I have been in a withdrawl stage in my marriage for some time, I recently came out and got close again to my H, then some things happened that has pushed me back to the edge of withdrawl. <BR>It was very hard to come out of withdrawl to become vunerable to being hurt again, it did make me realize how much I love him but also how much hurt that we have gone through. <BR>There are alot of things that my husband has done to hurt me in the past that went unresolved, he never wanted to talk about them and it always just got swept under the rug, now that rug is very full and I don't know if those problems in the past still need to be dealt with or to focus on now and the current problems and put that behind me. I used to let him walk all over me, let him get away with everything, he doesn't realize how much he has hurt me and I am afraid that he won't realize it until its too late. It seems that I have always had that problem in past relationships before I was married. <BR>Where do you draw the line at bringing up past unresolved conflicts?

I think there's a time and a place to discuss unresolved issues. For my H and me, it was in group therapy where there was a ton of support and feedback. It would have been much more explosive and potentially damaging had we tried to do this on our own. I've read your earlier posts, and would suggest that, at least for now, you might want to stick with the current situation. It might be safe to raise past issues in the context of taking personal responsibility for them (for example, 'I used to let things go in the past because I was afraid of conflict leading to losing you. Now I realize that doing this was destructive, and feel that I'm losing you because of it, so I'm resolving to deal with things more immediately'...).<P>Raising past issues in this time of conflict would likely lead to LBs. I, for one, am still not able to take my husband's angry outbursts very well -- I hear the anger instead of the message. I think many women are like that (possibly men too!). This is why the group was so useful for us. They were not so deeply involved with us, so heard the message and were able to kindly point it out to us.<P>So again, perhaps bring them up in the sense of taking responsibility for them, acknowledging the part you played in those past issues, and emphasizing to your H that you understand that they were not necessarily his 'fault' -- indeed, you experienced similar issues with others. This might be complicated, because you don't really want to undermine how painful his current behaviour has been.