Hmm, I see a lot of parallels between your H and mine. I just wrote several long posts but then deleted them because they were all psychoanalysing my H and as Steve pointed out, I'm trying to do a lot of mind-reading and it's not that helpful! Focusing on me, I keep trying to understand WHY I tolerated H's terrible behaviour for so many years, if he'd been like that at first I would have run away as far as my legs would carry me. But slowly over decades he behaved worse and worse and I tolerated more and he gave less. I think a lot of it comes from my mum, who is a bit of a martyr and had a tyrannical father she was afraid of, and a weak mother who put up with it. Anything to keep the peace. I'm very bad with any sort of confrontation, and I've never learnt how to assert myself. I'm changing that slowly, but it's in my M that it's happening the slowest. My IC says that I make a lot of excuses for H's behaviour, I see it as trying to be empathetic and understanding why he does what he does, but I suppose I'm doing neither him nor me any favours in tolerating poor treatment of me. If my H is going to change I have to change first and allow only positive behaviours from him, if he's not capable of doing that then that'll be his loss.
Lots to talk to my IC about I think. Like discussing what my needs are and how to articulate them better. if they're ever going to be met I feel like I started making progress on that at the start of the year but since then have been backsliding.
