Yes I mentioned it to him various times over the years and this area of disagreement was a source of friction between us.
To bring it to a more general level, we disagreed that "playful" bad treatment at home is a way to toughen up a kid to hold his own among his peers. Horseplay, crotch grabbing, peeing on people in the shower, goodnatured namecalling like dummy and dumb@ss, sarcastic joking, many examples of things I was too lame and hypersensitive to understand about the ways of men. My H has charm, humor and charisma, and his wild and crazy antics are appealing. The "normal" bar can get ratcheted up over years and you don't even realize how not ok it is because you've been living in the middle of it. Our friend who's a psychologist got in on the conversation a few times when we had dinner get-togethers, and she confirmed that abusing or bullying your child is no way to inoculate him against abuse or bullying. H just disagreed with her too. What do you do when it's your husband, the father of your kids, and he's 99% fine and in some areas even better at parenting than you? It all starts to look like grey area.
Also, though, and here's my reason for feeling my future is different, during my marriage I thought speaking up was communicating. I thought saying hey knock it off, or I really don't like that, or expressing anger, or saying I wanted a rule against something, was communicating. So I would communicate this over and over like bouncing a ball off a wall. I think I have learned better to try something different, to work harder at communication that goes two ways rather than lobbing my ideas over to him, to ask for agreement or ask for feedback. To not accept an ok-FINE.
I don't know for sure if I ever told H what happened to me - I really held it as a secret my whole life. Another one of our repeated disagreements over the years was his love of grabbing me roughly or tickling me and telling me you gotta take the good with the bad when I would object to that. I know that I told him as strongly as possible that he really needed to stop doing that, but he is who he is. If I told him exactly why I react that way, and maybe I did, I don't recall - it was very embarassing to me (that probably seems funny but it's like lizard-brain thinking). I definitely tried (and failed) to get him to connect the dots that doing those things virtually guaranteed I wouldn't be in the mood for what he was seeking. This disagreement did come up in our marriage counseling session, maybe our first one.
I wasn't sure if I had ever been so clear as to explain that being molested as a kid created that violently fearful response, but I did say so in this counseling session and the message I got from IC was that I needed to learn that H is not the person who molested me. I needed to learn to be OK with physical treatment that was similar to what happened to me but was innocent and meant affectionately. I said why can't I just not want to be tickled and people just don't tickle me?
But that was when we were just working on getting h to talk about what was wrong with our marriage in his view, and validating that. It wasn't the time to get things I needed, that is for the future.
Adinva 51, S20, S18 M24 total 6/15/11-12/1/12 From IDLY to H moving out 9/15/15-3/7/17 From negotiating SA to final D at age 50 5/8/17-now: New relationship with an old friend __ Happiness is a warm puppy.
