I'm having a rough couple of moments with hubbie.
I think some of the tension around the last couple of days relates to my family. Here is my story in a nutshell (its been a bit of time since I last posted): My mother has passed. Much of the therapy that I had related to my FOO and my developing my own voice, perspective, and reality. Last year, before we married, my hubbie was a bit N-ish (entitled, angry, defiant...). He promised to change and I've seen him change a lot (I am amazed at the changes, actually).
Here's the thing. Hubbie says that he
loves my father but he becomes outraged with my father staring me down or passing out guilt-trips if I don't do what he wants. I am mostly the one that hears the outrage because he hasn't seen my father for months and I don't even know if my father is willing to see hubbie at this point. If I speak up, my father turns white and begins to shake. If I set boundaries, he becomes furious and I end up hating myself. Nonetheless, I have begun to. I ended therapy that he was paying for. He said to me that if I married this guy he "would have a big problem" with it. So I anticipated him ending my therapy ahead of time. I was ready to stop in any case. I have since received a very positive letter from my therapist stating that he hopes I now have the confidence to have my own voice. That was encouraging. So, there is truth in hubbie's perspective.
My father on the other hand feels that hubbie is "sick" and mean and "psychologically battering"--and criticized my willingness last year to tolerate that. I realized he was concerned but his wife got involved and it became a mess as she involved my brother and best friend in trying to secretly (without telling me that she had input) separating me from my then boyfriend. I was furious and I still haven't dealt with this.
Hubbie has problems, too, as do I (clearly)
.
My hubbie seems very protective of me but it upsets me. Because I am used to
NOT speaking up to my father and simply soothing my father's feathers, smoothing things over, being agreeable and apologetic, and basically doing whatever he thinks is best. I am trying to change this and set boundaries.
Anyway, back to the last few days. For the first time since hubbie and I married, I saw one of my siblings. This went very well, but there seems to be much tension in our house. Hubbie knows he was not acceptable to my father; my father was frightened of hubbie's temper (my father says he wasn't, his wife says he was). To make a too long story short, we haven't dealt with my family yet. I feel like I have to choose between family and hubbie. So I've chosen hubbie and I don't know how to deal with my father.
Sooo. My aunt called me asking if I was talking to my father yet. Why does she keep asking me that? It isn't like her to get in the middle but it bugs me. That call set hubbie off into a tirade about my father and how manipulative my father is. I ended up crying. He said that he assumed I was getting e mails from my family that I wasn't telling him about and I became (very uncharacteristically) furious. Because I had gone to great lengths to fill hubbie in on EVERYthing. So hubbie later claimed he had apologized for that (he hadn't that I remembered).
Then he was very negative about all things he hated (we were trying to enjoy dinner) and I said (again, uncharacteristically), "You don't like a lot of things." He said, "Enough with being a bitch."
I fell apart in private. I know--I am very sensitive. But I am sooo calm and patient that he says I am the easiest woman to be with. I didn't tell him until the next morning, but calling me a bitch really hurt. I thought:
I became angry when accused of something I didn't do. And I, perhaps in not the most polite way, pointed out his negativity. But calling me a bitch really bothered me. 
So I thought I was setting boundaries when I said, "The next time you call me a bitch, I will go and spend the night elsewhere." This greatly upset him and he said he would leave if I did that. I said, "What I am telling you is that calling me a bitch hurts and it is unacceptable to me." He was hugging me, telling me he loves me, and saying he was trying to stop swearing. But he said, "It's going to happen again. I just don't think." Inside I was really mad--I just kept thinking: how can you say it is going to happen again?
Am I too sensitive??? He said "I am not scolding you like your father." Arrrggghhh.
Today, he was upset that we didn't do prayer devotions together in the AM (he prayed early). When I got up, we went to breakfast. So I thot I was helping by going home and having devotions with him that I was resolving that. Then he cut off my prayers and said that he couldn't get anything done, that we weren't on the same schedule--then I realized he was upset we hadn't done it earlier and he wanted to get going. He said, "I can't do anything right. The last few days, all I do is hurt you." I said, "You do a lot right." I said that it was priority for me too. He said that he doesn't know how to plan a day for two people, just like when I was single I wasn't weighed down with him. I didn't say anything. But I am seriously wondering--how do we resolve this stuff? I feel like he IS angry with me and I feel like I get so confused with mixed messages. I just feel like I start out in a great mood and things go South.
If I have zero to do with my family, we get along extremely well. The minute the tension of my family arrives on the scene, it is awful.
I haven't been married before. We've been married a couple of months. I really feel like these are small things but that the atmosphere of tension is high. I felt today that things were going back to the way they were the first year. But he is so caring a lot of the time, I know we both have difficulties.
I don't wish to give the impression that he's really mean. We have many lovely times together and many, many times he tells me how much he cherishes and loves me. And he cooks and does laundry. And and. So I am not wanting to give a really slanted view here. Its just that this is the BIGGIE I don't know how to deal with.
