The Goddess of the Goats Sees Into The Future

[jim0987]

Your normally my font of advice and wisdom....

For him its not about the cushion. its about everything and everytime he was made to feel not good enough and most probably most of those werent by you but my guess is there is some deeper more fundamental thing between you that dominated his guilt response and if i had to guess (sorry if im overstepping) its that the ranch hasnt/isnt the life he had planned - its been harder and less fun. And thats before you add that mountain of stuff that he should feel guilty for since BD.

in my situation we moved cross country (only 2.5hrs) and it made my W miserable, no matter how many times she said she doesnt blame me for moving (we agreed to move) i still felt guilty about it and she did/does blame me for not moving back when she said she was unhappy - so more guilt on me. That guilt tarnished so much of our interaction that it contributed to the communication problems between my W and I which in turn were a big factor in how we handled all the other problems.

what to do about it............???????????????

without knowing exactly what mental place he is in on a lot of this stuff it would be really easy to make suggestions that go right against everything you've been doing DB wise. what i will say is that if his self loathing is strong enough then no matter what you say or do he will find a way to judge himself poorly(you can test me on this if you like - i pretty much gurantee i can twist anything to put myself down and make it about me being rejected). but then this is why we cant control anyone else.

If i go back to the cushion situation as a specific example then i've been trying to think what the 'best' thing you could have done might have been. [INSERT BIG MENTAL PAUSE WITH LOTS OF COGS WHIRRING]

i think maybe the best option would have been to engage him in the how to fix it maybe something like

'I really wanted that cushion as it goes with my favourite chair. Is it gone, gone or can we fix it?'

this shows that it mattered to you but engages him in the solution as a way to make amends and alleviate any guilt. by talking about can WE fix it removes the blame from the conversation

But why can't he just say "Sorry, I made a mistake. I won't throw anything else away without asking you." ????? I don't get it.

because to say this he would be engaging with his guilt rather than avoiding it and he would then also be yeilding power and control to you as well. I bet if he did say the second part of that it would sound patronising or snarky

out of curiousity does your H have a habit of apologising profusely for small insignificant stuff but rallying against the idea of apologies for stuff that really needs it?