A New Beginning

[Determined_Doug]

Hi Karen;
Sorry for the crap you are going through. As I re-read your thread, one idea kept presenting itself to me about you and your H's interaction. He knows you well enough to know which of your buttons to push in order to get a reaction from you. For him, whether he does it intentionally or not, it is a sense of power over you. "Look what happens when I do this!" and you respond, perhaps not in the same way each time, but you still respond because it is a personal hot button for you. Any power he has to hurt you with his comments or actions is power you give him by reacting. I also realize from re-reading your thread that you largely realize this already.

How do you turn off hot buttons? Well, in my case, finding them is the first step. When my W pushes a button, it is often one I don't know I have. I react in an automatic fashion to her. I don't know about your H, but I don't think my W (or most people) do it on purpose. So, what I have tried when I discover a new hot button is tell my W (after I have reacted and realized that is what has happened ) that a hot button was pushed. I hope that by verbalizing it two things will happen. One is that (in a perfect, merciful universe) she will avoid pushing that button (not bloody likely, mate!). The other is that I will learn to see it as a hot button and learn to change my reaction. (laugh, leave the room, pass gas...something different and unpredictable so that the button no longer has control of me). This is still an experiment in progress for me, but maybe my story can give you some ideas on what to do.

If you H is pushing your buttons on purpose because he knows you will react in this way, well, that is just emotional abuse in my books. I would tell him to STOP and leave the room. Just my $0.02 worth.

DD