I know my H has been very frustrated when he's pointed out that he feels my emotional reactions to things (his coldness and distance, his parenting styles, his EA) are more to do with my childhood experiences than his behaviour. He's said, many times, he feels like he's taking the blame for my past. That I don't actually see him, but I only see other people who have hurt me, and he's paying for their misdeeds. He says I massively over-react and he can't live his life around my trauma, trying not to trigger it and to heal it. And I can totally see that. He is right.
What it feels like for me is that because I've had a terrible childhood I am not yet healed from, I am not allowed to have a reasonable emotional reaction or objection to actual factual things he's done in the present. That he believes most normal people would be okay with the silent treatment, the EA, the verbal abuse, the relentless criticism. Those things aren't in my head: they actually happened, and he did them - and it isn't only trauma that makes me object to them. He believes (or at least I gather this from what he says and now he acts) that the problem isn't in how he behaves, but in my inability to tolerate it.
I think we're both right, and it is good for me to heal the past and work out which of my feelings are about now and which are about then. And I can't do that work with him in the house with me, still acting in ways that trigger that stuff and hurt me. So where we are today - me healing and setting boundaries is the right place to be.
