Hello everyone. I’m not sure if I’m posting in the right place, but I hope so. Looking for some advice on some current marital issues that have been getting worse for many years.

LONG post incoming.

My husband and I have been together since I was 17 (he was 23 at the time); we have been together for 11 years, married for 7. We have one child, a 3 year old. Lately I’ve felt so depressed and hopeless about our relationship, and I finally opened up and told him that I was tired of trying to live up to his expectations of me, and that there were times where I cried in my car after my workday because I didn’t want to go home. He was very upset at first, then very angry, but eventually suggested that we see a marriage counselor. We’re still trying to decide on the right one, however I’ve been doing a lot of research into healthy relationships and....quite frankly, our relationship appears to have numerous red flags, according to multiple sources on the internet. This seems like one of the best places to reach out, rather than a random blog or something, so I’m hoping to find a few answers here.

Our relationship started out amazing. He was sweet, overly thoughtful of me, would surprise me by showing up at my job or at my home, take me on spontaneous picnic dates, called me his “angel,” etc. I thought I had found the man of my dreams. We shared everything and would spent all night talking on the phone until we would fall asleep with the line still connected. It was wonderful.

And then he discovered that I had “lied” about the nature of a previous relationship. I had an old male friend that I never spoke to anymore; at the time, we had both been in love with the same person, and we connected over it. After we both withdrew from friendship with that person, we connected more deeply and had a very close friendship. We eventually tried to date (one makeout session, staying above the waist), though I had forgotten about it since I mainly thought of him as “a good friend.” Well, we didn’t talk anymore and it had been so long ago, I just completely forgot about that one mildly intimate encounter with my old friend. About one year into my relationship with my husband, I suddenly remembered that the friendship hadn’t just been a friendship, even though it was very very brief, and so I immediately told my husband the new information I had remembered, to make sure I was 100% honest with him. He FLIPPED OUT. Our relationship almost ended. To this day, he is convinced that I deliberately lied and hid that information from him, rather than simply forgetting an inconsequential encounter that meant very little to me in the grand scheme of my life experiences.

Ever since then, we had struggled with trust issues. For years, he would “snoop” through my phone, my messages, my call history, my online posts, my diaries (both physical and online), etc. If he found something he didn’t like, he would confront me on it and reveal that he had been snooping. I was heartbroken and felt very violated, but he always maintained that I shouldn’t be upset about it if I have nothing to hide. I have never really been able to see it that way; to me it is a clear violation of my privacy, and shows that he expects me to cheat on him and lie to him if given the slightest provocation. This has gone on for years. One time in the past, I was so frustrated with all of the snooping, I changed my phone passcode so he couldn’t get in. He was absolutely furious and unleashed a tirade on me that made me feel very ashamed, and like I had no business trying to hide anything from my husband, if we are to be “one” – his words.

For many years, he controlled our finances. He has all of my bank accounts and passwords, and maintained our budget and bills. He would often say that he thought I couldn’t handle it, or mention that if he has ever given me the chance to take care of bills, that I’m always late in paying them, so there’s no point in me trying to handle the finances. He would say that he worried about what would happen to me if he died, because I couldn’t “handle” taking care of finances. About 8-10 months ago, I finally got sick of it and blew up on him; told him I would handle all of the bills and finances, and prove that I could handle it, because I was tired of him treating me like a child. And I have been handling it just fine ever since.

I have often felt (and communicated to him) that I feel like he treats me like a child. That nothing I ever do is “good enough” for him, and he’s often constantly critical of me and how I handle things, and especially of how I handle our daughter. He has told me that he doesn’t think I am capable of taking care of a child. When I tell him how upset I am about his constant criticism, he tells me that I’m taking things the wrong way, that I have the wrong “filter” for his words and he doesn’t mean them negatively, I simply take them that way. That I should “know him” and know that he doesn’t mean what he says as an attack, even though I – and others! – see it that way when I share the situation with them.

Shortly after our daughter was born, my sex drive took an immense nosedive. I never wanted to do anything intimate. First because it was too painful (I had to have reconstructive surgery because my post-labor sew-up was done incorrectly), and then because I was too exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed to really care about sexual things. He became angry with me and told me that it wasn’t okay to keep refusing to be intimate with him, that it was wrong to deprive your partner of their sexual needs. I felt like I had no choice, and was not allowed to say no. Shortly after that, he started molesting me in my sleep – I would wake up to him fingering me. I felt so violated. I kept telling him that I hated it and wanted him to stop. He would always apologize and say that he knew it was wrong, but it would continue regardless. The only reason it stopped is because we started sleeping in separate rooms (one of us would sleep in the baby’s room). Now, our toddler sleeps in the bed between us, so it definitely doesn’t happen anymore.

What else....ah. He is often suspicious of me. If I don’t pick up my phone right away when he calls, he wants to know what I’m doing, who I’m talking to, why I’m not answering. I gave a friend and coworker a ride, because she had had surgery and couldn’t drive, and he was furious with me. He suspects me of having feelings for her, even though I have firmly maintained that she is just a friend and I have never felt that way about her. He does not believe me. One time I had a nightmare that a man climbed in the bedroom window and raped me; I woke up shaken and horrified, because it had felt real, but then I realized it was just a dream. He was furious with me for days; thought that it had really happened and I was lying about it being a dream.

Laid out like this, it really looks a whole lot worse than I always told myself it was. My friends and family all dislike him, and they have often expressed concerns about the way he treats me and talks to me. I’ve always stood up for him and believed him to be the good man he was when we started our relationship, but......now, after taking so many online tests and doing so much research, I’m starting to wonder if maybe this is an abusive relationship. I scored 84% on the “Is Your Relationship Healthy?” quiz at LoveIsRespect.org. And every other subsequent “Are you in an abusive relationship?” quiz or test I’ve taken has all unanimously said the same.

It is....very hard for me to accept that, because I still believe him to be a good man. I still love him, even though I feel very hurt, disrespected, violated, and trodden upon. I would like to stay in our relationship, and I don’t want to take my daughter’s daddy away from her, because she loves him deeply and he is so sweet to her. But I fear for the future of our relationship and my own emotional sanity. We are going to seek marriage counseling, but I just....I don’t know. Everyone I know has told me to leave.

What do you think? Are these behaviors acceptable? Is it normal to demand access to your partner’s phone at all times? Is it okay to be so rampantly suspicious, regardless of the fact that I have never been unfaithful and never will be?

I am lost.

Is this abuse?