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The one thing I wanted to say in defence of your partner.

I had a little bit of an epiphany yesterday and came to the realisation that many dynamics between my wife and I get disturbed by the fact that we both have severe boundary issues that still differ quite a lot.

She has boundary issues due to her sexual abuse.

But I just yesterday got a better sight on how I am broken due to my childhood, my mother never allowed me personal space and would commonly force me open emotionally and made me be her son father and husband emotionally, all while I was relentlessly picked on in the outside world.

She (my wife) gets utterly freaked from any friction in asserting boundaries or even the hint of them, and relies on my calmness to disarm, and it slides into her being dependent on me really quickly as the regulator.

So while we are a very close loving unit, there's a super hidden toxicity in it where I'm left steering the ship while lovingly holding her by her waist, if she feels like it.

Bottom line in this story is that my borders are really thin, I have a hard time actually "feeling" I'm being transgressed on, and am extremely empathetic even when people are treating me toxically.

The reason I'm saying this is, that you may have similarities to this issue, you can register it, but it took me a long long time to actually FEEL it.

And nowadays I have to sort of "wake myself up" at the moment I get disrespected, and for my usual self "overreact" based on what I think is appropriate, even if I'm not all there emotionally I "demand" respect.

The flip side to this is, that your partner may also be the victim of never having been allowed boundaries.

He may just be expressing his character, and have been put on a pedestal and suffer horrible narcissism.

But if he is just controlling as hell because he is utterly "co-dependent" and doesn't know who he really is, then it's up to you how to respond after you take a break IF he shows signs of willingness to change.

P.S. I'm not co-dependent, I've looked into that, I just don't respect my own boundaries or don't even know them enough, as I would put it now, they're shock sensitive, and I get emotionally stunned.

[This message edited by Derpmeister at 11:03 AM, November 21st (Saturday)]

Thank you for your insight, Derpmeister.

I know I have a very hard time defining or enforcing boundaries. I tend to grouse and bitch when my boundaries get stepped on, but I don't really enforce them. Hence, my current problem.

So I let things slide unless they are really, really important to me. Then I fight like a tiger. That's how it was during the A. That's how I am about my study time.

So if I am fair, I can admit that I was really harsh to him. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I know it was probably bad. I was desperate to get him to leave me alone so I could study. He wanted to talk about the M, and I did not want to go there. With every fiber of my being, I just wanted to be left the fuck alone.

Now that I am thinking about it, I realize i might have hurt him. Like, seriously. What if he really is as fragile as he says? I felt so backed into a corner, I said some shit I should not have said. Used to be, nothing I said ever mattered to him. And he would say the most gawd-awful shit to me, that just ripped me apart. And now it seems the situation is reversed.

So I am of two minds about it, really. In the first place, I feel like I took so much crap for so long, and then he has to get all butt-hurt over a few remarks I made which, whatever they were, could never have been as bad as some of the stuff he said to me. What a pissy-pants little jerk!

ANd then on the other hand, I took so much crap from him, I know how awful it feels to be on the receiving end. I would never intentionally do that to someone. Just because he did it to me first, does not make it right. It is no excuse.

Yeah, as far as what you just said.

Bitching is the utmost height of ineffective communication.

It only says keep going until you get clarity while I use this opportunity to vent.

You're not shaping your desired outcome but blaming the other for not mind reading.

I would definitely work on that. That said, I'm not at all familiar with the intricacies of your relationship.

But what advice I could give you is to start focussing on using longer descriptive sentences for your motivations and emotions.

One thing I've noticed communicating with my wife is that I could never finish a sentence.

She's very invested in not truly understanding me for some reason, which has gotten better because I told her I can't tolerate her interrupting me anymore by talking overtop of me when she decides she knows what I'm saying before I get to express it.

Inversely, she is always vague, and I am to this day just supposed to accept that, coming from someone that believed omission isn't lying at the start of our relationship.

So one could say she's just not good with words like she says, but after 13 years, she isn't even trying either, it's such a cop out, but: "That's just how I am".

She never admits/shows colour, or as little as she can, and that's what's going to kill us in the end...

She respects that now and as per my demand, she "asks to interrupt" which makes it possible for me to pause my thought.

In this scenario I always let her interrupt when done "politely".

Relationship has always been rife with boundary issues from her side and it's only now improving since I've become a dictator and refuse to meet her in the middle.

I mean I am, I let her interrupt every time, but when I say I need courtesy, respect, and I can't communicate when people talk overtop of me. Then I MEAN THAT.

I would say the fact I haven't been as much of a c*nt in the past is my fault in it all, I was accepting a certain amount of fairly abusing communication style.

Now that I am thinking about it, I realize i might have hurt him. Like, seriously. What if he really is as fragile as he says?

Pardon my potty mouth, but F all that jazz.

If anything, if he's been breaking your heart long and hard, let him get a little bit of a backbone.

Your impulse to baby him is not what you should nourish.

He needs to stop burrowing in like a tick, and get a sense of two individuals in a relationship-unit, he's probably scared to death of your individuality and the possibility of seeing his, and what he did with it.

Whatever understanding you have for him should not come with a reached out hand if he is not in a state of respectfully handling your boundaries.

This would be like telling your kid they're punished for eating candy, and you get so upset over how they're taking it you give them candy.

It's perfectly healthy and normal for your hubby to be upset, affirm your boundaries. (saying this in the context that I don't know what was exchanged exactly, assuming you didn't tell him his manhood is shrimp sized and looking, or that his face looks like rotting fruit).

Your doing schooling for crying out loud, building your future.

Get a grip, and tell him to get a grip too.

That's hard, when you're post-affair the first years you're doing this frantic bonding thing, scared to death of losing the other.

And it makes it harder to have a little more healthy rationale about behaviour in a more "action=result" kinda way.

It feels cold, but it will allow you to see him much better, and more importantly, yourself. Claim that space to heal so you can reclaim agency over your relationship choices moving forward.

If he keeps up his domineering ways, you can assure him that at the end of the ride, you'll never had any choice and will suffocate and vanish in his personality and have to leave to protect yourself, and to run from the feeling of being dominated.

[This message edited by Derpmeister at 11:01 AM, November 22nd (Sunday)]