MMI (More Marital Issues)

A lot has happened in the past two weeks. I have been digesting everything and trying to figure out how to put it into a cohesive blog-posting. I'm also worried that he could find this blog and get very angry with me for posting about all of this, and considered not posting about it at all. But I think that the therapeutic value of doing this will be worth it. (I'm also thinking about participating in IComLeaveWe this month).

A week ago (Thursday) I had an all-out panic attack. I was VERY thankful that no one was around me when it happened. Preceding this attack was the realization that my husband is an emotional abuser. I came to this realization after reading two blogs about marriage and IF (whichbox.blogspot.com and jo-mojoworking.blogspot.com).

I should state here that I am a VERY independent person, and rarely let him get away with the behaviors that are abusive. But it does wear on a person, regardless of how strong.

I had never put it together quite like this before. I was a bit shell shocked, and went to girls weekend anyway, and got a chance to talk about it very briefly with my best friend (who is very grounded and gives great advice). She wisely asked me if I was overreacting because of everything going on in my life right now. I said I could be, and decided to think about it some more.

Then on Sunday, we went in for our first round of IUI. On the way there, we got into a ridiculous fight about something trivial. He belittled my ability to park, and then told me that he wasn't going to go through with the IUI while we were in the elevator going up to the office. We argued with the door of the elevator open for a bit, and were interrupted by the security guard, at which point, Sweets snapped back into the real world, and everything was suddenly fine.

I should also give you a little back story on Sweets' family. He was raised primarily by his wonderful mother, as his parents divorced when he was quite young. His father is/was a CLASSIC emotional abuser. His mom says "He was only ever happy when I was crying." He continues to be that way with his new wife, and he chooses uneducated and dependent women to marry so that they can never leave him.

Last night, Sweets and I had a very frank conversation (no yelling, yea!) about all of this, and I told him I thought he was being emotionally abusive to me. And he actually HEARD ME. REALLY heard me. We chewed on lots of issues, and at one point I asked him,

"If everything is so terrible and bad, why are you still here, and why are we still trying to have a baby?"

His response was, "Because this is my fault, and I want to fix it." And apparently he's considering quitting his all-consuming, crazy crazy job to do it.

I feel hopeful for the first time in a long time. We are going to find a counselor (something he has previously refused to do) and see if we can get everything worked out.