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Also, you have a right to demand more respect and that he treat you properly even if you need to try harder to compromise about the messiness. They are two separate issues. Just because you have a flaw you'd like to work on doesn't mean that he can't be working on his own stuff It sounds like things have been kind of lopsided in that respect.
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Yes. This is all true. But how do I stand up for myself when he believes he is right? Whenever I have tried to assert myself in the past, he says something to make me feel stupid. For example just the other night he told me there is no point to his trying to work things out with me because I know what it takes to make him happy, I have always known, but I just don't care. I came back with "how could you say that? All I am ever consumed with is trying to make you happy." He says that I am saying that but I haven't really done anything to that affect. He says all the cleaning and keeping myself neater that I have done should not be about him, that these things should be done simply because they need to get done, and my making this about him is wrong. He said "It's not an act of love toward me to clean the house." And then he went on about how I am selfish and what I really want is for things to go back to him being miserable and just faking things, and me just reaping the benefits. When I said that if that were true, I wouldn't be bringing us to counselling and trying to make things better, he says that I am trying to make a display, put on the show of trying, but I really don't want to do the what it actually would take. He goes on and on about how I KNOW what needs to be done, and that it has been the same argument for years, and yet I bring us to counselling and try to talk about it, all instead of actually doing it!!!! I just don't know how to combat him and to assert myself.