So there is a big layer of your childhood that acts as an overlay onto your marriage and sometimes what is really a good adaptive thing in childhood, doesn't work well in marriage.
I've found that to be the case with me. My older brother was quite cruel to me growing up, and I learned to cope by walling myself off. I got so good at it, that whenever I felt attacked, I would put the walls up and remove myself emotionally from the situation. Unfortunately, I did the same thing when my W would criticize me for something. She was left feeling "Where did he go?" It was so automatic and so internalized, it never even occurred to me that I was doing it purposefully, and that it was damaging my M. Through a lot of IC, I finally was able to see it for what it was and disengage the automatic mechanism. Too late to save my M though.
