Anita – In all honesty I cannot recall covert or overt aggression at home in my childhood. My father was a gentle person who was liked by everyone and everyone tells me that I take after him and my mother wasn’t a particularly domineering person. I have a brother who is two years older and we got on well enough but we were and are very different people. The problematic situation developed when I met my wife and I’m sure it was very much in response to her aggression and manipulation and my inability to deal with. As mentioned at the beginning of the thread, she was a Jekyll and Hyde character with a mixture of nice and nasty, which I could not deal with in an appropriate way. Why didn’t I turn away from her is a good question and I think that there was lot of guilt on my part. She was an expert at playing the victim and reminding me of all the good things she had done for me and she could make me feel guilty about not behaving in the way she wanted me to. She was an expert at this and could put on really convincing performances of great emotional distress. I fell for it every time and it took me a very decades to realize that it was always a performance designed to manipulate me into submission to her strong will. I must emphasise that other people in my life, who I am close to, can not make me feel like this. It is very specific to my wife and this situation developed quickly into a very controlling relationship. Paralyzed? Most definitely. The perfect victim!