Happy new year! I hope that you had a good one! You are too right, I think they almost relish ruining the holidays. I am not sure if my H did that to get a rise out of me or not. I think that the honest truth for my H is that he has a very very different world view than me and one in which his starring role is a victim. And that role is relative to everyone, whether it is his parents, me, his workplace issues and/or life in general. My H can be very spiteful but I tend to guess his stuff is mainly out of self focus to the exclusion of his surroundings which he has gotten very accustomed to.


That is very tricky when they try to get attention and especially in a negative way, i.e. drinking alcohol for the first time. It is good that you have learned to recognize those behaviors for what they are as I think that tends to help a lot. I am definitely still working on that piece. That is very good advice about negative attention being a draw, it is so hard to avoid falling into a trap.

I am definitely going to read that article so thank you for passing it along. I have an appointment with my therapist this coming week so one of the topics I have been thinking about is how to reconcile my H's strong words to me about ending our marriage vs. what is happening now that he is moving in the right direction out of his depression episode. It is not only that he doesn't intend to "follow through" on leaving, it is that I feel at a loss without him giving me some announcement or reassurance that he doesn't mean that now, if that is even true. I don't know. My therapist and I have discussed that one of my "core" issues that I bring to a relationship having to do with my mother is I need people to apologize and admit mistakes when they make them which is something my mother struggled and struggles with and never did. I feel like I need some acknowledgement from him about the havoc he wreaked but I also don't really want to rock the boat because he is doing better overall. This is a very slippery slope.


Have you struggled a lot with this back and forth with your H? I find it a very confusing place but it does help me to remember that my H says a whole host of things he doesn't mean. We also got into a discussion recently about some things that happened back in 2018 when I was really struggling after the birth of our daughter that we have rehashed countless times in our first round of couples therapy and he still hasn't let go of. He has this way of holding onto every little mistake I have ever made which puts me into a very hard position. I sort of have the opposite mindset to a fault where I tend to just completely forget stuff like that - maybe it is the trauma? I don't know. It is very difficult to hear him talk about these things as if they are currently happening today. I think its part of whatever issues he has going on but the inability to let go of anything is a hard burden to carry and it certainly hurts our relationship.


Thank you as always for your sage advice. I will definitely check back in after I read the article, I always think evaluating priorities is a good thing!