When the goal is positivity

[Zues126]

Painter,

I missed your post until now just rereading. OMG. We have so many similarities! I Felt so frusturated with my husband's attitude and way of communicating, I would diagnose him as being on spectrum ( I know I am not supposed to do that). Even his mother would get frusturated and tell me how patient I was (not trying to come across as an angel cause I have some flaws as well)

Once in order to give me advise, MIL told me "sometimes you just have to let them be a..holes". (Zues Is this what you meant when you said no such thing as perfect relationships" )

He would also get annoyed when I would ask to review budget. Things logically didn't make sense to me and he too deflected. That drives me crazy. For professions that are supposed to be based on logic, I don't understand his lack of logic. I like things quantified and when he can't quantify he deflects and I end up totally Frusturated.

No one is perfect, yet everyone is perfect. Take a dog. I am a dog guy. Dogs are as close to perfect as you get. There is really nothing bad about a dog. If they aren't toilet trained they will go to the bathroom in the kitchen...is that bad? Or is it that we expect something from them they don't understand that isn't inherently important to them? And once they learn it makes us happy when they go to the bathroom outside, all they want to do is do it right. There is a book called "there are no bad dogs". It says there are bored dogs, neglected dogs, misunderstood dogs, poorly trained dogs...but there are no BAD dogs. Dogs live for nothing more that to show us love. Yes, they might chew something up that was important to us, but that just means we have a complicated world and we value things they don't, and we don't get mad at them for that, we get mad at ourselves for expecting something beyond them being a dog. Any dog owner loves their dog, they don't walk around all day pissed off that their dog isn't good enough or upset at how our dogs communicate.

Husbands are no different. Men really want nothing more than to make their partners happy. Happy wife, happy life. Unhappy wife, unhappy life. Men are fed on admiration and appreciation, and they feel that expressed by physical acceptance. A man wants nothing more in his life than for his wife to tell her girlfriends she's got a catch. And nothing stabs him through the heart worse, NOTHING...than if she talks bad about him. When a man's wife criticizes him he gets hurt. When it continues, he gets defeated. If no matter what he does he is getting torn apart he gets very, very wounded. Then finally he gets resentful because he asks himself this question: "Why, if my boss respects me, my employees respect me, my children respect me, my family respects me, my sports team respects me, why if everyone else in my life thinks I'm a good guy, why does this woman only see me through $hit tinted glasses and think there's something wrong with me?" You say that all of your friends and family see you as being patient and calm...I'd bet all of his friends and family see him as being a good guy that has value. My point is at some point he gives up, and either walks away physically, or emotionally withdraws because he doesn't want to be emotionally beaten anymore.

Then when he does this is used as more evidence that he is a bad guy?

I'd really suggest you talk to IC/DB Coach about this. I have worked through a lot of anger, and have a ways to go yet. But there's got to be some ways to make progress. For example, you could challenge yourself to follow every angry comment about H with a reflection on why you find the need to attack him there, why you're so sensitive in that spot, etc. And you could then follow it up with 5 things you like about him or specific things he has done in the past that are good, things that when you first were together made you feel like he was a good guy.

This is just an example of an exercise, but if you get in the habit of owning your anger rather than blaming it on him for being human, and forcing yourself to refocus on positives...maybe that would be a good experiment.