Wow. Well I'm really sorry your going through this. I have never been married but have been in a relationship with an extremely emotionally unavailable person. Sounds like you are both being pretty unavailable to each other right now and are in definite need of some couples counselling. In my case it was our separate issues with our own families of origin that created a barrier between us. Our individual issues triggered bad feelings in each other and until we could sort those out we could never be completely open and vulnerable to each other. Do you think it could be something like that?

Hi Possum! Nice to find you over here! You did exactly the right thing. What marriage is healthy when a husband says he does not like being with you?!! Would you ever say that to someone you love and care about?? My Husband treated me like this for so many years. If he doesn't like being with you why wouldn't he leave? It eats you alive it is so damaging and lonely making.
He says there is no place in a marriage for protecting yourself from hurt??!!!! That means he recognizes he has and is hurting you. He is essentially saying...put your defenses down and let me hurt you!!! NOW he says either open up and let me continue to hurt you or leave ...I am sorry but i am incredulous!!!! He has no inkling that HE is the one who needs to get help to stop hurting you!! AND quite frankly, HE is the one who needs an ultimatum to stop hurting you or leave!! Possum, I have recently seen the light on what my own husband has been doing all these years. I joined this group and have gone back and forth from this to the emotional abuse site. Now I stay over there mostly because i can see so plain as day that it is HIS turn to fix himself. I have told my husband it is time to part. I would guess if u turned around and told your hurtful husband you are choosing the option he gave to leave...he would become so nice and clingy like mine has. Which is just an act anyway, not sincere. I am finally getting angry about this stuff and am angry for YOU!!!!! Lots of hugs

P.S. By the way...you sound so healthy to me! Saying just the right thing...it is hurtful to you and it affects intimacy.....what a perfect response!!

I agree. I'd do marriage counseling or hit the road. There is no room in a marriage to be treated like crap. What happened to love, honor and cherish? He's doing none of those things, yet you are supposed to. It's a 2-way street.

Hi possum: I agree with marriage counseling and if he still continues the way he is, then he needs to be kicked to the curb. I also disagree with him giving ultimatums.

I had been in a marriage where I gave everything of myself while he gave nothing but demands for excessive sex daily and I was working 40 hours a week, taking care of a young child, and then every other weekend he'd take us to his mother's in another state and I'd be working there too. On the other weekend, I'd be working all weekend on our home, cleaning, groceries, everything and he wouldn't lift a finger. And I'd also be outside tuning up my car and working on the yard. And it didn't change him. He was demanding, and physically abusive, and couldn't handle crises in work and would bring them home and beat on me. I foolishly felt if I loved him even more I could make him change, that if I did so much more I could make him change and none of that worked. I couldn't be myself and I had no time to myself. We did nothing, we went no where, and we had to isolate.

After I got out of the marriage, I realized that I couldn't become what another person wanted me to be or what they expected me to be. I realized what abuse was and that trying to talk to him about it and even counseling didn't work with him because he felt he was doing nothing wrong while I was bruised up from him.

Counseling showed me we can be ourselves and that a lot of these old ideas of the women being the heart of the home was outdated. It takes 100 percent effort from both husband and wife in order to make it work. And abuse is a deal breaker and I walk away.

take care and many, many hugs.

My view is that he responded like that because you really did hit a nerve in him.

I agree with "rosiekins" that if does not like it then he is the one who needs to leave as that is his problem.

I say to just keep it up, but wait for him to say something mean and then tell him your feelings that his words hurt you and that way he will never get away with anything mean because by telling him then it puts it back onto him, and if he really does not like it then it is up to him to stop it.

It is a mistake to think that any one time or one day that he will get the point as it might take a week or a month but he will get the point eventually.

If you do it correctly then it is nothing to harm him as you just let him know that it hurts your self and that is a thing which very few if any one can long ignore.

The ultimatum is just trying to scare you and to control you, and you could tell him that you are not getting offended as his meanness hurts you and being hurt is different from being offended.

Tell him that it hurts because you do care about his feelings, and it hurts you because you do love him.

When someone loves you, they don't want to hurt you, and when they do they want to make it right. I'm sooo sorry you are in this situation. Keep your head up and make good choices for you.

He's successfully deflecting that he is the one causing the problems here and not you. If anything, by opening up to him and telling him hurtful you find these comments, you're making yourself very transparent and vulnerable to him. Yet, perversely when you do this he tells you (more or less) to toughen up and take his comments on the chin.

What does he want you to be more open and honest about exactly? It sounds like you really are already doing this with your feelings. While I think in a relationship you have to accept some unkind comments as no one is perfect, there should either be an apology forthcoming and an explanation for where the comment came from.

This comment about not liking being with you... if that's really the case, why is he still with you, complaining about you not opening up to him? He should just leave if that is the way that he feels. I'm really sorry to hear you're going through this.

Hi Sunshine,

You might be correct that we do not want to hurt the people we love, but almost always we really do hurt the people we love the most.

A lot of Men are clumsy or stupid about expressing our feelings, and I honestly believe that for most people if we talk to them and explain to them then it is totally possible to get them to wake up and to see the truth.

Sometimes, but not always. I told my STBX repeatedly that the things he said and how he acted hurt his family very much, but he still doesn't see it. He thinks, after he says nasty crap, that we should just get over it because it's in the past. It's hard to get past someone putting you down constantly, and there really is no need to put up with that.

nothing to add good advice

He is totally full of bull!!!!!

"Open your heart to him or leave" is an open hostile threat to abandon you if you refuse to play by HIS RULES and allow this horrid behavior to continue.

You have no reason to trust this man. He needs to go to therapy with you. If he believes this stuff about
"wouldn't get offended by what he says because I would understand that he loves me and is for me, and that what he said ( ie- he doesn't like being with me or my sister) is true- ouch"
then try getting any therapist to agree with that as making any sense at all. I promise you that a good one will tell you that is called CONTROLLING behavior using abusive language and abusive behavior.

To respond:
tell him some "truths" about being with him.

Frankly, it sounds like you should just start laying out how you will split up the house, the money, sue him for support and find out how much you need to hold an apartment or explain that he is moving out of the house.

The way he is behaving is that you must do all the WORK of marriage and he just behaves any way he wants. There is no excuse for anyone to simply say whatever they want about you without caring about what it means to be the one hearing such words. Words are meant to be healing not tearing apart. He is using words to rip and tear and then excusing his rotten behavior with really poor excuses.

NO ONE EVER does ANYTHING to DESERVE being spoken to thusly!!!!
NO ONE has the right to act out in this way.
You do not deserve this NOR did you do anything that warrants his speaking to you in such a way.

You best position is to start planning what you will do when you leave him. These sorts tend to believe they have you trapped and have no hope of leaving so they behave mean and rotten thinking they can get away with it. Calling his bluff may be just the thing but you have to come from a position of actually meaning it and being prepared to follow thru without giving in unless he admits that you both need to work on a marriage.

Kindness is the basis of all good relationships. UNKIND words and attitudes are the basis of abuse!

"if I trusted him I wouldn't get offended by what he says because I would understand that he loves me and is for me, "

"he doesn't like being with me or my sister)"


So he thinks you should never be offended by him?

I had a Man like that once. He liked to control me, how I should feel, my friends, my family. eventually he didn't like me either. . I was young, he actually became repelled by me I thought submission to him was the only way to keep a man, that's what my dysfunctional alcholic illegal foster mother did. Why should he have respected me?.....I didn't know how to respect my SELF.

Eventually I found out the truth....from inside my SELF:
He liked himself a little too much. I learned to like my SELF more........... I DUMPED HIM.