Although my home life is at least fifty percent very loving and happy with my son and husband, the other fifty percent...well...
Let's just say that my triggers and my husband's triggers match up to a really emotionally volatile degree a lot of the time.
What is frustrating is that my husband doesn't do any sort of ACA work, as he feels that he has already dealt with his childhood issues (I am suspicious of this claim), and so it seems to me that not only does he react to his triggers in an unhealthy way (of course I do the same thing), but he is often totally unaware that he's doing it, and refuses to acknowledge anything that I say about how he's reacting.
I'm not perfect (not at all...I'm realistically an extremely difficult person to live with...argumentative, defensive, and controlling, etc.), but I try to at least acknowledge my faults and work on them.
I generally don't find that my husband is very willing to do this.
I don't know if it's something that comes very naturally for him to begin with, as he's had no experience with 12 step groups (despite having some pretty serious issues with drugs when he was younger) and only a couple of therapy sessions in his life, but it's extremely frustrating for me to deal with sometimes.
I do believe that I have a part in our dynamic, as he has told me before that he is afraid to talk to me about anything, as I am generally just angry, defensive, accusatory, insulting, etc., and I know that I think of myself before I consider others a good deal of the time (unless it's my son, he comes first).
I have tried to curb this behavior, monitor it, make amends as needed, etc...
But I feel that my needs are often unmet, overlooked, or disregarded as not being important, and I end up relapsing with my ACA behaviors.
My husband is the typical ACA who puts everyone else's needs before his own, pushes himself beyond a reasonable level in order to get everything done that he believes needs to be done RIGHT NOW, and then comes home and has little to offer in the way of helping me get things done around the house (even if that just means taking the baby somewhere so that I can do some cleaning, etc.).
Most of the things that he thinks need to be done so immediately are stressors that he places upon himself. No one else is expecting him to do some of these things.
He expects me to read his mind regarding his needs, and I have tried to explain to him that self-care involves telling people around you what your needs are, and that I am not a mind reader.
This situation is so frustrating right now, as he has been complaining incessantly about the small, cramped apartment that we're living in (it clearly bothers him far more than it does me), and pushing me to go look at houses to buy every day, in spite of my very clear statements that I am not ready to rush into buying a house right now, and that going to look for houses is stressful for me, so one major event each weekend (i.e., family coming to visit, major trips, etc.) is all I'm willing to do.
He doesn't seem to grasp the fact that our history has been a bit unstable as far as moving around from place to place (we moved from the city we live now to Anchorage in 2008, I hated it, so we moved back...then we moved to a small town in 2010, and we both disliked it, so we moved back to our city, etc...), and that buying a home is something permanent, not to be rushed into simply because a person feels "cramped" with their current living situations.
I have tried to talk to him about acceptance (he will go on and on and on about how everything would be so great if we could all just move back to his home town, even though none of his family or close friends live there anymore...it's like he's pining away for a memory, and thinking that his home town will be just like it was when he was growing up).
He does not seem to be interested in hearing about acceptance, or gratitude, or anything other than "yes, let's spend every spare waking moment looking for a house to buy because you're uncomfortable here...never mind the fact that you have a good job, we have a roof over our heads that many people do not have, we're not hurting for money, etc...."
He also takes out his frustrations about living in this apartment on me, because I am only willing to deal with one stressful event per weekend (that is my rule), and we have had a non-stop parade of family visiting, bad winter weather, work, and other things that have simply prevented us from looking for houses.
We put an offer on a house that we loved a couple of weeks ago, but it fell through. So now, here we are again.
Anyway, this is what I'm dealing with right now. I don't want to divorce my husband, we have things to work through for ourselves, but I often don't feel that he does his part in checking his own behavior or motives, and I'm starting to feel really resentful and hostile towards him, and it's being returned in kind (or vice versa).
Anyone have experience or advice they want to share?
