Hi Kalni and NW - Yes, it does look like things are getting worse - at least as the holidays approach. I'm now going completely dark and just letting her be - only communicating in matter-of-fact terms about finances and our baby via email. At least the email gives me a record of our interactions as well - though she never responds.
I started reading Love Without Hurt - and trying to understand more of what she might be seeing/feeling/fearing/etc. But it's strange - since the book is written with the belief that the husband is the abuser. While I can see where I've been emotionally and verbally abusive toward my wife in the past - I don't see the kinds of patterns in me that Stosny identifies in the abusive husband...and so, yes, I'm still trying to see things from my W's pov...but not to benefit her...rather to figure out more about relationships and how they should function. Having been in a terribly emotionally abusive marriage, I don't ever want to repeat anything like this ever again - it has never happened to me before, and still just leaves me bewildered sometimes.
In many ways, that conversation from a couple nights ago sums up how my W and I would interact over the years. I would be calm, try to talk about something difficult, she would get angry and start attacking, I try to stay calm, she pushes more buttons, I start to get tense, she pushes harder, and then I snap at her...and then she says, see, you're an abusive person....It's so damn frustrating to feel so twisted up like that - even when I'm sitting there thinking, be calm, stay calm, don't get sucked into her drama...but then she manages to accuse me of something like not caring about my son...after I've been literally peeling myself off the floor from weeping about how this is affecting him - and how much I wish I could do more to protect him from all this negativity...I had been in agony over the weekend - outright physical pain from all this and how it's affecting our baby - and so when she accused me of not caring about our baby it was just too much to bear...and in my weakness, I snapped...
That's what I have to work on - not letting her anger, her pain, and her confusion get into my head like that - and letting her go/going dark/removing myself from her life seems like the only way to do that.
But I'm going to keep on learning about functional relationship and marriages - I'm going to keep on working at being a better man - since I don't like to be the type that succumbs to her temper. It's hard for me to navigate this, though, since I've always stood up for myself vehemently when attacked - I think it's why I overcame my father's abuse in ways that my brother and sister did not. When my father attacked me with irrational accusations about who I was or what I thought, I did not let him get away with it - and I learned early on to stand my ground and remind myself that he was wrong about me - and I would fight him back...which is most likely why I fight back when my wife does the same...It was a learned survival behavior - but it didn't really solve things with my dad - and it certainly doesn't help me with my wife. So I need to learn a better, healthier form of self preservation - no matter what happens with my wife.
Hm...Wife...that just doesn't seem like the right word anymore. STBX isn't right either...she's more of a ghost to me than anything else. Hard to see, sometimes frightening, and always vanishing.
