My H felt completely emasculated. What came through to me, once I was ready to truly understand, is that his choice to not ever use his voice (completely confrontation avoidant - seriously, you should read my threads, some major parallels) means that he feels like he emasculated himself ... he can't deal with that, that would mean turning inward and he is no where near ready to deal with that. So he blames me. For all of it. Even now, he finds ways to make the parts of his life he doesn't like ... my fault. Now, it amuses me. I see it for what it is. And I hope for his sake that someday he does the work to dig out.
I need to expand on this because it makes it sound like I don't/didn't see the truth in how he felt. I do. My take charge, managerial approach to our life greatly contributed to how he felt. I remember one conversation we had (my stbxH has had various moments of clarity where we've had interesting conversations) where he told me that even when I WAS listening to him, he felt like I was only hearing as much as I needed to start formulating my rebuttal/defense in my mind and the rest of the time he could tell the wheels were turning and the I was no longer listening. That stopped me in my tracks. Now, my first instinct was to deny ... but ... it was true. So true. Unfortunately true. And it's something I will never forget.
Holding onto anger to punish someone else, is like lighting yourself on fire to get smoke in their eyes ~ 25yearsmlc
