Hi,
This is gonna be LONG, and I'm really sorry, but I feel like it's all relevant.
First, I don't live in america if that has any sort of relevance.
I (F32) have been married to my husband (M35) for 2.5 years. We have been together for 6.5 years.
We are a "merged" family consisting of these members, apart from our selves: -M12, my husbands son. Hes here every other weekend, when my kids are not home -F10 and M8, mine from previous relationship. We have them every other week, 7 days at a time. -M4 and F3months. Our joint children.
We both have good relationships with each others children, and my children are actually closer with my husband than their own father.
I feel like it's relevant to mention that I grew up in an emotionally abusive household with divorced parents. My stepmother was often angry, gave me the silent treatment and I was treated very unfairly. I never knew why the grown ups were angry, and if it was my fault, which meant I walked on eggshells all the time and tried to fix things. I went on to live in an abuse relationship for five years, just repeating patterns from my childhood.
This is the first good relationship I've been in. My husband treats me with love and respect. He's honest, helpful and considerate. We are equals. He would never say anything degrading to me. He's very supporting and empathetic.
That being said, he's a bit of a jerk when he's angry, which happens very rarely though. He's very aware of this and apologetic about it, and he tries to avoid conflict, because he knows how irrational he is, when he is upset. When he's really angry he cannot see his own mistakes, and second of all he will bring up a bunch of old stuff, which gives me the feeling he goes around collecting stuff I've done wrong to use in arguments. It isn't anything personal, but it can be a bunch of small stuff that on its own wouldn't be that upsetting, but put together is just a lot. He will always apologize when he's calmed down, and he knows he isn't fair.
The reason why this is a problem is that it is very triggering for me. If he sighs or seems a bit irritable during the day, I go into fight or flight right away. I walk on eggshells, try to fix something I don't know what is, and this is because I'm afraid of conflict. I don't like that I can't "feel" him, when he is angry with me, even if it happens very rarely. This creates a bad dynamic. Maybe he just sighed because he stepped on something. Then I begin walking on eggshells, keep asking if somethings wrong. He gets annoyed because I won't accept him saying everything's fine, which leads to me becoming even more distraught, because now he's really annoyed. Then I become scared of getting into a fight with him. I'm aware that my past is an issue here, but also that it's combined with the fact he will "collect" stuff and use in fights, which means when he sighs I feel like I might have actually upset him, he's just not telling me what I did wrong.
We had our second child three months ago. It's been hard, because she's been really colicky. My husband also just started a new job in a leadership position, which is both time consuming and very challenging, as this is a completely new field for him. Because of COVID we have almost no help from our families. So we have not been able to take care of ourselves or our relationship, and the stress has been palpable. We sleep in separate beds, because that's the only way we can get our children to sleep and actually get some rest (I sleep with the baby, he sleeps on the couch, where our 4YO usually joins him some time during the night).
All this stress has made us both irritable, which means my past and trauma is activated constantly. At this point I feel anxious and uncomfortable whenever my husband is home. It makes me withdrawn. I don't feel like kissing him, spending time with him. He makes me anxious, which isn't completely fair, because I too am irritable, and our joint irritability isn't really anything to do with the other person, just general life stress.
At this point I can't even really feel my love for him, and I feel much more relaxed when he's at work. I feel myself hoping he will work late, which is very sad, as we are very compatible and have always had a very good relationship.
At this point I don't know what to do. Especially when the Opportunities to take care of our relationship are scarse and I don't even have that much motivation for it. I'm aware my past trauma makes me withdraw in the face of conflict.
I could really use advice
Tl;dr: me (F32) and my husband (M35) are having issues after months of stressful circumstances, worsened by our dynamic caused by my past trauma and his way of handling conflict. This has caused a wedge in our relationship, with very few opportunities to take care of it because of COVID and many children.
Submitted December 06, 2021 at 04:58AM by MiniMiniMuh https://ift.tt/3IrJQd0
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