Sue, It has taken me more that a year in recovery to learn some of what Michelle posted. My H & I have spent countless hours arguing about his feelings and reactions after his EA. He would get so argumentative and was a master at sending our conversations off on tangents. He spent 99% of his energy ducking and dodging real communication. The harder I pushed, the more he'd nit pick on syntax. We are both lawyers, so it was totally illogical for him to think I wouldn't see through his shenanigans with syntax. Nevertheless, logic failed me miserably.
Now that we are further into recover and the pressure is off of both of , it is amazing how much better I am at receiving his thoughts and recollections about his EA and how much less evasive and "less illogical" he is.
My H is an extremely bright man, but, during the months after his EA involuntarily ended, you would have thought that he did not have enough common sense to come in out of a rain.
As long as he was emotionally defending himself, he was totally illogical & my attempts at reasoning just aggravated the tension between us when any mention let alone discussion of the EA came up. His evasiveness together with all the other emotional trauma nearly drove me nuts.
Good luck with being the strong one who just backs off when H gets noncommunicative by being argumentative. I'd love to see what Michelle would say about how you address your need for honest and open communication under these circumstances. I, too have that communication need near the top of my needs list! My H has great difficulty meeting it because being open just doesn't come easily to him.
