<p>I thought of Gaslight, too, when reading the OP’s description of her husband’s behavior. I think that no matter how much OP tries to head off his behavior, he’ll find something to move.</p>
<p>A relative of mine could have written the OP years ago. The key seems to be whether the H will go to counseling. She Was married to a rager and ranter who would not go.Definitely a jeykl and Hyde. When he was in public everybody loved him, I used to say butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. At home a complete different story. Much like described here about OCD and compulsive behavior. when their child approached college years she finally got out. Had to have the police met door to make sure he left peacefully. she was lucky that he agreed to leave the house. Four years later she moved to the state where the child is in college. bought a new house with no mortgage due to lower cost of living, took a less stressful job, changed her first name even.
Unfortunately she has significant emotional and medical issues due to the years of abuse. child also has some and now has very little contact with her father. While most of us would see this as a success at the end it has been very difficult. Without great support the outcome cold have been much different.<br>
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that it can be changed, it wont be easy and if both persons won’t go to counseling the odds for saving the marriage are likely not good. both persons have to want to change.</p>
<p>OP - trying to constantly appease your husband is a a form of subjugation:</p>
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<p>[Schema</a> Therapy](<a href=“http://www.cognitivetherapy.me.uk/schema_therapy.htm]Schema”>Schema Therapy)</p>
<p>Your husband probably has his own set of schemas (my husband has unrelenting standards).</p>
<p>Jeffrey Young has a great book on the subject. “Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthough Program to End Negative Behavior…and Feel Great Again” is excellent.</p>
<p>I grew up in a home where anger was not considered an acceptable emotion so I learned to try to keep the peace at all costs. My husband is a very successful businessman who is use to being in charge and having people do his bidding. He is not an abusive man but he is a perfectionist with OCD tendencies (OCD is a form of anxiety whereby the person uses things like reordering drawers to calm themselves).</p>
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<p>So in his mind, giving ‘orders’ is a natural part of who he is and trying to accommodate him is a natural part of who I am. It’s taken me a long time to feel comfortable when he gets angry. Now I just walk away when he has an angry outburst. I have no problem telling him I will not engage with him until he learns how to express his angry in a healthy way. Anger is a healthy emotion but some people express it in unhealthy ways. I carry around a card in my purse that says ’ I am not responsible for someone else’s feelings.’ I still sometimes feel guilty when I say no to him but I know that’s me, not him. If he gets angry, he gets angry - no big deal. My husband railed against me standing up for myself for quite a while but once he figured out I wasn’t going to back down, he got comfortable with it and it doesn’t upset him any longer. I would emphasize this is not a once an done exercise and personally, I could not have done it without the support of a therapist. A good therapist - not one who simply going to tell you what you want to hear.</p>
<p>Try to find a therapist for yourself that uses cognitive behavior therapy. Excellent set of skills to have. Understand that working through your own stuff is your most important first step to deciding whether to stay or go. Once you can get clear on why you feel the need to keep the peace, what would happen in the relationship if you stood up for yourself and what you need to do to change yourself, staying or going will be an easier decision.</p>
<p>Anxiety and depression are genetically linked (this article happens to be about adolescents, but it was the first I could quickly find) [Genetic</a> Link Found between Anxiety, Depression and Insomnia - American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM)](<a href=“Sleep Blog - Get the Latest Sleep Research & News Articles from AASM”>Genetic Link Found between Anxiety, Depression and Insomnia - American Academy of Sleep Medicine – Association for Sleep Clinicians and Researchers)</p>
<p>I agree with others that change is possible, but the key to change is if the person is willing to change. My dad would fit the bill of OP in many ways, he had a troubled marriage with my mom, and while in so many ways he was a great person and father, he had issues. He would talk to others about being willing to go into counselling and such and claim my mother didn’t want to, but the reality was he saw things from the perspective that my mother needed help but he was fine and therapy was idiotic, etc. Speaking both for his example and for my own story, I also believe a lot of the resistance isn’t believing therapy is a waste of time, but being afraid of what will come out of it. And my mom in many ways enabled him, as angry and frustrated as she was, she also made excuses, etc, and my dad was correct that my mom would not go into therapy, she was the classic example of a brilliant person whose emotions made her a basket case. </p>
<p>It is not that I think things cannot change, I am an example of what can happen, and it did follow the pattern of what people propose. There were issues in our marriage on both sides (not exactly surprising, among other things, people often marry people with complimentary problems i.e the bully with someone unable to fight back) and in my case there were real issues with seperating my birth family from my own family (shouldn’t come as a surprise that was a major problem in my birth family, too, with my dad). My W was working on her own stuff, and in the process she became strong enough to confront me with what was wrong and it forced me to deal with the unhealthiness of things with my family of origin. Without going into the details, I had to make real choices for the first time rather then expecting my W to keep the peace by going along with bad behavior, and I was able to do it in a pretty dramatic way…and survive the fallout of it, too (not easy being the family pariah, but I don’t regret my standing up like that). The thing was, I did the work, got through the things that were crippling me and was able to realize what I needed to do, but sadly not everyone can and to be honest experience tells me in such situations it is more likely to fail to change the other person, but still worth trying. </p>
<p>When I say I am sympathetic to the H in this story, I am, and I will add that I am not a perfect spouse, I still have times when I don’t handle things well and act out, so I am not judging him or saying he is an evil person, far from it. The difference is that when confronted with the not so good things, I was willing to work on them and to change, I am not so sure about the H in this case…but I could be wrong. I was resistant to getting help in terms of therapy, and I still hate going to the doctor and such, so it could be H, who shares some similarities to myself, will make the effort. </p>
<p>I agree with another poster, CBT is effective, at least from my personal experience. I used a variant of it called EMDR, and it helped a great deal to unlock things, and relatively quickly.</p>
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musicprnt, thank you for your frankness.</p>
<p>musicprnt, thank you for your frankness.</p>
<p>Yes I was going to say the same thing- I feel I always hear my own perspective or that of those similar to me- I like hearing another side.</p>
<p>Mom2collegekids asked me upstream for examples of how I changed my behavior, which led to a change in my husband’s behavior.</p>
<p>Initially, if he became angry with me, I would back down. I genuinely felt that not expressing anger was a good thing. So if he became angry, I’d change whatever I was doing so he’d stop being angry.</p>
<p>After my revelations, I realized that his being angry was not going to be hurtful. (He was never physically violent so I was not afraid of that.) It might be unpleasant, but it wasn’t going to hurt me. So I started standing up to him. When he give me lines like, “You always . . . .” or "You never . . . " I would challenge him. I also started realizing that his reactions to my behavior were not necessarily (or usually) about me, but were about other important people in his life. I was able to stop feeling responsible for the way he was feeling. The way he felt was mostly independent of my actions. So I didn’t fear his anger anymore, since I knew I hadn’t caused it.</p>
<p>I also realized I had to stop waiting for him to do things that I wanted done. For example, one marital myth was that he was good at decorating and I was not. I remember waiting for a year or so for him to select a paint color for the living room. When I’d mention it, I’d be accused of nagging. I finally had the realization that i could choose the color and paint the room without his permission or approval. If he didn’t like it, I’d tell him that he was perfectly capable of selecting a color and painting the room himself, but until he chose to do that, we were going to live with what I was doing.</p>
<p>Nothing changed overnight, but things definitely changed over time.</p>
<p>I’m back after another long, exhausting day. Yesterday, my husband was in a good mood and dinner was pleasant. I was feeling more hopeful, but then I came downstairs after posting and he had gone into angry mode. It’s interesting, I am already more detached from the situation now that I have a way to analyze it. I am more of an observer and less of a participant. When I saw that my husband was in angry mode, my heart sank. I noticed this almost like an outsider. I was able to respond to him more calmly and I was much less affected by him.</p>
<p>The book VeryHappy recommended (on Abusive Relationships) arrived yesterday, and I started reading it last night. I skipped around because I wanted to get to the chapter on responses to abusive statements. The book is incredibly helpful. While I was running around today, I was formulating responses to my husband’s usual “problem” statements. I was able to come up with quite a few. My favorite is this: Next time he makes a negative comment about something I’ve worked hard on (a special dinner, a home renovation project, etc.), I will say, “Why don’t we change places? You do the cooking/renovating/whatever, and I’ll do the criticizing.” Brilliant, no?</p>
<p>Some random responses to various posts: I have never blamed my husband for his health problems. Until another poster stated that his problems are probably the result of working too much and having poor habits, I hadn’t even realized that, as I stated in response, he probably could have prevented his condition if he’d exercised, etc. This was the first time I’d even had that thought. I haven’t even blamed him for not trying things I’ve researched that might help him. Someone else sympathized with my husband, pointing out that I’d discontinued “marital relations” and moved out of the bedroom. I did this in an effort to prevent him from destroying my soul. I really had no choice. </p>
<p>Thank you, greenwitch and MomLive, for the book suggestions. I will order them. The “Spiritual Divorce” book sounds particularly intriguing.</p>
<p>I’m very glad the book helped. Read it and re-read it, and after a month or two, read it again. </p>
<p>A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. You’ve already taken four or five.</p>
<p>OP, something for you:
Did you mention above that you’re also the child of an alcoholic? If so, that’s a classic character trait of adult children of alcoholics. Yet another option for you during this time of reflection is to see if there are chapter meetings of Al-Anon, or better yet: ALCOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) which is one of the Al-Anon subgroups. They do a lot of work on figuring out what are the character traits that linger and impact one’s current life, due to growing up with an alcoholic parent, who is sometimes long gone</p>
<p>They don’t spend meetings bashing the alcoholic relative. Rather they look at ways to undo what they term the “character flaws” that linger, such as excessive people pleasing. Meetings are anonymous, in person, and don’t require your H’s knowledge or permission to attend. In fact, he’s kind of irrelevant to the meeting – it’s for and about you.</p>
<p>For your H, his pain management sounds absolutely terrible. He either needs to change the meds so there’s less physical pain, or modify his behavior so that he isn’t his own marriage-wrecker. I know first-hand that constant, chronic, poorly-managed pain can absolutely alter personality, and you indicated he wasn’t always as difficult as he is today. </p>
<p>If he’s in such pain that it has warped his personality over time, you as the wife have every right to phone his doctor as witness. Here’s my suggestion: without his knowledge, leave word (dictate notes to a nurse) of all your concerns about his pain level and some indicative examples of his domestic behavior (the countertop issue and his rearranging your items, and unpredictability of anger outbursts. Ask nurse to write large across the top: “Wife Requests: She Needs Total Confidentiality.” It’s just a reminder, since it’s the law anyway. Other docs please tell me if I’m offbase, but I don’t think you need HIPPA privacy sign-off for a wife to call in this kind of info. People do it all the time regarding their elderly parents, so I’m applying that model here.</p>
<p>Don’t ask for any reply words from the nurse or doctor, just register your concerns one-way. Next time your H is seen, the doc will have read this file. I think it will alter the way the PCP evaluates and treats your H, including not being dissuaded if your H is the kind to minimize or aggrandize his own report of “how he’s doing.” You could even add to your list of concerns that you “wish” he’d be called in to be seen very soon as home life is extremely strained. It puts all the next actions in the hands of the doctor, not you or H. When I use this approach to generate change in care for my elderly parent, her doctor manufactures a reason (“lab test due…”) to call her into the office for an appointment, then brings things up once she’s on scene with him.</p>
<p>Pain aside, he might also be suffering from several possible mental disorders, such as bipolar, OCD or depression. You can add this to your list of concerns for the PCP. That much pain, so poorly managed to boot, can cause depression which is so hard to live with as a spouse. But if that’s his circumstance there are pathways for him by which to recover and manage himself much, much better than this. </p>
<p>In sum: youj might consider adding “AL-ANON” or “AL-COA” to your toolkit, and meanwhile, rat him out to his doctor. </p>
<p>These are 2 small steps that might be initiated independently by you, right now, regardless of whether you would leave or save the marriage, which is a big step.</p>
<p>Sadmomof3 - I do think that playing the ‘observer’ is a good start. I do this with my husband often. You have to realize that a lot of what your husband is doing is about him, not you. As such, you really don’t need to get caught up in the drama.</p>
<p>It’s hard. I know that feeling of disappointment when my husband starts to rant. There are times when I handle it quite well and other times, when I’m under some stress that I don’t handle it well at all. The one thing my therapist pounded into my head is an emotionally healthily person should not depend upon their significant other’s mood in order to feel happy. His manta is ‘you should be able to be happy with or without this person.’ I struggle with that concept all the time but basically he is saying that happiness comes from within. Choosing to stay or go should be independent of that feeling. There is some truth to this because as the saying goes ‘wherever you go, there you are.’ I never fully understood this until my husband and I separated.</p>
<p>BTW- Patricia Evans has some good books on emotional abuse. I’m a little hesitate to recommend them simply because once you start to label someone it can be hard not to see them that way but those books did shine some light on my husband’s behavior for me. I no longer think of him as emotionally abusive but merely a person with some ‘issues’ relating to anxiety, OCD and his chronic illness. He is, actually, a very good person, very devoted to me and our son, very generous and caring. He simply has issues with how he deals with some of his stress. I have also come to appreciate the fact that I am not a perfect person and he puts up with a lot from me too and loves me anyway.</p>
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p3t is that because the child grew up with the problems of the alcoholic, or something that comes simply from having an alcoholic parent (i.e. genetic?)</p>
<p>I havent read all the posts, but OP, be aware that some states will mandate divorced parents pay for college, some won’t. NY and NJ will; Pa wont</p>
<p>* Someone else sympathized with my husband, pointing out that I’d discontinued “marital relations” and moved out of the bedroom. I did this in an effort to prevent him from destroying my soul. I really had no choice. </p>
<p>*</p>
<p>I do not understand why anyone would criticize you for this…and I don’t know why a verbally/emotionally/whatever abusive person would expect someone to have se with them. Do people expect you to be some kind of sex slave or sex prisoner…treat you badly and then hop in the sack? I don’t get this. </p>
<p>*
OP: I will do anything to keep the peace. </p>
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<p>Originally Posted by paying3tuitions </p>
<h2>Did you mention above that you’re also the child of an alcoholic? If so, that’s a classic character trait of adult children of alcoholics. </h2>
<p>Xania: p3t is that because the child grew up with the problems of the alcoholic, or something that comes simply from having an alcoholic parent (i.e. genetic?) * </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s because of any genetic aspect. I think it’s because these people grow up trying not to make any waves in an already dysfunctional home…they try to stay under the radar.</p>
<p>I think there are two extremes with Adult Children of Alcoholics. Both of my in-laws had alcoholic fathers. My MIL is the pleaser and “good girl”…My FIL was the demanding, moody, depressed, difficult to live with person.</p>
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<p>The children that come into the shelter that I work at almost always fit into one of two categories (whether their parents are alcoholics or not- it’s all about the abuse whether it’s physical, mental, etc) they’re either great kids who do anything anyone ever asks of them and are always way over-eager to please OR they’re just angry and moody- at everyone- and try to (either consciously or unconsciously) try to make everyone else miserable. The kids that fall into the 2nd category often ease up within the first week of being in the shelter when they start to relax and realize that that “cloud” is gone.</p>
<p>Hugs, SadMom. I can’t add much to what already has been said, but I thought I’d pass on a mantra that has helped keep me sane during recent marital problems:
“I can’t control you; you can’t control me.”</p>
<p>I say each part separately, and really think about what they mean to me: “I can’t control you” - Nothing I do will change your behavior. I can and should let you know how it impacts me, but ultimately I cannot make you change unless you want to. (Surprisingly this is very freeing – I had always felt as if I wished hard enough I could get my DH to behave better. But that turns out to be a huge waste of my energy.)</p>
<p>“You cannot control me.” - I can spend my time as I see fit. I don’t need permission, I don’t need to discuss in advance – I am an adult. The only areas that require discussion are those that involve both of us, not how I spend my time. I don’t need your approval if I approve of myself.</p>
<p>Hope this helps a little.</p>
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I don’t think anyone was criticizing her for that, just pointing out that it could be one of the factors in the current dynamic with her H.</p>
<p>Sadmom - I have nothing wise to add, nothing related to shared experience or experience with counseling, but I wish you love and I wish you peace. You deserve to be happy - we all do. You matter - not just his needs, the kids needs, but your needs matter too.</p>
<p>^Amen. And I hope you keep in mind that kids don’t miss much. If they witness you sucking up the bad behavior and unhappiness they will think it’s normal and learn to do the same. Best of luck to you on this journey that hopefully results in your happiness.</p>