I send hugs to you and hope that someone will respond to your painful situation, as there are so many on here whose words of wisdom and love have helped me and others.

One thing I would like to suggest is to read the book “How to Break Your Addiction to a Person” by Howard Halprin. I just started reading it myself and it has been eye opening. It talks about our Attachment Hunger and how we cling to those who hurt us. Lots of examining of childhood issues and relationships with our parents.

Please be well.

Words definitely do hurt, but we can shield ourselves by choosing not to believe them or take them personally. When someone talks about another person, they unwittingly reveal more about themselves than about the person they are talking about. Try to remember that.

He is acting childishly. Just because a person is of a particular age and looks like a grown up, it doesn’t mean they have actually matured emotionally. It’s actually scary how common it is for adults to behave like children when they are hurt. Yes, I do think that he is hurt, but it is his responsibility to deal with that hurt, just like it is your responsibility to deal with yours. You both need to step up and realize that what is happening isn’t healthy. He needs to stop acting like a child with a temper tantrum, and you need to stop enabling him.

So stop taking personally what he says or does and see it as a completely separate thing from you. That way you can get a better perspective on things, a bit of neutrality, which helps you to start healing and enables you to make decisions based on rational thought rather than feelings. I know it’s easier said than done, but it would help you a lot.

When you can be a bit more neutral and don’t take the attacks personally, you also have time to start healing. I want to say that you definitely need to become more confident, but people tend to misunderstand what confidence means. You don’t have to become an assertive person if that’s not who you are. You can be quiet and confident, knowing that you are a worthy and loved and skilful person with her own precious body, mind, soul and life. You need to appreciate yourself and love yourself. If you don’t, then you’ll fall back into situations like that, where you accept someone else treating you in a bad way, even when you know that it’s not OK and it hurts. You are the only one who can do that. You are the only one who can choose to love yourself and take care of yourself. That choice is made again and again, so even if you tell yourself now that you choose to love yourself, you can’t just leave it at that. You need to keep at it and choose to love yourself for as long as it takes that it starts to come naturally.

I will play devils advocate here. As I can relate to this but on the other side. I see some of his behavior in myself with how I treated my ex. However, I had no clue what I was actually doing until the smoke cleared from the battlefield and I was able to clearly see what damage my words and actions had done. Sad thing is, the type of person I was acting like is not the type of person I know I am capable of being. Ruminant’s statement “So stop taking personally what he says or does and see it as a completely separate thing from you” I agree with. If his behavior of late seems out of character to that of the man you fell in love with and married. There probably is an explanation for why all of a sudden post baby he is acting this way. I cant speak for him, but for me, something changed in the relationship and I suddenly feared loosing this person. I became very insecure, and my answer to insecurity and anxiety is control and borderline abusive talking. Like you husband, I attempted to control my partner, his attitude and his action to calm my own fears about what they might could mean for us down the road. Instead of treating my ex as an adult and allowing him to come to his own decisions. In hindsight my attempts to control resulted in the complete opposite of what they wanted to achieve. I ended up forcing him to rebel and pull away from me to assert his independence. Never realizing under the surface the damage I was doing not only to him as a person, but his preexisting insecurities, anxiety but to his self esteem.

I believe marriage is a huge commitment one both parties shouldn’t take lightly. If remember correctly a promise is made between the two of you, “for better or worse.” I feel to stay true to this promise you have an obligation to attempt to reconcile these issues, however keeping in mind who you are dealing with and how you can successfully get through to him. Ultimately you can not control him, his choices or his actions. Or his willingness to be receptive to the issues you are bringing to the table. However, you should know him better than anyone, what makes him tick and where his buttons are. If you bring it to him in a way that shows this understanding, be open, compassionate to what he may be dealing with and going through that is causing this behavior change towards you. I feel you will have a better chance of keeping him open to the exchange and not immediately getting defensive. This was a lesson I learned the hard way.

At the end of the day, it is on him to heed your words and make the appropriate adjustments and show commitment to you as his partner. Concede that although he may not understand why his actions are hurtful the point is that they are. That should be good enough reason to own them and improve upon them. Again, another lesson I learned the hard way. When its all said any done, and you’ve put him on ample clear notice of your boundaries and expectations of him. If he still refuses to show improvement, than at least when it comes time to make a hard decision you can do so knowing you gave all that you had to make it work. The responsibility lies solely on him.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in what is happening TO us we forget, we are not the only ones in the equation. I dont believe people really change, as much as we evolve. The environment we are in, which encompasses many factors, dictates what parts of ourselves become more dominant to survive as the environment changes. I give you much hope and support to be strong for yourself during this trial, and to be strong for your husband and child also.

I agree with Kelly. This is what I meant with web of illusions: to be so unsure of what’s reasonable and normal, that you start to accept unreasonable behavior. Or think that it’s your fault that he is acting in a certain way, and if only you would change in some way (which is never anything tangible), things would be better. Acceptance or punishment comes on a whim and it’s difficult to predict what will set the other person off, so it’s better to be careful about everything, and when you stray, you’ll blame yourself for causing disturbance. Or you try to find ways to please the other person so that they would for once be happy and accept you and there would be peace, but it never happens, or it happens so sporadically that you never really figure out what caused the perceived happiness, so you keep trying. It is torture and it is ridiculous.

Look for support groups, local and online. There are others with similar stories and if you can see it from an outsider’s perspective, you’ll see how unreasonable it really is. I have a hard time suggesting any one particular support group, because, well, I don’t know them all and I’m not sure what would be good for you. I’ve gotten help from Al-Anon which is for friends and family of alcoholics (my father was an alcoholic, and I didn’t join because of the alcohol, I joined because I had problems creating healthy relationships). I’ve also gotten help from an online community for victims of narcissists (that no longer exists and is in a different language). But there are several others. I really think you might benefit from seeing the same things play out in other relationships. You can’t right now see clearly your own relationship, because you are in it and you’re stuck in a certain thinking pattern, but seeing and talking to others with similar situations could be very beneficial. We tend to be much more compassionate and understanding towards other people, but deny that from ourselves. So…if someone else was stuck in a similar relationship, what would you say to them?

Sorry for the spellings, im sending from a mobile phone 🙂 😉
Xx