Originally Posted by
wifeofadrinker 
I had another period of feeling INFURIATED with my AH. He said he KNEW I didn't love him and I was just not able to admit it yet. That's his reasoning for why I was so hurtful to him (aka. when I told him I was concerned about his drinking).
I will tell you, if I didn't love him, I would not be suffering or here to suffer. I would move on. That's the thing. I DO love him.
I was able to tell him I was infuriated by him deciding he knows how I feel better than I do. (Yay for me!)
Today, I realize my anger is more dependence on his acknowledgment of my feelings and what I say. How dare he ignore what I say I feel and believe whatever he wants??!?
Because he is his own person and I can't control him.
My job is to acknowledge how I feel REGARDLESS of how anyone else thinks. I know how I feel whether the outside world acknowledges it or not.
So, thanks to anger today for helping me SELF define and SELF acknowledge.
Hugs,
wife
I have been reading a lot about abuse lately, and one hallmark of an abusive relationship is the "defining" of another person. I am *NOT* asserting that your H is abusive, WoaD, but it is a concept that I haven't considered.
Only we can define urselves. For someone else to do so is presumptuous and a boundary violation. He is not inside your brain, reading your feelings. It sounds like passive aggression to me - he is setting you up to leave him and he gets to say that it's because you don't love him anymore, instead of facing that you are really grappling with his addiction and making your decisions based on what you want in your life more than whether you hold strong feelings of love for him.
It is inappropriate for other people to tell us how we feel - unless of course, we ask them.