A gentle question: do you have fear of confronting H about things because there is a small part of you (deeply buried?) that is still trying to 'nice him back'. Is your subconscious telling you to 'keep pleasing! Don't make waves or you will really blow it now!'?
I have been watching myself do this without even knowing it. I thought I was afraid of H's anger. But what I was really afraid of was losing any hope of pleasing H back into his old self. 'Nice-ing' him back wasn't going to work.
It is an exercise in futility and only serves to harm me more.
Does that mean we should be unkind? Less compassionate? Put on our raging-bull-boss-b!tch front and confront H's anger head-on? No. I think it is all about boundaries.
So far, the boundaries I have put into place (which required a huge amount of bravery on my part), resulted in me getting my needs met (because only I was in charge of meeting them!). And it also helped me to understand that I was being kind to both him and myself: he knew where he stood. And I knew I could protect myself.
I am not sure if this will resonate, but your latest posts made me think of the similarities in my sitch.
