You apply a lot of pressure to people to do things your way He hides from the consequences of any damage he does
Not a good mix is it?
I may be off on the first point, I really am just guessing based on his complaining about you controlling.. this usually means people applying a lot of pressure to make something happen... If what you are trying to DO is SAVE a marriage, its a GOOD thing in my opinion.
Owning your behaviour is a HUGE one in Phil McGraw's therapy approach which I read quite a bit of.
To McGraw you have two things to do to become an adult
a. Own your past b. Keep it OUT of your future
By ownership we mean here to fully acknowledge the harm done to people, do the work to rebuild trust, and repair damage where you can.
By keeping out OUT we mean setup whatever boundaries you need to make healthier choices for yourself and others.
For example : If you have a habit of abusing finances, pay back anyone you steal or borrow money from, turn your finances over to your spouse to budget and manage. Full transparency.
Your husband seems to want to HIDE from damage he's done rather than owning it. This is a serious problem and a serious obstacle to his therapy.
How can you go to therapy to repair a marriage if your instincts are to HIDE from your WRONGDOINGS? The LAST place you want to go is a FT office.
And of course, he's afraid of being attacked and made out to be the bad guy... Right on cue.
He has trouble managing his emotions it sounds like. If you bring up even a small problem, he will turn it into a thunderstorm and run away to hide. Then he comes back later and doen'st want to talk about it?
Classic passive aggressive.
He will have to learn to take HOLD of his choices, ugly or hurtful they may be, FACE them, be HONEST to himself AND you that he DID DO THEM... and then do the work to rebuild the betrayals and the damage into something respectable again.
Mb28 does your husband do any repair work at all? I am not sure what kind fo work he does, but it may benefit him to learn how to repair things... just to get a TASTE of it.
Many people nowadays have a disposable mindset, thanks to the market selling miles and miles of things that are best tossed away when broken.
Is your vaccum broken? Buy another Is your microwave busted? Buy another Is there a tear in your pants? Buy another pair Job not satisfying you anymore? Leave and get a new one Marriage isn't working anymore? Get rid of it
I majored in engineering, I build things by trade.
I suspect your husband either doens't think or work this way regularly, OR he can only think that way regarding his line of work.
Life is becoming so disposable that marriages just fall into the same basket of disposable part of our life.
Your husband needs to be RE-educated about REPAIRING problems rather than disposing them.
He may associate part of his own self-worth with the damage so its easier to get RID of it and the memory and pick up something NEW instead with a clean slate.
This is NOT a healthy way to think through your life and its challenges...
Your husband needs some education in rebuilding what's broken. I suspect he's adopted the same disposable mindset that many these days fall prey too.. its partly just the modern market... Its very often easier to dispose of something and buy new than have it fixed... its ubiquitously taken over marital thinking as well.
