I am lucky, geez. Thank you for reminding me. Of course she is trained as a clinical psychologist and she does research in the various effectiveness of different modalities of psychotherapy, so if she's not supportive, I don't know who would be! And if she wasn't, it would kinda invalidate her entire life's work.

I think your nutshell analysis is just so smart and that was worth the price of admission of your H into the process. I think all survivors have difficulty believing that we are worthy of what we want. Maybe we had to deny what we wanted so often when we were kids that we even stopped caring about what we wanted. I have been in that place, and while it has benefits (like not being demanding on our partners), I have been practicing asking and to some extent just taking what I want. Now there's a lot so fine line between taking and entitlement, like with asking and demanding. But I've noticed that while my wife feels no qualms about taking time for herself, especially for the things she really enjoys doing (some of them with our kids), I have hesitated at times. Okay, most of the time. Also, she has an important job with a lot of responsibilities and she makes way more money than I do. And I'm the one who cares for the kids after school and in the summer, and during her many trips away from home, and I do all the doctor and dentist and lessons, etc because I can rearrange my work schedule easily and I don't need to physically be at work all that often.

All that makes me feel that I can't necessarily just spend money or take time that I need for myself. I don't like having to justify spending money on $50 work of bike accessories or whatever, so I told her I was getting my own credit card and I would pay it off. She was absolutely fine with that, and it's worked out well so far. This shocked me, because I had thought it was her that was requiring me to justify what I wanted. Turns out she was just curious and making conversation, and it was me who was feeling defensive.

This is mostly to say that it's okay for you to ask for, maybe even demand, what you need. If your H is the typical guy, he probably is patting himself on the back for having married such a low maintenance wife. He might be in for a rude shock if you stop defending what you want and just take it (in ways that he probably already does), but because he loves you, he will also work on himself to give you what you need.