Dear Emma:

“Any advice would be appreciated“- It helps me to understand a story better when I re-arrange it chronologically (including quotes) best I can. Therefore I will do so with your story before offering my understanding and advice:

Your childhood was “not particularly happy”. You had “a poor relationship with your stepdad and (your)  mum”. As a child and a teenager, you struggled to make friends and focused on schoolwork. You enjoyed reading books and you watched a lot of TV. Your long-term memory is bad and you “struggle to remember a lot of things” from your childhood, “can hardly remember anything about being a child”. Growing up and onward, you “don’t feel comfortable talking about emotions and… have a lot to do in this area to develop emotionally”.

His childhood included “traumatic events that had happened earlier in his childhood, the blackest, darkest parts of him and how tormented he is”. He has clear memory of the childhood he experienced since he was 3. At 16, he suffered “a traumatic sexual assault… at the hands of an older woman”.

Your relationship: At 19, just out of high-school, you met him (23) and he became your very first boyfriend. Early in the relationship, he told you about the sexual assault he suffered 7 years earlier. He offered few details and you didn’t ask questions. The two of you slept together 6 weeks after meeting, and moved in together 4 months after meeting. Living together, things where good for a little while, as far as you knew, and you spent a lot of time watching TV. There were specific things on TV shows that triggered his sexual assault trauma. He commented to you: “You watch disgusting things”! Your response: you switched it off and apologised.

Two-three months into living together, he went into “a deep bout of depression… left his job, spent days at home sitting in the dark.. talking and crying” about his sexual trauma, and at times, he talked about hurting himself. You tried to get him to see a doctor but he refused.

A year into the relationship you (20) got engaged to him (24), and had your son a year (or two) later. The two of you got married 8 years into the relationship, when you were 27 and he was 31.

Sometime along the way, you started watching a certain popular TV show that includes  “a LOT of the content that upsets (your) husband”, that is, suggestions or depictions of the sexual act or activity that triggers his sexual trauma. You knew that it would, and he knew of the content of the show, so you watched it when he was not around,  and lied to him about watching it when he asked you if you watched it. As time went on, you let go of trying hard to hide the fact that you were watching that show (“didn’t really actively try to hide it”), had CDs of it and mentioned it on your Facebook page, and so, you figured that he knew that you were watching the show and he was okay with it.

Throughout the years, his first depression episode shortly after you moved in together happened about once a year and then “started to happen more frequently.. “twice a year”. You wrote about his depression episodes: “He would get angry about seemingly minor things… obsessive over certain things, like problems with neighbours or issues at work. It got to the point where it seemed like he was unhappy with everything”.

Your response to his unhappiness: “I just started tuning it out and not listening”, and the two of you “grew more and more distant from each other… essentially living partly separate lives”.

In November 2021, he asked you if you watched the show and you replied truthfully, “yes”. His response: “This reply broke him… (he had)  a mental breakdown. He was in an awful place for weeks, unable to sleep, unable to eat, he couldn’t control his thoughts, he was having blackouts”.

You wrote about his response: “That simple act of watching a TV show and lying to him about it caused him to question everything… He believed I was on the same page as him about certain core values and beliefs, but if I could watch this program, it meant I wasn’t. It showed no respect for him and no acknowledgement of the terrible things he has had to go through… Every bad thing I had ever done came out, every time I had ever made him feel bad or disregarded him or belittled him… all my other bad behaviours were brought to light. He said how controlling I had been over our son… putting so many rules in place for everyone. He felt like a babysitter, not a father. He said I talked down to him, only thought about myself, had to be right about everything even when I was clearly wrong….”

Your response to his response: “I just couldn’t accept that I had been so terrible. I couldn’t understand why this affected him so much, why he was so upset. .. And I argued back..  I tried to justify myself, explain that he wasn’t seeing things right. All I could see was the situation from my own perspective and I couldn’t see my actions in the way he did”.

Most recently, you (36) wrote about your relationship with your husband (40): “My relationship with my husband is on the rocks and I am mostly to blame. I am really struggling to accept all the things I did wrong and take accountability for my actions and behaviour… the difficult truth is that I have behaved poorly and immaturely… He still doesn’t feel in a place to make a decision about whether he can be with me… He has very black and white views on things, and I have put myself into the black category. He cannot believe anything I say and even though I have made great efforts to educate myself and try to change, I have so much against me. I am really trying to see things from his perspective, but I can’t silence the voice in my head that says he’s being unfair and I’m just not this horrible, bad person he thinks I am. However, when I look objectively at the things I have done, it could be seen as abusive, and that really upsets me”.

And now, my understanding: you did not mention that you are a psychotherapist or any other kind of a healthcare professional and I assume that you are not one. Let’s say that you were a certified psychotherapist:  treating your husband wouldn’t have been possible because of the lack of objectivity that is necessary in a therapist-patient relationship.

His childhood traumas, including his sexual trauma at 16, are deep and ongoing and all took place before he met you: none of it is your doing, none of it is your fault. Because it is not possible for you (or for any woman in the role of his wife) to treat him and guide him through healing, the best you could have done for him would have been to support him while he sought and received professional help.

You were right to suggest that he sees a doctor, but he refused.  As tragic as his childhood traumas which were not caused by him,  it has still been his responsibility as an adult husband and father to seek professional help. He failed his responsibility to himself, to you and to your son.

You and your son are co-victims of his childhood traumas.

You wrote: “That simple act of watching a TV show and lying to him about it caused him to question everything… He believed I was on the same page as him about certain core values and beliefs“- I don’t think that it is true that before Nov 2021, he believed that you were on the same page as him about core values and beliefs and that he didn’t question things about the relationship. I think that his deep episodes of depression through the years involved such questioning and doubts.

“But if I could watch this program, it meant I wasn’t. It showed no respect for him and no acknowledgement of the terrible things he has had to go through… Every bad thing I had ever done came out.. … He has very black and white views on things, and I have put myself into the black category. He cannot believe anything I say…“- he used this incident of asking you if you watched the program (something he suspected or knew already) so to focus his anger on you and unleash it on you.

“Every bad thing I had ever done came out, every time I had ever made him feel bad or disregarded him or belittled him…talked down to him, only thought about myself, had to be right about everything even when I was clearly wrong….“- all this reads like projection, projecting his childhood abusers unto you: as a child and a teenager, he felt bad, disregarded, belittles, talked down to, etc., by his abusers who thought they were right about everything even when they were clearly wrong, even when they abused him.

You wrote: “I just couldn’t accept that I had been so terrible“- but you were not and are not terrible. He projected his terrible abusers unto you. Likely, he doesn’t have it in him yet to confront his real abusers, and he feels relatively comfortable to confront his abusers by proxy, meaning using you as a substitute for his abusers.

“All I could see was the situation from my own perspective and I couldn’t see my actions in the way he did“- I think that the true perspective is that you are a co-victim of his childhood abusers and currently, his victim as well.

“I am really struggling to accept all the things I did wrong and take accountability for my actions and behaviour… the difficult truth is that I have behaved poorly and immaturely” – you behaved imperfectly. No human behaves perfectly.

In addition to being human and therefore imperfect, you have your own childhood traumas with which he didn’t help you, did he? I think that your childhood  traumas are the reason why, as a child and teenager, you focused on solitary activities such as doing school work, reading books and watching a lot of TV- instead of interacting with your mother, step-father, and peers. (I think that the reason you don’t remember much of your childhood is that much of your childhood took place alone).

I hope that you post again. I would very much like to read more about your thoughts and feelings.

anita