Yeah, I agree. I think things have flared up between us because a) he's waiting for these results and knows it is poop or get off the pot time in terms of our relationship - if he has been making excuses, it's all being exposed now and b) he's really angry about the ultimatum I gave him (which is fair enough - it wasn't clever of me). I can agree that his behaviour amounts to low-level verbal and emotional abuse, but I don't think he's a narcissist or anything else incurable. I also don't think I can cure him.
What I need to work on is the part of me that doesn't feel okay unless I have his approval. I know for sure that my wish to do the parties slightly differently is yes - more about my needs than Youngest - but doesn't come from any particular shame around his family or selfishness to the extent that Youngest wouldn't have a nice time and see his family. The fact that H consistently believes the worst about me should be something I can shrug off as just his opinion. I find him thinking badly of me very frightening and threatening and it's why I get into it with him - trying to convince him that he's wrong - which is of course invalidating but also a total and utter waste of time.
He doesn't really reply to texts or emails. I send information sometimes about school trips and we have a shared calendar, but he often spaces on things like that. Then gets annoyed with me about it for not telling him. Again - I need to just shrug off his annoyance rather than seeing it as my problem to solve, and I am not there yet.
I don't know how to work on that. But I am seeing IC today and will bring it up there for discussion. Learning not to care what he thinks of me seems a strange way to repair a marriage. When I am on my own or with friends I feel like I am a flawed but basically okay person who has a lot of kindness and insight and is doing her best most days. When I am with him, quite often I feel like the worst person in the world. I suspect he has a similar experience and a lot of our skirmishes are about getting the other person to think and feel the way we want them to think and feel so that we ourselves feel okay. I wish I could talk about this with him as friends - not in a hectoring way, but just in a 'huh, look at this thing we keep doing, isn't it crazy?' and I miss that part of our connection, which did exist. Ah well.
Makeup counter lady was very persuasive. I am now happily skint for rest of month.
