smiling when I woke up to his early morning texts, and things were good... for a week, until the next thing happened. The point though is that getting rid of that shame was what enabled him to open up again, maybe your husband has some strong shame issues still attached to the affair and as long as that's unresolved he's unlikely to move past it, even if they don't always acknowledge outwardly what they do, their sense of shame is insanely powerful and crushing. If you want to give working that part out and seeing what happens it might just be worth a shot.
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