Rough times, need support

YES. 💯 %.

However, I am very concerned about the chain of events that occurred on Saturday. His old behaviors resurfaced, and I didn't like what I experienced from him. Will this keep happening? Is he slipping backwards now? Or will he try to be better? These are questions no one can answer for me, and only time will tell with regards to how things unfold from here.

I need to discuss this with my therapist, however, I don't particularly love my therapist, who I think is on my husband's side of things. He's typically pointing out how my husband may feel and seems to downplay any abusive behaviors from him. I don't have the energy to look for another therapist right now. I feel a bit stuck.

What I think is your therapist's attitude would only work if your husband also went to a therapist that pointed out your side of things to him. lol
But yeah I'm serious.

Agreed! And I hope he does. We both have the same individual therapist, who is also our couples therapist.

I return to work on Wed. My CEO is willing to step down my responsibilities for a month and said we will reassess in one month whether I am still a good fit for them and vice versa.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to have same individual and couples therapist. It doesn’t seem right but who knows. Your t maybe defends your husband because of whatever he tells t in private. Maybe things about you

I think the issue isn’t if he is always going to behave nicely but lack of foundation in the marriage. Like it shouldn’t be falling apart and cause such turmoil after every argument. Something is amiss. Maybe some issues are not being addressed so they keep resurfacing. Plus why is it so hard all the time. You’ve been married less than three years and separated part of it. It’s unusually hard and it’s not due to stress, everyone has ton of stress ( it’s easier to blame on stress). What does your couples t think about the future of this?

I don't know yet what my couples therapist thinks. We haven't had a couples therapy session in a while.

And it's not always so hard. Like I wrote in my OP, the last ten months had been fine between us. It's only when major life stress comes up that things go awry in an argument. And this is the first major argument we've had in ten months.

Have your emotions leveled off a bit? You expressed how angry you were after the argument and how things have gone back to a little bit more normal. A return to work with some accommodations is positive forward progress too.

I think your point of view and concern about how your husband reacts and treats you in difficult times is very valid. From an outside perspective and not seeing the whole picture, I would hope you made an individual appointment to discuss your feelings. Life isn't always smooth and easy like it was in your 10 month reunited honeymoon phase. How people navigate the rough times is far more important than how the roll along with the easy times. If your husband insists on ignoring the rough times, you are 100% correct that he is a fair weather spouse.

There have been an enormous number of exceedingly stressful events in the last ten months, during all of which, except last Saturday, I gather that he endured the stress and treated you well. If that is correct, then I myself would not call him a fair weather spouse.

Hi, yes, my emotions have leveled off. Even though I am nervous about my performance level at work, I am happy to be returning and at a less stressful level for now.

I do have my own therapy tonight, during which I plan to address Saturday's events.

I don't really think he's a fair weather spouse. I think it's more so that when the pressure builds, and if I seemingly force him to talk about his stress, then he can implode under all the stress, which is what occurred. Of course, there is a very small part of me that wonders if he would leave during or after all the stress is over, based on his comments last Sat in which he said he would leave and not come back.

Bill, you are correct. He endured my hospitalization, my return to work, and all the stress I endured during my last job, which all came to a breaking point practically for me. At one point, I told him I was feeling suicidal, and we got through that. We've gone through a lot together.

Honestly, I learned that HIS trigger is me forcing him, or seemingly forcing him, to talk about issues when he's not ready or willing to. That's the straw that broke the camel's back on Saturday, but it had not been like that at all for the last many months.

I would say many men (and some women) deal with emotions differently. The first reaction will often be dismissing of the negative emotion. Especially when it comes to personal matters and personal stresses in relationships. Giving it time, and having a commitment to eventually deal with them when feeling ready and relaxed enough to do this difficult task can help. The important thing is that Have Hope's husband has a commitment to doing so, whenever that may be, with a little time before he can reflect on it properly. If he does not have the commitment for this, that is a problem. At this point if I were in this situation, I would want to clarify with him that he is committed to dealing with this. And that he is aware that the important things just cannot be forever ignored, even if they may seem negative and threatening.

I only saw this after sending my post. Yeah I agree that seems to make sense.

I can understand if that's threatening, having had to hear words like that from him. He should also have a commitment to improving on his coping with stress. Getting results would take time, of course, but he would have to start as soon as possible.

Good luck with the counselling tonight!

Thank you for understanding. It was rattling to say the least. And I agree - he needs improvement on coping with stress.

And thanks re: counseling session tonight!

Hope you have a good counseling session

One thing you seem to have started realizing (as I read through this thread), is that your husband is also struggling right now and you both sort of cornered each other at the same time the other night, and both of you were triggered and came out fighting.

My husband and I always had the hardest time when BOTH of us were struggling personally. It's like the flight attendant instructions about securing your own mask first before your try to help the other person. The problem in a marriage is that if you are struggling AND trying to help the other person at the same time, your personal resources just sometimes reach a breaking point. When you are BOTH struggling, it can get complicated, but it is important that you validate that BOTH of you can struggle at the same time and that doesn't invalidate either of your struggles. That's hard to do, but absolutely vital if you are going to make it.

When you said to your husband that he never wants to talk, that triggered him because (my guess) he's probably been keeping things to himself in order to support you. He came back making a comment about your mental health issues. He's not wrong; this isn't "normal." But of course he could have/should have said he was feeling overwhelmed because he doesn't understand what is happening with your or how to help, but he's reached that breaking point. And we all tend to say things badly when we break. It's important to own our own missteps in such complicated dynamics.

It took time (and the help of our therapist) to learn how to speak in "I" statements instead of in accusations, to simply speak about our own feelings and thoughts without trying to attribute the other person with what we think are their thoughts and feelings, to be willing to actively listen to each other (with our mouths shut) even when perhaps what the other person is going through is hard to hear because it hits too close to home. Being willing and able to not take things personally when we hear what the other is saying is about their fears and anxieties -- even if it feels like an accusation (so often that wasn't the intent even if they clumsily spoke and it came off that way).

In learning to truly listen and validate and give each other the space we might need to work things out in our own heads (instead of on each other's personal timeline), our marriage became SO much calmer and safer and comfortable.

Getting to that place takes time. It also takes an agreement to truly speak without accusation, listen without defending ourselves right away (give it time), willingly give each other space if space is requested to just have some time to sort things out so long as you also agree to talk when you are both calm and your thoughts are more gathered.

Thanks, divine!

Thank you so much. You make all very valid points. I think I will bring these points to our next couples therapy session, which may/could be next week.

I realize now that by what I said, "you never want to talk about it" was an accusation that naturally would make him feel defensive or attacked. I didn't even realize this until reading your post and absorbing the content regarding accusations and defensiveness.

Thank you for bringing these things to light. It gives me hope to hear that you and your spouse were able to work through the difficulties with counseling. I hope the same for us. I need to watch how I speak, too. Often I'm not even aware of how I may be coming across.

My individual therapy session went OK, but at one point, I told the therapist that I felt like he was on my husband's side because he always gives me my husband's perspective on things. I said I don't feel validated by him when I bring a legitimate concern to the table. My therapist's response was that he's trying to open my perspective up to consider other possibilities and to keep me from maintaining a narrow vision/conclusion.

Bottom line: the way he's approaching my concerns makes me feel invalidated. I brought up legitimate concerns, and he only just gave me other perspectives, rather than saying, yes, that's a concern and you should be concerned. It bothers me.

I know I should find a new therapist, but I don't have the energy right now while I am focused on a new job search. Yes, I am returning to work today, but I don't think this position is right for me, so I am applying again.

Our couples therapy session won't be for two weeks now because the therapist is out of town next week.

Yeah sounds like he's trying to skip/move on from that step too fast about validating your concerns, before moving on to opening up the perspective of the whole situation if that's necessary for a well working and constructive solution

Agreed! It's not the 1st time I've told him I feel invalidated and it's not the 1st time I've said I think he's on my husband's side. I don't think he's a very good therapist, because he hasn't adjusted his responses to me based on my feelings, and on my feedback and observations.