Husband Threatened to Leave, Don't know what to do

[TrentC]

Am I being annoying? Is this fine and normal for him to do? Or am I being high maintenance?

To answer the last questions first: in my opinion, no, no, and not really.

Ok...so how do you bring this up without sounding controlling?

By making it about what you can and can't accept, not his behavior.

He wants freedom.

This is fairly reasonable.

He wants to be able to go out for drinks and me not nag him for going.

This is also somewhat reasonable.

And it's not that i care everytime if he does but he has been gone for 3 days out of town then worked the last two nights and informed me today he is going for wings tonight after the boys are in bed. I have him a sad look and he said "what? We are going away this weekend and ill be with you for 5 days straight. It's not a big deal"

This is far less reasonable. He doesn't get to decide what is a big deal for you.

See, he wants to behave like the only person responsible for meeting the others' needs is you. This whole thing started (again) with him having real, heartfelt issues that needed to be addressed. And you understand that, and you are trying your best to change.

But that doesn't absolve him of his responsibilities to the relationship—not to you, and not to your kids. (I keep hearing about how he feels and how you feel; how are your boys dealing with all of this?)

The problem is lately his "Wing" nights turn into bar and 4 am nights. And we leave at 9 am for another holiday...

This brings me back to my prior post. He's giving you just enough to keep you invested in the marriage, but—for right now at least—he's checking out.

The others have made really good points about what to say. The trick to not being controlling is to make your boundaries about what behavior is unacceptable to you because you have to be willing to enforce the consequences if he violates them. Controlling behavior is about "you can't do that" while boundaries are about "I won't tolerate that".

Just so we're clear: setting boundaries in this situation means accepting the possibility that one or the other of you is going to move to end the marriage. Because in the current situation, he's probably going to threaten to walk out when you set the boundary, if only to see if you give in. And if he doesn't, then he almost certainly will test the boundary—which means you have to enforce the penalty, which in turn may also cause him to threaten to leave (assuming the consequence isn't you kicking him out).

In either case, the best non-controlling response is "I can't make you stay in a relationship that you don't want."