Feeling alone and frustrated with a 180.

[Psych77]

Endeavour, you are exactly right - at this point, even if I had a valid excuse for something, to W it would just be another excuse.

And yes, I do feel attacked when W lets me know I did something I shouldn't have/didn't do something I should. And it is mostly based on my fears/insecurities. My past is a very odd story - I spent most of my childhood being rejected by others (outside my family), so I came to view having someone care about me as a very rare and precious thing. That in itself is OK, even an advantage. Unfortunately, it has also made me hypersensitive when there is any conflict in a relationship I have - I become panicked, afraid it is going to fall apart at any moment. So, as you can imagine, GALing has been a great challenge for me. But it has been something that brought up immediate results - I haven't been hanging on W all the time, frightened by every negative word she says (well, the times when I have been consistent with it). Add to that the fact that my parents went by the dictum, "Never fight in front of the children," so I thought that a successful marriage had no conflicts (even though my parents told me they had fights, more is learned by seeing than by hearing), and became either very clingy or very defensive every time we argued (I have known this is a problem for a long time, I just keep discovering more ways in which it has been influencing my behavior). I suspect there is a similar dynamic at work with your H; every time something negative happens, any time there is conflict or hard feelings between the two of you, he fears that it rings the doom of the relationship. Difference is that he is not scared of leaving the relationship...maybe just scared of "missing" whatever would make him happiest? Maybe that's why he won't commit either way - because when you fight he fears that he is giving up his chance for happiness by staying with you, but then later he wonders if the fight was just a normal part of marriage, and leaving you would be giving up the "right choice" for him? And (just going totally out on a limb, here) what about his dignity? Is he afraid to respond to you when you are angry with him, for fear he will be losing his independence, just doing what he is told? That's just a (very) wild hunch.

W is a little harsh, but I don't think that has too much to do with it, most of the time. She has always had a rougher way about her than me, even when we were dating. She grew up on the east coast, where sarcasm is the native language. I grew up in the midwest, where the cardinal rule is, "Be nice at all costs." Maybe neither one is completely healthy. I know my upbringing has made it very difficult to assert myself until things are brought to an extreme (which may also contribute to my history of angry outbursts). So, there are times when W is overly harsh in her response to things, and that hurts me. But I think mostly I need to learn to deal with her way of communicating - and mostly, I have. It really is the criticism itself, and the anger itself, that I get nervous about. And, to be healthy, I really have to learn to deal with that.