—> Apart from my therapist and one of my best friends, no one else knows the real truth of how things are right now. ←-

It's not exactly the kind of stuff you share with just anyone, and sometimes even people you do choose to share it with end up backing away or not believing it- at least IME. This sort of situation has a lot of potential to be isolating and lonely.

—->she said most women just "know" when they have had enough and once they get to that point they can't be convinced otherwise whereas men go back and forth and are ambivalent. This sounds very familiar to me! ←–

That isn't hard to believe! There's a thing called "walk away wife syndrome", where women are thinking about it quietly for years, and then just get to a point where they leave. It's interesting to know that there is often a predictable pattern of how men handle these things, versus women. Dr. Ramani says in one of her videos that when people decide they want to leave, they're generally already disconnected enough that they don't threaten or talk about it, they just do it.

Your therapist sounds amazing. Some of us aren't very good at focusing on ourselves and need to learn how to do it. And if we've gotten in the habit of focusing on others needs, that can be a darn hard habit to break.

Yeah, October was definitely a step back month- not so much for him as for me. Unpredictability is his normal, but my ability to deal with him and have strong boundaries slipped. I let myself get sucked back into the vortex. It's gotten better with more codependency work. Detaching and boundary setting do have some magical qualities.

Screaming… that's a good question. I don't deal with it well either. To me, screaming and yelling by an adult is a sign of an out of control person who's slipping into their child-self. Not that we don't all end up there on occasion, but IMO, it's not okay to yell at someone and it's not okay to be yelled at. Neither is productive, it just makes the yeller feel better/powerful/in control, and causes the yellee to feel scared/controlled (or causes them to disassociate).

Coincidentally though, I've watched a few videos this week by a woman who has recovered from borderline, and she explains some interesting perspectives about when borderlines rage (which may not apply to your H obviously). When someone starts yelling in a particularly uncontrolled way, they aren't able to think, they're only able to react, and since they're so deep inside their own head, they don't have much concept that it's damaging to other people. In their heads they're justifiably venting their frustrations (of course, don't try to vent back, that's unacceptable and will just escalate their entitlement to scream and vent). Logic/cognition is completely out the window when reaction/overreaction is in play, so don't even try to reason with them.

I can see this dynamic in H. The best course of action seems to be to remove yourself and any kids from the line of fire as gracefully as possible, and let the angry person calm down. With dh the best time to address it is when he's calm (reasonable mind) and complaining that everyone avoids him- at which point I try to explain to him that when he gets moody and "frustrated", it's scary and upsetting to us. It sinks in at least a little bit better in those times that the yelling isn't okay, even if a part of him feels it's somehow justified. But like someone who's borderline, in that emotionally charged moment, he's not going to be able to see the effect he's having on others- it's literally all about him. He's upset, he's the victim, he's trying to ease his emotional upset in an external way, and other people end up the target or in the crossfire. His mother also rages, so to some extent, this is normalized and acceptable to him, even though he gets hurt in the same way when she does it Don't know if something like this might apply to your H in any way, but a screaming mind is generally not able to be a reasoning mind….

As November starts, things here are better, but it's not because he's better so much as I realized that I slipped back into engaging him in ways that aren't productive. It makes him too much the center of the circle, you know? No one person should be in the center of the circle with others orbiting around them. Now the challenge is keeping myself out here in "ArmorPlate Land" where I'm supposed to live….

Hope you are doing well and living in "Shyla Land" where you belong