Well it's a good thing I have you, labug, since I clearly have tunnel vision.
No, my needs do not need to be his number one priority. But I would like to make the list.
It wasn't that the event itself was a hill worth dying on. But he wouldn't explain to me why he wouldn't go and I felt hurt. I was new to the area but he had grown up around there so most of what we did was about his connections and interests. The event would have involved a trip to a nearby state and in those pre-internet, pre-cell phone days I wanted to spend time with one of my few connections and show off my wonderful boyfriend and have someone riding shotgun in case I got lost.
I didn't go because I was afraid to go by myself. Note that marriage with him has cured me of those kinds of fears. But I still feel hurt at how unable he is to communicate himself to me. (I know it's a skill he's lacking because his mom is just the same.)
We did have surrounding issues about him needing more downtime than I realized and my acknowledging that was part of what brought us back together. So it wasn't just one thing that led to the break up... But the part that I cared about never got resolved, only his needs which I figured out independently and he then confirmed.
Did he feel heard? No, but mostly about the surrounding frustrations. I really feel like his not wanting to take that particular trip had more to do with his other feelings of being crowded and his general introversion than the trip itself.
I'm not sure how this might have followed through to now.
Our year or so leading up to the start of his A was really hard on him because we were in very close quarters with our three noisy kids and cave time was hard for him to get. Not to mention the anxiety of the financial issues leading up to that. Then once I knew about the A he voluntarily gave up his cave time so I could see he wasn't messing around. The "not messing around" part didn't last long but staying out his physical cave did. But he hid himself in his phone & video games right in front of me and the more he retreated into electronics the angrier I got till he finally snapped and said "this isn't what I want."
I don't have the means to fix it like I did back then and it would be stupid to anyway so now I have to watch and see if he ever does the work to fix it for himself or if I'm just not worth the effort to him.
Me42, H40 D12, S8, S7 A revealed: 7/13 Sep 4/14; Agreed to D 1/15
