Thank you for your response. You are correct in the fact that I am usually upset when I confront him about an issue. My goal is always peace, but my husband is not really communicative: his father is an extremely quiet individual and his mother overcompensated by expressing his feeling for him (these are his words). So, when I try to express myself to him sometimes, I am countered with passivity or ambivalence. He will also wait for me to tell him what I think is wrong, so he can tell me how I’m assuming or how I have not given him the chance to open up because I am so impatient.

Recently, he did share with me that he has a perfectionist complex, which was exaserbated by his mother. She was a stay at home mom and everything had to be a certain way in order for her to feel purposeful. It would be remiss not to add that his father is an extremely intelligent man and to me, seeks every opportunity to minimize his mother’s intelligence or contributions, making her vigorously competitive, defensive and outspoken. If he did something less than perfect, she wouldn’t scold him but she would discourage him from doing it again so he wouldn’t be disappointed. He told me he feels inadequate and finds comfort in normalcy. He does not like change.

I empathize, but I do not enable. I believe if you have done something wrong to hurt your partner you should take accountability and not try to finagle your way out of the situation. I believe this to be his method of operation. It’s hard for him to accept that he has done anything wrong because his parents modeled this philosophy. He never got punished for anything as a child and to me did not learn consequence or have appropriate emotional cues because everything was rote.

You mentioned Machiavellian games. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Despite our communication problems, we do connect intimately. However, he recently told me he was not in the space for that type of interaction, due to our precarious state, and I appreciated his honesty. The next day, he was romantically playful,and I did not engage. I told him until we figure out our trajectory, we should refrain from exchanges of that sort. He said okay, but continued to cross the boundary. I still have not obliged. I think this is passive aggressive behavior. I think he just wanted to hurt me by saying he wasn’t interested. Then, when I didn’t get upset or react negatively, he started playing games to lure me. When I didn’t take the bait, he called me cold.

To his credit, he is trying to be more expressive. He is trying to identify his emotions and communicate them. However, in holding him accountable and not engaging, I feel like my marriage has evolved into some sort of chess game.

It’s so confusing at times. After my last post, I did talk to him about separating, but he said we could make it work with some patience, prayer and understanding. Certainly, this is everything I wanted to hear; unfortunately, I doubt his sincerity.