Hi, @daazydawg. I applaud your courage for seeking out and finding multiple avenues of help in this. One thing that struck me about what you said is more of a technicality but I wanted to clear it up before I respond to your post: you portray individual issues as independent from marital issues when in fact all issues – from the past, the present, and anxieties, queries about the future – should all be considered as ‘marital’ issues because they are having veritable impact on the marriage itself. I think it would be beneficial if he perhaps came to understand that too.

First thing I wanted to bring up in this is that you and your husband seem to have two starkly different personalities and I only identified this out of my own experience. I am very much like you, I’m very emotive, very sensitive – typically I act between states of polarity, going from one extreme to the other. I am never a little happy or a little sad, if I’m happy I’m REALLY happy, if I’m sad I’m REALLY sad, I guess I find it particularly hard to regulate my emotional state. As a result, I can come across judgemental, argumentative, and often highly critical of others when they don’t, can’t, or refuse to comprehend how I feel or my perspective. That doesn’t mean I’m moody or have bipolar disorder or anything, it just means I’m highly sensitive. In addition to this, I notice you are willing to accept and admit fault where necessary and move on from past hurts in light of more caring, more constructive futures. I am very much like this also, I can absolutely lose my shit over something – almost unreasonably – but I have never ever been one to hold grudges or dwell too extensively on the past when I know it won’t change the future etc. I can be profusely yet genuinely apologetic about my actions but because of my tendency to fly off the handle, so to speak, people who are not close to me or people whose personality is completely incapable of understanding mine, will often be offended, hurt, and slowly corroded by my actions.

As for your husband, he appears to be exactly like my ex, he is less to communicate openly, he doesn’t like to express his feelings, he is not particularly emotive, and takes a great deal to heart, irrespective of whether or not you have apologised. A ‘closed book’ is apt, but it is more than that because they are much less likely to change, and as a result of that, much less likely to want to change (even if it can be perceived as being for the better). It’s a psychological barrier that precludes moving forward because they are incompatible with our much more fluid state of emotions. What makes it worse is that when they do occasionally (or finally) open up to you and allow themselves into vulnerable states (which they will mostly try to avoid at all costs), they will not be entirely open. And you won’t actually know this until the next fight where you find out there was more to the story than they disclosed. Overall, my ex sounds so similar to your husband because she had a complete inability to understand just how necessary communication is. I mean, we had trust, love, and acceptance but we barely had compromise because communication is the driver of compromise. In fact, communication is the conduit through which most marital issues can most effectively be addressed.

We are human. We need to feel. We need to talk. But we should not ever have to assume. Assumption indicates a lack of communication. Nearly all of our fights, sadly, were over miscommunication, misinterpretation, and assumption. Like you, what I found most frustrating and, later demoralising, about this was that the problems were so obvious and all of them centred on communication. But every time I tried to remind her of this so we could work through it, she would simply get irrational and start talking about us needing a break. Basically, she was saying to me that she would prefer our relationship end than have to work on it. In a way, it was the most immature thing I’ve ever had intimated to me and ultimately the very reason for our demise. When I pushed her for something more reasonable she just said she would rather be lonely waiting for the perfect person who completely understood her than waste time with someone who is too different although who loves her.

My advice, is that people like this barely change because they have a very conceited idea of relationships and expectations and how their needs should apparently be prioritised over other ones. Having said this, I cannot honestly say you should try and move on from this because I have not heard his side of the story. I know you are the one being proactive and it’s very noble, but it would be unfair for me to elicit certain responses considering I’m not a professional and I’m not a valued friend. I think you should both keep ‘trying’, at least for now. I’ve found that working through things slowly, incrementally is the best way and most likely way to achieve results. People of our nature tend to want to introduce radical, sweeping change into relationships by starting afresh at some given scale. But other personalities do not cope well with this, especially those like your husband and my ex, so I would hasten you take a more pragmatic approach and make some small iterative changes that show both of you that this can work, it’s not beyond each of your control, it’s hard, it’s complex, but it is progressing. The biggest problem today is that the world has become so selfish that we find it difficult to accept people could be fundamentally different to us. And it runs deep into relationships, even within marriages. Something you can do to work toward remedying this is take a personality test, so at least you both have some form of foundation in understanding your basic differences.

http://www.16personalities.com/

This is a great site and ridiculously accurate. Of course personalities can be further sub-defined but it will give a very real identification of who you are intrinsically. It’s a simple survey that only takes 15 to 20 minutes as I recall but it will provide a platform upon which you can both read each other’s results, compare, and consider your relationship more broadly.

I’m interested in hearing updates about your marriage whenever appropriate. I hope you can keep confident enough to work through your issues, even when it seems you’re doing all the work to make change.

P.S. How long did you know / date each other prior to marriage?