Does your spouse make you feel like you have perpetually wronged them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, it's painted on my wife's face. When the momentary smiles fade she makes it clear she doesn't love me and deeply regrets being with me. It's sad because I don't feel the same.

My husband says this to me. That he can see that I regret being married to him.
It would mean a lot to me if he would actually open a discussion about this.
This isn’t really how I feel. But he us so scared to change. He would rather believe that I don’t love him than believe that there are ways he could change and be a better spouse.

[Anonymous]

Do you have kids? It sounds like your husband feels trapped somehow so not talking openly even though you say he is a dominant partner. kids, sense of religious obligation, some other sense of dependency

[Anonymous]

Each person in a couple has a part in its dysfunction. I don’t hear what you are owning OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Constant criticisms for seemingly minor transgressions? 10 year grudge holding? Rude comments? Who else lives this way? With a dominant personality partner who is unreasonable.

You have the power.

Fix your bad habits so they stop suffering from them and pointing them out. Then you’ll have peace and silence and fun conversations.

Alternatively go to couples therapy and walk through a few examples every week- soup to nuts - until both the bad habits and criticisms stop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Constant criticisms for seemingly minor transgressions? 10 year grudge holding? Rude comments? Who else lives this way? With a dominant personality partner who is unreasonable.

Everyone with untreated ADHD or ASD lives this way. Constant mishaps followed by questions and comments automatically deemed rude.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know of a marriage like this. But the person I'm close to doesn't want to get out because they don't want to have a second divorce. But they are also miserable a lot of the time because their partner is rigid, demanding, belittling, and controlling.

I know my friend love their spouse, but they also reallllly dislike their spouse. It's easy to see from the outside that the marriage should not be salvaged because one of the people in the marriage is not interested in working on themself or compromising.

+1. I'd say we know the same couple, but I honestly do not think the couple I know has friends, and I am betting the same is true of the couple you know. She is staying because of money, but it just keeps unraveling, while he keeps unraveling. He is absolutely miserable, criticizes others like it is a sport, has multiple professional and personal issues, has terrible coping mechanisms, and it extremely immature and anti social. The anti social tendencies are endless. It would be an awful way to live - which puzzles me, because my other couple friends seem normal and well adjusted, competent adults. It tells me that she is likely also not dealing with a full deck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can’t really picture what you are talking about here.
It sounds to me like you are regularly (perpetually?) being hurtful to your spouse in a way that you feel is minor, and potentially majorly hurtful 10 years ago, and you don’t like that they are upset about it.

I can.

OP F’s up.

Spouse asks what happens.

OP is silent or starts mounting a personal attack on spouse, either escalates the situation.

Spouse falls for the bait and both asks what happened again and starts defending against the personal attacks.

OP starts an all out argument and throws out accusations, feigns being a victim. Original F up is buried.

OP storms and stonewalls off.

Spouse sits there in a daze, and starts cleaning up the original F up mess Op made.

Next day.

OP F’s up again.

Spouse asks what happened.

OP’s DARVO ensues, escalation, personal attacks, storms off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Constant criticisms for seemingly minor transgressions? 10 year grudge holding? Rude comments? Who else lives this way? With a dominant personality partner who is unreasonable.

Pls give some examples of “seemingly minor transgressions.”

Is there a pattern, as in the same transgressions keep happening again and again? (Ie unlocked doors over night, dirty counters, dog not let out OR just totally out there criticisms like Why’d you buy that price of crap luggage, r u stupid? )

The former you can both fix, the latter is a passive aggressive spouse hoping to get you to do the “dirty work” of filing for divorce. Just gray rock them and write them off. Try to find the humor in how consistently petty and broken they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Constant criticisms for seemingly minor transgressions? 10 year grudge holding? Rude comments? Who else lives this way? With a dominant personality partner who is unreasonable.

Some of these traits resonate. You disengage, build a wall around your heart, and start seeing them as an emotionally immature child who deserves your sympathy but not your full attention. Build a support system of other women and livr your seperate life.

[Anonymous]

Is a comment about something rude that happened, rude?

[Anonymous]

Does my spouse make ME feel like a perpetually wronged them?!?

No. Because I haven’t.

Maybe once or twice they picked a fight and tried to zoom out like that but I’d just laugh. Because I’m constantly doing everything, correctly, so the handful of times I drop a ball of 100, and someone dare point that out, I’d laugh in their face at my 99 other accomplishments that day or week.

Anyhow, the old saying is true: a person can’t really make you feel anything, you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know of a marriage like this. But the person I'm close to doesn't want to get out because they don't want to have a second divorce. But they are also miserable a lot of the time because their partner is rigid, demanding, belittling, and controlling.

I know my friend love their spouse, but they also reallllly dislike their spouse. It's easy to see from the outside that the marriage should not be salvaged because one of the people in the marriage is not interested in working on themself or compromising.

Sounds like my FIL. His second wife is a b——h but he won’t admit he made a mistake.

[Anonymous]

My DH is like this. I didn’t realize how much anxiety he introduced into my life until we separated. It sad and hurtful when he moved out, but also such a relief. I haven’t quite figured out which feelings will win, love versus relief, but I’m leaning towards relief. I think you can love someone and still recognize that you’re completely incompatible

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t really picture what you are talking about here.
It sounds to me like you are regularly (perpetually?) being hurtful to your spouse in a way that you feel is minor, and potentially majorly hurtful 10 years ago, and you don’t like that they are upset about it.

I can.

OP F’s up.

Spouse asks what happens.

OP is silent or starts mounting a personal attack on spouse, either escalates the situation.

Spouse falls for the bait and both asks what happened again and starts defending against the personal attacks.

OP starts an all out argument and throws out accusations, feigns being a victim. Original F up is buried.

OP storms and stonewalls off.

Spouse sits there in a daze, and starts cleaning up the original F up mess Op made.

Next day.

OP F’s up again.

Spouse asks what happened.

OP’s DARVO ensues, escalation, personal attacks, storms off.

Projecting much? Sounds like a script from someone's own life, but you can't know it's what OP is doing. So the source must be much, much closer to home. I'm sorry if you've endured this sucky pattern, PP, but this is the very definition of projection onto an OP's situation about which you know no more than she's actually said here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t really picture what you are talking about here.
It sounds to me like you are regularly (perpetually?) being hurtful to your spouse in a way that you feel is minor, and potentially majorly hurtful 10 years ago, and you don’t like that they are upset about it.

I can.

OP F’s up.

Spouse asks what happens.

OP is silent or starts mounting a personal attack on spouse, either escalates the situation.

Spouse falls for the bait and both asks what happened again and starts defending against the personal attacks.

OP starts an all out argument and throws out accusations, feigns being a victim. Original F up is buried.

OP storms and stonewalls off.

Spouse sits there in a daze, and starts cleaning up the original F up mess Op made.

Next day.

OP F’s up again.

Spouse asks what happened.

OP’s DARVO ensues, escalation, personal attacks, storms off.

Projecting much? Sounds like a script from someone's own life, but you can't know it's what OP is doing. So the source must be much, much closer to home. I'm sorry if you've endured this sucky pattern, PP, but this is the very definition of projection onto an OP's situation about which you know no more than she's actually said here.

It’s one of a handful of scenarios it could be, all of which are “projections”.

The OP post actually says very little; let’s see if OP answers any of the helpful questions posted.