Thank you for your comments. I have been doing a lot of thinking about what you have all said.

I can see that everything is not my fault. I feel I have some clarity on what my part has been and I have things I want to work on. But I know that I am not solely responsible for my husband’s trauma and pain, which is what I need to keep reminding myself.

I think that he does have a victim mentality, but I don’t like the term ‘Poor Me Syndrome’ because I feel it trivialises his pain and experiences. Victim mentality can be a coping mechanism for people who have suffered trauma and it becomes a thought pattern that can be difficult to recognise and even harder to get out of. He has suffered – and continues to do so on a daily basis – and I can see how easy it would be to get sucked into that way of thinking. He is not doing this to get sympathy, as he pretends to the whole world that everything is fine. I am the only person he has ever told all of this to. I don’t believe he wants to be like this, but I also don’t think he can see that he is standing in his own way.

I have found a male therapist who I think would be a good fit. He specialises in male sexual abuse and is an advocate for issues affecting men. I have gently approached the subject with my husband and I hope that he is seriously considering it. While he doesn’t believe it will do anything, I said that if there’s even a small chance that things could be better for him, that he could sleep without being disturbed by nightmares, that he could wake up in the morning without feeling the way he does, then isn’t it worth trying? I am not going to push too hard because I know he will get resistant and think I am just trying to put the blame back onto him again, which isn’t what I’m trying to do.

In the meantime, I will continue to work on myself, to keep my eyes open to the injustices and unfairness around me, to listen to him and support him in whatever way I can. And I just have to hope that the future holds something better than this.