Fixation on saying they’re a good person- why?

[Anonymous]

DH and I have had big struggles and arguments lately. He has been having what I guess is some kind of midlife crisis. Dropping the ball on kid and household stuff, lying, and being a real jerk when he’s caught or called out on any of this.

The wild thing to me is that I’ll be talking to him and say something like, hey, when you didn’t pick up DS from practice like you said you would, it put me in a real bind going out of my way to get him before the place closed and I wish you would have given me warning. Instead of just apologizing like a normal person, he’ll get really defensive but then perseverate and keep saying “I’m a good person! I’m not a bad person!”. I reply that this isn’t about being a good or bad person but about showing up to drive a kid when you said you would, and he continues to say “stop saying I’m not a good person! I know I’m a good person!”

This is an impossible dynamic that I need to get out of but in the meantime, wtf? I feel like good people don’t announce they’re good, but are actually their own biggest critics and are constantly trying to do better.

Someone who needs people to tell him he’s good and who announces he’s good rings alarm bells for me.

(If it helps, we are from the same religious tradition and denomination, so this isn’t a philosophy, perspective or semantics thing that could be explained by that)

[Anonymous]

Couples therapy

[Anonymous]

Your husband is irrational. Can’t be relied upon and then shifts blame.

Best of luck w that kinda’ man.

[Anonymous]

Guilty conscience?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Guilty conscience?

This

[Anonymous]

He is not a bad person, but he is FORGETFUL. Talk to him about being accountable to you,as well as his child. Why say he will handle something when he has no intention.

[Anonymous]

The emotion is shame and guilt. They are heavy emotions he’s struggling with. Tell him all good people make mistakes but to try to learn from them.

[Anonymous]

Does he have ADHD? They tend to hit a wall around 50 and get way more unreliable.

[Anonymous]

All of the above.

Talk strategies and solutions (put pick up Larlo from xx with a 20 minute alarm in the family giggle calendar).

[Anonymous]

Individual therapy for DH stat.

It's called splitting---he cannot tolerate that he, like everyone else, is a mix of good traits and bad traits.

[Anonymous]

Has he always been like this?

My husband grew up in an emotionally abusive household (his dad abused his mom and the kids and his mom would in turn abuse him in a different way) and he can be very sensitive to feeling like he's being criticized. He's been in therapy for a long time (I wouldn't have married him had he not been aware of the situation and actively working to deal with it) but every once in a while he can still feel like he's being "attacked" if I were to say something similar to what you did. (There is nothing wrong with what you said, and actually, I think you said it in the perfect way by explaining the consequences and not just calling him inconsiderate or whatever).

That was probably too many words but at the end of the day, he needs to be in therapy to figure out why this is his response. It's not ok for him to deflect what he did by trying to make you out to be the bad person. And of course good people make mistakes - there's something disordered about his thinking there. That's why I asked if he had always been like that. If not, perhaps something about mid-life is causing this (stress, etc.).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The emotion is shame and guilt. They are heavy emotions he’s struggling with. Tell him all good people make mistakes but to try to learn from them.

I agree with this. A friend’s husband was struggling with some deep, dark secrets. He used to say he was a good person and she was puzzled like OP. Kind of nuts and it was a marriage-ending secret.

[Anonymous]

Because he's trying to flip the topic to something you can't argue with. If the topic is him dropping the ball on practice pickup, he's legitimately in the wrong and has to admit fault and do better. If he can turn the argument into you trying to indict his whole personhood over an event that happened on a Tuesday, all of a sudden you're having to defend an unreasonable position.

Which is a long way of saying it's just manipulation and absence of accountability.

If it's sudden, it's usually an affair or addiction. If this is worsening of long-standing behavior, it's likely the coalescing of middle age and a lifetime of poor coping skills.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your husband is irrational. Can’t be relied upon and then shifts blame.

Best of luck w that kinda’ man.

+1000 I know this first hand. and let me tell you its worse as they age.