Afterall..... This IS my life V

[fearless]

Heather,
I think by now you know that I think your H has some serious issues that he needs to address. That being said I still see many issues you still need to deal with whether you are married to your H, are a single woman or are back in a relationship with someone else. You prefer the idea of staying with your H because you love him and desire a family with him. IF you have made the decision to stay for the remaining year (and that is your decision to make), then my suggestion is that you focus on yourself for at least the next few months. You can still give your H some information to help him along if he chooses to engage but leave your expectations low with what he does with than information.

IMO. This is where the concept of detachment comes in. Detachment is NOT passivity and it is NOT ignoring your H or walling yourself off from him. Detachment means freeing yourself of expectations from your H. Complete detachment is NOT a permanent place for a healthy marriage. This is a short term place to give both of you some room to grow. Detachment is a gift to yourself so that you are free to work on your issues without expecting each personal success of yours to be directly and immediately recognized, appreciated and reacted positively to by your H. For example, your H baits you and waits for you to scream "it's over" and throw something. Instead you keep your cool, stand your ground and react as the Heather you want to be. You should feel great about that achievement even if your H ignores it or goes back to his same old stance. The PURPOSE should be your feeling of accomplishment and not whether your H sees it and not whether he then makes his own positive change. Again this is in the short term.

This is also where you work on staying on that middle path of not giving into his demands but also not being defiant, abusive and aggressive yourself. Just remember that you cannot control your H but you can control yourself. Also remember that you do not like him controlling you any more than he likes feeling controlled by you.

Also my opinion is that you (and maybe others) tend to confuse vulnerability with passivity. People have given you the advice to be vulnerable which I think is good but you may need specifics in how to be vulnerable. Giving into your H's demand for staying out of "his" bed, letting him have the chrome faucet handles, not kissing him, etc. without confronting him about how hurtful it is and without telling him how you feel are passive behaviors. Vulnerability is communicating to him that you feel hurt and worthless to him with his actions. Vulnerability is soooo much more scary than passivity which is why it is so hard. In passivity you can keep control (you are keeping control because you do not give him information. Like refusing his gestures without telling him why gives you control). In vulnerability you "give" away some control to someone else (now he knows why you refused his gestures and he has a choice of what to do with that information.) Obviously I do not want you to give your H control over your life or emotions but I think you do need to give him the information he needs to understand how his actions affect you. You will feel vulnerable if you "give" him the information of how hurt you feel with his actions. And in fact it is risky that he may "use" that information to hurt you even more which is probably why you resist being that vulnerable to him. But on the other hand he may actually NOT know how hurt you are by his behavior. (as amazing as that may seem. He might actually see you as someone that does not care.)

Another example for vulnerability is the porn issue. You have approached it only (as far as I can tell) from a position of control and boundaries (not a bad thing but it can limit communication). "I told you to stop looking at porn and you lied to me." Now he is on the defensive and it degrades to a power struggle and arguments of semantics. (Again this might be okay if you two were on a more level playing field but in your case he seems to have the upper hand so when you "play" this boundary card, he always "wins" and you end up feeling even lower than when you started.)

What if you approached the issue from a strictly emotional side and were honest about your feelings? "When I find out that you are looking at porn, I feel unimportant, insignificant, unattractive, etc. to you. I feel when you look at porn you are choosing unknown and "faceless" women over me. It hurts me." You have merely given him the truth about your feelings. (And also importantly not judged him because you have OWNED your feelings with the "I feel" statements rather than "You make me feel" statements.) NOW what does he do with that information???

I hope this comes across as a balanced "Plan of attack" of giving yourself some detachment by removing expectations from your H while giving him some information about how you feel. Yes, he may not do anything with that information but at least he has it and now it can be his choice how to proceed.

Heather, I think you are a great person and I admire how hard you have worked. Whatever you decide with your marriage, you will have support here. I would just like to see you have more balance in your life no matter what happens.