Maybe it is just that I view things from a Man's perspective, but he is saying that his stressful job is upsetting his marriage, and he is NOT saying that you or his marriage is upsetting his job.

You are taking it as a slight against your self, when it is a criticism of his job.

I have had some terrible jobs myself so I really do agree that it is better to view the marriage as much more important than any job.

His job is stressful - then yes that is a huge big problem.

To me he sounds like a sensible husband who has great value for his marriage and for you.

Actually what was said is "he is thinking of quitting his job (which is quite stressful) BECAUSE HE CAN'T RELAX AT HOME WITH ME BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO RELATE TO HIM WHEN HE IS STRESSED." [emphasis added]

So your husband is trying to quit his job because he said he can't relax at home.

Explain that he should go into therapy to learn coping tools for stress so that he can come home and not take the stress out on you.

It still comes out the same that his job is too stressful.

You his wife does not need to learn to handle his stress.

And he does not need to get a Therapist in order to handle the stress of his job.

Just get rid of the stressful job.

The hubby knows what he needs to do, and Men are known to be fixers, so just give him support as he quits and looks for another job.

And many times it might be an easy job but having a horrible boss or having unfriendly coworkers even in a nice job - but the problem is the job and not his wife or the marriage.

Why in the world would you think that it would be better for you to "separate" and breakup your relationship break up your family instead of quitting a stressful job?

I wonder the same as he - How can you value his working above your marriage ?

I actually agree with both of these comments. It is commendable that he thinks enough of his marriage that he's willing to leave his job because it's taking a toll on his marriage; however, we cannot quit our jobs any time we get stressed out. I think therapy would be good for him to learn some coping skills. I tried to get my STBX to do that, but he wasn't interested. To him the job WAS more important than the marriage, and he refused to get any help for himself. That was the demise of our marriage. Hopefully you can urge your husband to get some stress management assistance.

Thanks everyone for your comments, I am scared that if he quits his job, he will blame me for it. In the past he has consistently blamed me for everything ( not having the job he would like, not having friends, not having hobbies, not going to uni .....) The issue for me is I could not live with this hanging over me for the rest of my life : ' I had to quit my job because of you'. It may sound selfish but these are the things he says and I can't live with being held responsible for all the bad things in his life

I agree with Cheryt. In today's world, there is so much stress and there are therapists that work with stress management. They use biofeedback, meditation, music therapy and many other methods.

If he does not want to get into therapy than refuse to be blamed if he quits his job. That will have been his sole decision and not anything involving you.

OH BALONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

This is called a GUILT TRIP! Darn simple. You are not reacting the way he wants and he is working on all the buttons to get you back into the state of crawling around letting him speak to you like you are a piece of dirt. Letting him say all sorts of rotten things to you without him having to behave in a loving way. And trying to convince you that he has a right to speak to you in any way that he wants and it is all your fault for his bad rotten behavior.

He is choosing to quit his job. It has nothing to do with you AT all!
UNLESS you are holding a gun to his head and threating to kill him if he does NOT quit, then it is his free choice.

"stress at home" is just another way to place the blame on you. If he does not like his job, he should look for one that he enjoys better.

Bottom line, he is responsible to earn the money. It is NOT about one thing being more important that the other like life is some perfect hierarchy. Money is necessary to pay for housing, food, utilities. He is threating to put you both on the street. This is nothing but threat to endanger you and fail to provide for you in the way that you BOTH have established for your relationship. He is totally violating all the trust between you.

Any suggesting that this is anything other than a threat to get you to cower and bow to his will is silly nonsense.

This man is controlling.
He is abusive. He is mean and passive aggressive. This is a horrible form of abuse because some people will never see the abuse. There are some who will back up your husband with total disregard for the truly nasty way he is behaving with these threats and abuse.

This man clearly wants control at all costs. He has no love for you at all. He is trying to place blame on you for every rotten thing that he does. That is projection. He may not even know what love means.

These threats and rude speeches are childish ways of controlling others. It is "play MY WAY or I am taking my bat and ball and then NO ONE will be able to play".

He has no intentions of wanting to be broke and on the street. He is saying these things to stir up as much fear in you as possible.
So call his bluff and tell him you will support what ever choice HE MAKES. Be sure to emphasize that this is entirely HIS CHOICE. You have no way to enter into this choice in any way at all.
to do what he feels is necessary.

This man is upping the threat level by threating to quit his job and leave you both homeless, without food and other necessities. DO NOT TAKE this lightly. These sorts will continue to escalate the abuses even to the point of causing serious physical injury and death of their partners when they show the sorts of personal strength that you are displaying right now.
Stop attempting to deal with this alone. You are no longer safe. The women's shelters in your area can help you to understand what is going on, if you are even safe in this situation, and how to proceed. They understand the escalation that abusers use to keep their narcissistic supply in tact and living in terror under their thumbs.

An appropriate response would be contact your local women's shelter. They can help you understand if you are safe even being alone with this man due to this escalation of abuses. They can help you access this situation so that you stay safe BOTH emotionally and physically. They can help you make a plan to leave so that you will be physically safe.

Please reach out to some professionals now!

Here is a great article which details this abusive behavior in an easy to read and understand format.

http://www.speakoutloud.net/male-perpetrators/economic-abuse


One thing that is absolutely certain; being male or female offers no superior understanding about this issue. Such comments come purely from a place of dominance and control offering us greater insight into the controlling mind of an abuser. There is NO WAY that he understands better simply for being born a certain way. Every single person has the same opportunity to understand FULLY and offer advice equally.

Regardless of our sex, everyone has an equal ability to comprehend codependent behavior, learn to understand addicts and addiction, and recognizing abusive behaviors, there is no preeminent knowledge allotted to anyone by merit of their sex.


This is a form of abuse called superior knowledge. One must also infer that based purely on sex, the knowledge of others is inferior. Any and all such statements are simply power and control based. It is folly to consider that some greater ability to comprehend was bestowed on anyone while in the womb.

Hi again p-lady,

I hear many people getting into fights because their partner blames them, and then there is a fight about who's fault it was, and to me I find this as senseless.

Truly the best way is to just accept any blame that he puts onto you because by accepting the blame it stops the fighting instantly, and it really does no harm at all to us.

In fact to accept blame is to accept the responsibility and that is the strong position as it is the power position in the relationship, and if you start accepting all the blame instead of fighting it then he will slowly but surely stop blaming you, and he will stop because people blame us in order to draw our a negative response, as in they blame as a way to start a fight, so when we fight back then they feed on that drama, but when we accept the blame then the other person gets sat down.

If he tells you that it is your fault that he lost his job, then say yes it is my fault so now lets go get a new job.

In codependency we must learn how to recognize our feelings and then do NOT let your feeling to control your living, so he is trying to put guilt onto you but you do not need to feel the guilt, and instead you can take control of it and then reverse the process back onto him by accepting the blame, and then doing some thing about it.

He blames things onto you because he feels guilty - he himself feels the guilt, so if you agree and say yes it is my fault then that changes nothing for him, because he will still feel guilty and he will still be guilty anyway.

He is not really trying to blame you as he is trying to get you to fight the blame and to resist the blame as that is the dysfunction.

You might not want anyone else to believe that it was your fault - and in fact nobody else will believe it even if you say that it was your fault, because it is his reality and not yours.

You say that he blames you for him = "not having the job he would like, not having friends, not having hobbies, not going to uni ..."
Well nobody here believes that is your fault, and no one in the real world would believe it either, and if you tell him that yes it is your own fault then even he will not believe it.

It is like reverse psychology except it is reverse feelings.

Works well for me when I do that.

I love when Men blame me for what I did to them. How I caused them to feel this way or that way. I've even made them hurt other women according to them. It's pure bull crap and we both would know it. So why would I waste an iota of my time worrying about how to fix them. Recovery from Codependency began with Fixing Me. Not him. You can't fix someone who loves themselves too much and the song and dance are always about them. I had to start thinking about my SELF, blaming them for my misery was just projecting it back to them, which they projected right back to me. This is a viscous cycle and nobody wins.

Someone said:
"In fact to accept blame is to accept the responsibility and that is the strong position as it is the power position in the relationship, and if you start accepting all the blame instead of fighting it then he will slowly but surely stop blaming you,"

I would not accept the blame, that is what got you into this position to begin with being submissive and a rug to be walked all over. To an abuser this behavior just encourages them and emboldens them to more abuse. I know people who come on here with failed marriages, failed to pay their child support was actually one the THESE ABUSERS and then recommends that you not only submit but accept more abuse until it continues. That's not reverse psychology, that's misogynistic and the exact opposite of what most therapist probably would tell you.

I accepted the blame for his problems at work that I had nothing to do with, and I had bruises all over me and IT DID HURT. Don't accept the blame.

Not only that but accepting the blame it is a LIE! Good relationships are NEVER built on LIES!

Also, trying to get "the power position in the relationship" is just being a bully and trying to control the relationship.

These are really bad ideas for every relationship. Only a terribly abusive person who likes being the controlling codependent would suggest such an idea.

A good relationship is based on polite truths NEVER lies. Lies are not only against God's laws, they are horrible for trying to relate to others. Any relationship built on lies can not survive because all in the relationship are totally confused.

We have only language during this part of our eternal journey. No one should ever waste it playing a game of lying in order to gain "the power position in the relationship". IN fact, anyone who thinks that gaining "the power position in the relationship" is a good goal is very confused about the point of relationships.

POWER is abuse. There is zero LOVE where POWER is the goal!
There will never be any LOVE where POWER in the goal. There can never be any love where power is the goal because love needs no POWER.
Love does not need lies.
Love does not need excuses.
Love never supports harming other human beings.
Love never suggest that harming another with lies and deceit is a worthy goal.

Keeping in mind that this is a codependency support group-I would say that your spouse is exhibiting the classic behavior that people do to co-dependent partners. He is making you responsible for his feelings/ stress. So he has to decide if he quits his job, what that is going to mean and how that will affect your finances and what he is going to do about it. It should not be an opportunity for him to blame you because pretty soon you will be the reason he quit his job and you will need to fix it.

When I say to accept the blame then I do not mean to lie about it.

What it does is accept the other person's feelings and thereby acknowledging his feelings.

If he feels that it is your fault and you are to blame then accepting the blame is simply accepting his feelings.

It does not mean that you or I am are at fault or that we are really to be blamed but just that we accept his feelings.

There is just nothing healthy about fighting over the blame or the fault.

Codependency is about dealing with feelings, and he feels that way so you denying the blame means that you are denying his feelings - and that is the unhealthy part.