That would probably help a great deal. Well, if he could let himself be calm and receptive during therapy sessions. We saw a couples therapist over a year ago. The therapist was very kind, understanding, level-headed, and fair. But my husband was very defensive. I never brought up this issue. I told the therapist that the way I see it we have two main issues: communication and a difference in expectations of the other. I have a degree in psychology and I made a point to not place any blame with him. But he's incredibly hypersensitive to feeling criticized and humiliated (his father was severely verbally abusive to him growing up), so his prime objective in therapy was to make the therapist and I understand that things were my fault, and that all he would talk about on his end in terms of improving was how to deal with MY issues better. Geez! After four months of this--and him berating me and yelling at me in front of the therapist often enough--we stopped going. I didn't see the point. The last month the therapist mainly saw me alone, by his request, and during this time he tried to get me to consider why I was with my husband. He told me that my husband is abusive and possibly a narcissist. (He did, by the way, see only a sliver of how my husband behaves, and it was the worst sliver.) As I didn't want to end my marriage, there was no reason for me to continue going alone to our therapist either.

But thank you. I agree a therapist could be vastly helpful. I just wish my husband thought so too!

Things have improved a lot since that bad patch a year ago, by the way. Basically, I've become more easy going.