Difficult Husband

[LillianRose]

My husband and I have been in and out of counseling for years and got very close to divorce last year, but pulled ourselves out of the dark place we were both in and have been rebuilding. Every counselor we have gone to has said he has some narcissistic behaviors and definitely dealing with some bigger mommy issues. Right now he had shut both me and his mother out - Saying we are both “crazy” and hard to deal with.

Not sure of the tipping point with his mom but for me it was my reaction to getting ice cream with the kids tonight. One of our daughters was acting up (she’s 2) and he said she couldn’t get ice cream, but we were all going. I went along with it all but I questioned his logic on letting the 3 year old have ice cream even though she didn’t finish dinner. This sent him into saying I was being condescending, jumped out of car saying he didn’t want to be  around me. Everyone was strapped in so I calmly said that was unnecessary let’s just go they are all excited - he then proceeded to get in car and tell me I was such  a “C word sometimes”  and that I was being evil and don’t know how I can live with myself. Meanwhile I’m like what just happened? Granted he is many times on edge and I do a decent job of staying away from triggers but I’ve got to be able to talk about disciplining our kids. I mean I’ve got to be able to have conversations with him.

That’s the other big issse - what I see as a conversation he sees as me questioning him. It’s so wearing. I like to talk things out and he finds it to be annoying. Tonight he said that he has a hard time dealing with how I process things on a daily basis. I honestly don’t know what that means other than he finds dealing with me to be annoying and I don’t see much love in that statement.  To be clear, I’m not a slow / dumb person - graduated magma cum laude and CMO of a company  - I think things through and am very self aware. I told him that we need to talk about what he’s having a hard time dealing with  - he says we can maybe talk tomorrow.

No one had diagnosed him with a personality disorder. I have my theories and sometimes even question his sexuskity - feel like that could cause a lot of inner anger if he was secretly gay. To be clear, no one would ever think he is gay - very much a guys guy - works in construction industry, big guy / a bit overweight ... .not the stereotype. However, he’s pretty asexual even though he talks a big talk - no follow through. He will say things in front of his friends like we have this great sex life while I’m like hello are you even interested?

Ok so I’m trying to figure out what to do next / get some idea of what I’m really dealing with here. He usually makes us stop going to counselors once they get to really know him / it’s like they get too close to figuring him out and he says we don’t need it anymore / they are not helping. We haven’t gone in over a year ... .I just wonder if there is someone that can figure him out / if there is a treatment. Ok this is a novel, thanks for reading.

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[Turkish]

Hi LR,



There's a lot going on here,  but I keyed in on the fact that he's angry at his mother.  Not to go arm-chair psychologist here,  but it may be that his feelings towards both her and you are conflated. This was my feeling with the mother of my children at the time... .she was angry at her dad, cut him off emotionally,  and since I lived with her,  I experienced the emotional cut off as well. 

As a dad, I can relate to the ice cream thing; I just went through it tonight with D6. 

We have communication tools here which might help,  summarized in Lesson 3 to the right of the board. The most basic tool is SET:

https://bpdfamily.com/content/ending-conflict

Regarding your questioning, it might be helpful to pose things differently.  Like: https://bpdfamily.com/content/communication-skills-dont-be-invalidating

I remember how I would get so frustrated about how my ex would get triggered by what I thought was normal conversation,  but with a person who has traits of BPD,  this can result in conflict.

Take a look at the articles and tell us if you think they might be helpful,

[pearlsw]

Hi LillianRose,

Well, I can tell ya this, there is always some room to improve one’s communication style - no matter how good one might feel like they are being.

I know I was pretty over confident a few years back. I’d read communication books, he hadn’t, so it was more him, less me - I wanted to think. But one of the best things I ever did was say, no, it’s me too, and I've gotta work on me. No matter what he does, I’ve got to rethink this, toss all I thought I knew and start with a clean slate and relearn.

I’ll admit, lately I’m off my game. I am quite busy these days and recovering from a lot. It takes discipline, study, and a lot of patience and awareness, to get your communication game up. So, I’d just suggest no matter how reasonable and fair you think you are being, there is still a lot to learn - especially the right time to disengage before things escalate. If you can at least not make things worse, that’s a big improvement. There are a lot of tools here to support that!

Have you ever asked him about your sense that  his sexuality may have more complexity than he’s representing to you and others? Is there a way to let him open up, if there is more to say?

with compassion, pearl.

[LillianRose]

Thank you both for the advice. Since I posted this I watched the video on invalidation and read about the ways to end conflict quickly. I do definitely realize all arguments take two and I believe I’m guilty of a lot of invalidation without even realizing what I’m doing.

With him it’s right or wrong - amazing or horrible. When you have two little  kids, there is a lot of gray area - where we are just coasting in an ok territory that spikes both ways in sometimes the course of a few min. I am seeing that as one of the big issues for him, he stresses out and either erupts or just shuts down - leaves room, gets on phone, etc. - emotionally not there. I guess those are moments I can validate he is feeling stressed? I just feel so much of this is family life and hard to be so on point that I can deal with his feelings as well as two toddlers ... .I realize I need to be better at it, but it’s wearing me out.

I have been wanting to talk about our fight last night as I definitely reacted and made it worse. He didn’t want to talk last night so I left him alone. I have tried this morning and he said he still does not want to talk to me. Any advice on 1. Getting home to talk and 2. His I approach what I think is our big issue ... .validation / invalidation?

[pearlsw]

Hi again,  

One thing that has helped in my situation is that I trained myself and my SO to say certain things to each other to help the other feel better. We’ll sometimes say “I’m sorry you’re feeling bad. I care how you feel.” It might sound a bit by the numbers, but it makes a big difference. I would often speak and he had nothing to say. Then I’d have to ask, growing increasingly annoyed, did you hear me? Did you understand me? Why don’t you ever say anything? Once I gave him things to say, at these moments he can’t think of anything, simple, but effective basic phrases, it helped. I had to work to let go of the idea that I was just basically in a relationship by myself as all the words I was hearing  between us were of my own making!

I noticed he tends to copy good behavior when he sees it, so the better I did the better he could do, so I had to choose to lead by example. I also noticed he felt like he didn’t hear enough apologies so I learned to give him better ones that made him feel like he wasn’t always being made into the “wrong party”…I always came back to the notion of we have to end up on the same side of things, we are not adversaries, no one needs to be right or wrong, how do we get back on the same side of things? By depersonalizing things I could make us both feel like we were working to improve, not let him feel it was all him messing up. This didn’t always work, but it did give us a better basis. You have to have some level of functionality in a relationship I think. Victories help you build the foundation for more mutual victories.

wishing you peace, pearl.

p.s. What do you think of picking one of the tools that makes the most sense and practicing it this week and sharing your results with us?