Help evaluating LRT progress

[44tries]

In our relationship, I have always been the emotional one. I can get stressed out and lash out or overreact. It's a failing and I know that. I've worked hard to not act like this and my outbursts have been far more sparse than when we first got married. I don't mean to be hurtful when I do it and I apologize when I realize that I have crossed the line. Afterwards, I feel guilty for days.

This sounds more like my wife. Except I do think she meant to be hurtful at the time of her outbursts. But, for both of you, I understand that this is part of your personality and while you have had to learn how to have better emotional control, this same trait has values in other ways. It took me a long time to understand the idea of becoming emotionally "flooded" as they say, because it simply doesn't happen to me. But now I do and I have a lot more patience with is, plus it is less of an issue.

My husband tends to keep things bottled in and lets them fester. When he is being hurtful, it is not a temper flare up. He is calm and intends for it to hurt. In those moments, he does not care about the pain that he causes. When the moment passes, he disassociates himself from what he said because in his mind, he's not that kind of a person. He neither apologizes nor eats himself alive over what he said or did. I think this goes along with being incredibly stubborn, which he is.

I don't mean to be presumptuous at all, but have you ever wondered if he has some kind of mental thing going on? I know you mentioned the low testosterone issue and even that he may be crazy, but I don't know how serious you were in a clinical sense. I don't know much about the area, but things like disassociating himself don't really sound normal.

I understand the frustration too of his refusal to receive proper medical treatment. My wife was actually diagnosed with something as a teenager, I can't remember what exactly right at this moment, maybe manic depression. She admits she could have a mood disorder and they run in her family. But, of course, she will not try to find out for sure or get help because it can't go on the military record. I am all for avoiding meds if you can and she has seemed to manage fairly well at this point if she does have something, but I have a fundamental problem with the way that military members are pushed to refuse seeing a doctor for fear of their careers.