Crimson - know that what you are describing about yourself is not uncommon. Please don't beat yourself up, but do recognize that you can improve in self awareness and how you relate to others.
No where else but in a M and as a parent do you entertwine your emotions, feelings, loves, fears, habits, actions & reactions. It's too easy to say your areas that need improvement were areas where you were flawed in some way. It's not that simple. You, like everyone else are working your way through your life, believing you are doing what is right for you and yours. It's often hard to know the exact starting point of a tough issue between H & W. You may have been responding in a way you felt justified because of the sum of who you are learned over your entire life, and also responding to your wife and something she has been dealing with her entire life. All in all its so hard to find the specific root of an issue, and then to try to assign fault to one or the other is often a waste of time and not what is needed.
I think you just need to see where your typical responses caused stress in your M, and think about how you could have handled it better. That's not assigning blame or fault. It's just learning through M how to find solutions. I keep hearing someone in this blog say that its better to be happy, than right. That sounded like a cliche to me at first, but upon reflection I came around to this wisdom, and that's not an easy concept for guys to accept.
You sound like me a lot. You want to repair things, you want to have control of things so you can make them work in a way you think makes sense, you think you know what to do because you want things to work for your M and family. So, it's not your intention that's off, it's learning to understand how to interact with others by listening and trying to understand their path, their needs.
Please take this from me because I am living your life right now too. My W is in a massive life crisis right now and is in full psychiatric treatment. The point here is that I used to do the same thing. I thought I had all the common senses answers to overcome adversity, to provide for W and family because I overcame so much myself. I felt like I knew always what to do, and if my W went down some other road and couldn't get it I felt like she was copping out, taking the easy road because hey, I would do the work if she didn't. I saw her inability to overcome these issues as selfishness, narcisistic, weak and taking advantage of my love for her.
Guess what? I was doing everything I thought was right for her and us. I loved her like no other and yet because of the areas I needed to be better, I couldn't do what she needed. And guess what? Until I was ready to learn to listen, not judge, look for solutions that would make her happy even if it may not be what I think is right, did I ever stand a chance of evolving. And by the way, it was of all of you on this blog that woke me up.
It all gets so complicated in a M though - desires, fears, life-long issues, habits, tendencies, etc. Hopefully your wife will slow down, maybe stop running from you, because you have changed how you are relating to her.
If you are fortunate she will see this. I don't know if you have ever gotten this chance with your W but I told my W what I have learned from our crisis as far as it relates to my personal evolution. I know many on this blog would say that words won't mean anything to the WAS, only action. That is true in a sense that only action matters but I do think if you have never told her what you have learned I don't think it would hurt so long as you have no expectations of what she will do with this info, that you are giving this to her with no strings attached and then you move on with your own life having gratefully learned something so valuable. This is not to say you won't have the massive ups and downs that us DB soldiers have.
So as not to hijack your thread I am posting recent events on my thread "DB'ins is sooooo hard" that may help you see that you never know when something will change on a dime, much like it was for you when you both brought your son to the ER for his tummy issue. Don't give up because you don't know what might be just around the corner!
Hey and BTW, your comment about your size and volume is an important insight. I'm tall like you too and have a large voice. My W always rrespponded to me like a father figure. Couple that with her being 5'2" 110 lbs and I'm literally twice her size. If a woman is feeling judged, lacking self-confidence and lonely, it's easy for them to perceive you as some bad-a$$ tyrant, and you might not even know that's how you come across.
Stay strong and keep self evaluating but pls stop judging yourself so harshly.
