It has been more than five months since I posted. Mostly, things were improving, until recently. I have been watching gucci’s work and those tactics seem to be pretty effective. I am ready to call it quits anyway so why not see what happens? I’d love to have gucci's input and also that of others who understand those principles. I’m open to other points of view also.
Here is the nutshell version:
Married 4 years,( after 2 years of friendship & 3 years dating). No kids. Me- 50 H - 67. No OP.
H emotionally abusive since we got married.(mostly the covert/withholding/passive-aggressive type). Sex took a major nosedive when we married too.
About 1 year ago I read Stosny “Love without Hurt” book and ask H to read it and do the work too because I did not want to continue the way things have been.
He did a little bit of the work over the next 5 months and things improved a bit. Then he read the part where Stosny says you have to leave your spouse if he doesn’t do the work and learn to consistently value you and care about your feelings. I think H finally realized I might leave.
He starts to work the Stosny bootcamp program much more diligently and has a couple of phone consultations with him too. Things improve greatly for about 3 months. Then a relapse (when he is feeling anxious) which took several weeks to work through and then back on track.
Then a month ago H began preparing for a major work event out of the country and is under a lot of stress. He starts to get a little jerkish, but doesn’t go too far and recovers. Then late on the night before H leaves the country for a couple of months, I am upset when I realize that even though we won’t see each other for a while, he hasn’t finished packing and does not appear to have any great desire to spend ‘quality time’ with me that night. He was very cold in response to my hurt.
He didn’t call me for many days after he left. We finally worked it out though. I decided to go ahead with my original plan to join him in early Sept and spend a couple of weeks together in France. (We have not vacationed together in 3 years!) So I made got my ticket. I was really pretty excited about it.
Then it got ugly again when I finally called him at work (only place I know to reach him) after he hadn’t called for 3 days & I needed some info from him to make plans. I told him I was upset that he hadn’t called and he was cold and suggested that I was sooo unreasonable to expect that he would call me and he was very busy and no he didn’t even have 5 minutes to leave me a message. He actually showed contempt for my feelings which I had not seen in more than a year.
So he choked when the pressure was on. Funny though, the same amount of pressure before we got married did not result in him treating me poorly. (when he was out of town before we married he called me nearly every day)
My tentative plan right now is to cancel my travel plans and try to move out before he returns in about 4 weeks. (It’s his house). I haven’t said anything to him yet.
So what do you think? Am I on the right track? What do I say to H when he finally calls me?
