Thank you - and everyone else again - for the very definite suggestions. Could you help me understand this a bit more? What primarily makes you say there is absolutely nothing to work with here?

Because of his attitude to my needing support about my disability issues?

When I said that he's poorly influenceable, I meant that if I get extremely emotional (not attacking him or defending myself from his attack, but just really emotionally upset), then I can sometimes get it through to him what it is that I need. He will register it then, apologise, or actually goes and does something where his help and support is very important for me. This happens rarely though because it is hard for me to get that emotional to get him to register my need. So I only do that for very important issues, like once a year.

At least this is how it was before things seemed to change for the worse recently. I also had understood before that I need to make sure he does not get to feel like a "bad person" if I say something he takes in a negative light (innocent, not angry, not judgmental comments). If I reassured him of that a few times, he seemed more open to me for a while.

But then this change now is too much. I do not think me reassuring him would help anymore. And I am not sure if it is about me trying to confront and change things to be more fair in the relationship. I am not sure if I should just forget about trying to do that on my own and start working with couples therapy, but I do know I need to understand more here.

I also find it hard to make sense of it for now, if it's the relationship dynamics gone worse, or it's his person and character changing too or if he was always kind of like this, just less worse. I find it hard to find that line between an "average" bad, negative relationship and an outright abusive relationship.

I find it hard to see clearly as it's all been a lot of shock, and would very much appreciate input on this.

The one thing I do know for sure is I did NOT do anything that would have deserved the insults, especially as I was trying to ask for his help and support in finding some solutions where my disability is getting in the way. I am trying to be more proactive about my disability too, but it is much harder to do that without his support. So he insulted me repeatedly and even a day later he continued about it, after I tried to open up to him about my difficulties with finding a solution for obstacles with my disability.

That is another change I am making in my life, being more proactive about dealing with my disability and not wanting to be stuck in a passive avoidant attitude about it.

I agree, I do not want to argue with him if it starts turning into this bad. I didn't have the sense that he enjoyed drawing out these horrible arguments, it felt more like he wanted to manipulate me into feeling like crazy that I'd even want to talk about the disability issues. To manipulate me to get me to stop wanting to talk about it at all. And then the extra insult the next day felt like he was still trying to get at me for that argument. That is where I truly felt betrayed, because why bring it up the next day too.

So yes, I do not want another crazy-making conversation. That's for sure.

I just want to have a realistic perspective, not see him more evil than he is, or nicer than what he is. I do not want to become bitter about all relationships or to get traumatised more with this one.

I also don't know if I feel paranoid about how if I resign myself to him saying "No" immediately to a request for help, and then he changes his mind sometimes because he feels I submitted to him.