SO he feels terrible, and that must be your fault, right? Gosh, that brings back memories. I suggest you don't reassure him that he isn't actually an awful person, but you don't give him suggestions to make himself feel better either. This is his journey and he needs to make it on his own.
You're really good at articulating where you feel he is going wrong. I'm going to suggest you leave all that on the back burner now. He won't want to hear your opinions on that, and really, he's will have to come to these realisations himself and work on them himself if he's going to be any good to you as a husband.
He's probably got a similar list of things about you. And while he obsesses with that list, he gets nowhere with his own personal growth. It's also - as you are learning - tiresome and hurtful to be around someone obsessed with your shortcomings.
Such good advice. A, thank you. I feel like yesterday I finally reached the truly ‘tired of all this’ stage. I feel capable of detaching and dropping the rope. I think this has been building for me for a while, but finally I can truly understand that I am only in the way of his process and I need to nimbly jump out of the way now. To save myself, mostly, but also in a way, it saves him. I don’t want to be a part of a relationship that includes another woman, a relationship where I am a whipping post, or more gently, a cause for another person’s suffering. I can’t change him or convince him or give him what he needs in a relationship at the moment.
I can only step aside and work on the changes I have been cultivating for the past few months. Getting out of my depression, getting my body and mind back, being the best person I can be for myself and my kids. I have been doing gymnastics around bettering myself for our relationship. I have been suffering from the rejection of it all and I have allowed myself to feel unworthy of any love. But the more I come back to myself (teeny, tiny baby steps, I’m not completely there yet), the more I realize that I am actually a good person, worthy of love and affection.
I’m sure I’ll be back in tears again sometime in the near future, second-guessing all that I have just written, but for this moment in time I am one step ahead of where I was a week ago.
