Dear Helcat:

Thank you for the Always being just for me, it makes me feel special.

Three posts ago, you wrote: “I’m not upset. You haven’t done anything wrong. You have been kind and helpful“- if this was my mother’s message for me, my life would have been something very different: a life spent living, thriving instead of a life spent dying, withering (isolated, depressed, troubled, dysfunctional).

I wanted to understand better the situation between you and your husband, so I went back  and came across something you shared back on to May 25, 2022: “I had an argument with my husband… My pattern is to feel defensive, explain that I’m hurt and how to improve feedback in the future. I seek reassurance from my husband that he didn’t mean to hurt my feelings… I am hyper-vigilant, looking for signs of abuse… Now that I’m aware of the specific trigger I can remind myself that the situation is different. I’m safe, loved and not going to be physically abused because I didn’t do something perfectly“.

Recently, Sept  28, 2024: “My feelings get hurt sometimes and my husband can tell even when I don’t say anything about it. And he wants to talk about it and I don’t and that makes him angry that I don’t want to talk to him about it… I have just been shutting down at the slightest hint of conflict… he is hurt by me withdrawing. And he acts out when he’s hurt“.

Oct 12, 2024: “My husband gave me permission to do what I need to do to regulate my emotions. It’s basically the break situation again. He didn’t want me to do it before because he was afraid I was trying to end the relationship. He’s not taking me putting boundaries in place very well“- as I understand it (another vastly sleepless night significantly slows down my thinking), you needing time for yourself (time-out) when you feel hurt/ triggered is the right thing for you to do: for yourself and for him, for the relationship. Unfortunately, he feels threatened by your healthy coping mechanism (time-out)/healthy  boundary setting, and feeling about-to-be-abandoned, distressed, he acts out (.. how?)

Your trigger has been the thought that he meant to hurt your feelings/ that he may be abusing you, and his trigger is the thought that you may be abandoning him. So, his pattern has been to pursue connection with you just when you need a break from connection (time-out).

And when he pursues a connection with you while you need time-out, he further distresses you.

Psychology today/5 Ways That Fear of Abandonment Threatens Relationships: “Many with fears of abandonment also have an insecure attachment style, where they may become anxious, avoidant, or vacillate between both extremes, especially when their fears surface… Having a fear of being abandoned can wreak havoc on a person’s romantic relationships, where they can come off as ‘clingy’ or become possessive or manipulative as ways of trying to prevent their inevitable fears from surfacing…

“While there are many ways a fear of abandonment may show up in a person’s romantic relationships, five of the most common ones include: 1. Difficulty letting others in. Many who have experienced abandonment in their formative years have built up emotional walls to keep others out…

“What is feared the most is also the antidote for overcoming a fear of abandonment, which is to be comfortable being alone. Many with deep fears of abandonment cannot be alone. Time alone may trigger an inner critic or may spiral a person into self sabotage…  In healing from this pattern, it becomes necessary to face your past and recognize where these kinds of wounds started and how they have affected your life…”

If I understand correctly, that his Fear of Abandonment gets triggered by you shutting down and needing time-out, I wonder if he’s working on this fear in individual therapy.

anita

Dear Helcat: You are very special, I am, your husband is.. equally very special. We all need to treat each other as very special while we agree and disagree on this or that. Respect first, Love and best wishes, first, always! ❤️

Will reply further Sun morning, dear, precious Helcat.

anita

Dear Helcat:

You are welcome, always! Again, I am sorry that you’ve been experiencing difficulties in your marriage for quite some time.

“She said that I attacked her. That I was trying to get rid of her and that I would try to get rid of other people he cared about next. She said that I was worse than her abusive husband“- her message, paraphrased (addressing your husband): it’s me and you (and everyone in your life) against the enemy (Helcat)!..?

“It turns out that he lightly defended me and said that I wasn’t usually like this“- wait, he meant that you are not usually like this, but sometimes you are like this (like this= attacking, trying to get rid of people he cares about, being worse than her abusive husband)?

“My husband told me about this and when I asked if he defended me he lied and said no“- could it be (it distresses me to ask this) that he feels that her accusations are sometimes true?

Please correct me if I am grossly misunderstanding the situation. My intent is to help a bit, not to add to your distress. So, if this conversation distresses you, please let me know and we will not continue it.

“He tends to want to continue disagreements and arguments for too long for me. He is a naturally loud person, so raises his voice sometimes. He tends to follow me if I try to walk away. He tends to threaten to leave me and say mean things when he’s angry. He never used to say things like that before“- never before because of his friend’s recent input.. in addition to the extra stress involved in parenting with no outside help?

About him threatening to leave you, you wrote a couple of weeks ago (Sept 28): “He also explained that he doesn’t really want to leave, and the threatening to leave comes from a place of trying to push me away before I push him away“, which made me think that the feeling behind his threats is fear. Most recently, I was thinking fear of abandonment, but now I am thinking that there is more anger than fear behind his threats, anger that you shut down and walk away during conflicts.. angry that you talked to his friend.. anything else that angers him..?

“You are very special!“- thank you. I liked it that in a reply to another member, following our special-exchange, you wrote to the member that he is special.

“I’m sorry to hear that you haven’t been sleeping well again. I hope that tonight is easier“- I think that I figured out why I stay awake for hours during the night: I THINK and thinking awakens me and keeps me awake. Last night, after thinking (about my communication with you, among other things), I repeated the words “silence” and “hush” and that led to eventually going back to sleep and sleeping longer than many nights before.

I am looking forward to your reply, and again, if the discussing the topic with me distresses you, please let me know.

anita

Dear Helcat:

You are welcome and thank you for reassuring me that my questions are fair. I’ve been trying to understand because I was thinking that if I  understanding better, I can help you understand better: being IN a situation sometimes makes it difficult to see what someone who’s not in the situation can see.

“Because of his beliefs in Traditional Chinese Medicine, he took on this idea that he was not allowed to argue with me or it could affect the nature of the baby. He resented not discussing his feelings during the pregnancy”- why does discussing feelings necessitates arguing, I don’t understand.

“We argued about general stuff like sleep, childcare and housework responsibilities”- again, I don’t understand why there’s arguing instead of discussing.

“Life has been hard for a while and the arguing makes things even harder“- my point.. arguing is a negative, harmful dynamic within a relationship that’s supposed to be intimate.

“He misses his family a lot. Even more so, now he has a child. He wishes that they could help. He wishes that they could have more of a relationship with his son. He misses his friends“- you are his family, you are his friend!

How complex we human beings are, how simpler I wish life was. This is why many people prefer pets over humans: simplicity, much simpler modes of communication, no vast vocabulary with many thousand of words and combination of words which complicate things, leading to so many misunderstandings.

Here’s a thought: what if you and your husband, instead of addressing problems since the pregnancy, what if you start from the beginning, have a Beginner’s Mind (a Western-Buddhist concept): re-start the beginning, when Helcat met the man she was to marry, go back there, to the beginning, and start over.

You went through a lot of very difficult times as a child, and difficult times recently. It’s amazing how strong you are, Helcat: a strong woman/ a strong person! Trust your personal, inspirational (in my mind) strength, express it, and may your husband find refuge in it.

anita