when you read this you will see why I added this message here.

I have tried hard to get talking with my husband but so often a conversation degenerates into raking over old ground. Basically he cannot cope with the idea that he was not the first man in my life. The first man in my life was a boss who behaved disgracefully towards women and as a naïve 15 year old I did not cope with the situation very well. Looking back I should have reported him to the police. Now I am 30 years older and been married for 26 years and my husband is still going on about this issue. I have not found anything that will stop him.

Last night I tried complementing him and then he starts off ranting again. I am left dumbstruck. There I am trying to say I appreciate his efforts to make me feel good and bang there he goes off on a tirade about this situation. I wanted to tell him he was better than anyone else or recently even than himself a few months ago. He heard the idea of comparison and it was like lighting a fuse.

This morning I have tried hard to explain things from my perspective yet again, praying hard for the right words in case they were misunderstood. Yet again I get nowhere trying to get him to understand. However, I gained a bit more insight into why he found it so difficult to understand my view, believe it or not it is actually linked to the ideas of His Needs and Her Needs.

This situation has been going on for years. So many times I have tried to express an area where he could improve or said something that he finds hurtful and off he goes ranting about this situation. If I suggest that it would improve our marriage if he did less than an 80 hour working week he can start on like this. It does not help the situation in that he has a history of compulsive hand-washing which mercifully has subsided to normal levels and that this has had various knock effects around the house that have greatly upset me but I have to learn to live with them.

BTW I have been seriously trying to learn all the tactics of gentleness and avoiding nagging in order to avoid such a response. In fact if anything I have been too quiet as I have been fearful of his retaliation. In some moods it is like walking on eggshells and I hardly dare speak to him in case he starts going on about my past history again. Early this morning I found myself thinking very carefully over replies to his questions because of my fear of being misunderstood, only to be accused to using the time to concoct falsehoods.

As I am typing this I am trying to calm down from the last encounter like this. It got so bad this morning that I ended up with the physical symptoms of an anxiety attack, i.e. trembling inside and having a stomach ache. BTW past experience suggests that mentioning this kind of reaction to his comments would not improve the situation as I was the one that started the situation in the first place.

He cannot see the harm this situation has done to our marriage. I have tried explaining it but it is like trying to get through a brick wall with your bare hands. He sees the worse hurt as the original situation and I see the worse hurt is his reaction. It does not help that his reaction has caused me pain for many times longer than the original i.e. 10 plus years compared to 2 months. I suffer repeated emotional bruising (probably averaging about 1 or 2 a week) that has just not stopped and that I am struggling to cope with. All I want is for him to leave my past in the past where it belongs. I have got on and got over it but he has not.

Susan
Also on emotional needs forum