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[quote=Anonymous]Married 20-plus years. Got engaged after about a year of dating and married 8 months after that. Did not live together.

The biggest surprise for me was how deeply and pervasively the emotional abuse DH received from his father would affect a wide range of things in our relationship and DH's approach to parenting. I knew his father had died from alcoholism (long before we met), that the alcoholism was a major factor in his parents' divorce, and that his father had not been nice to his mother when drunk. But I was told repeatedly what a great father he was to DH and his brother.

After we were married, DH would tell stories that in his mind were funny memories but to me sounded cruel, like purposely continuing to do something that terriified a kid to see them freak out. DH was in deep denial, and it wasn't until we had been married several years that DH, after listening to a random podcast about a family with an emotionally abusive father, admitted to himself and me that his own father had been emotionally abusive.

DH tries really hard not to be his father, and on the whole, he is a good dad. But there have been times where he has overracted to kid behaviors, especially in the tween years.

There were also some financial things that we discussed before marriage where I thought we were on the same page, but after marriage he changed his tune. I felt coerced into some decisions but went along to keep the peace because it was obvious that he was (and still is) incapable of understanding that you can have a healthy marriage even if not every financial account is shared jointly.

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