People pleasing, resentment & relationships

Yea absolutely, our nervous systems are programmed in early childhood and we’re drawn to levels of stress etc that we’re used to. We’re often drawn to the pattern we’re used to from our opposite sex parent (so your H will be similar to your father in emotional patterns).

There’s some good School of Life videos on YouTube that explain things like the attachment styles, the anxious/avoidant dance, childhood trauma etc which give some pragmatic and easily digestible education on the psychology of relationships.

He sounds quite manipulative to me. You are shouldering a lot of blame (and he seems to encourage this) around you being hard on him. When in actual fact you were only hard on him because of your past experience with him love bombing and then abandoning you. I think if you take a partner back after such circumstances you are well within your rights to be a little defensive-the fact that he is now pushing this back on you doesn’t sit well with me at all.

put aside what he wants, space to find himself and all that. What do YOU want? You are aloud to advocate for yourself and your wants-by putting blame on you he’s basically written himself a free pass to behave however he likes.

Yes very true, but in my experience moving on like that - as a top-down cognitive rational process - leaves the body behind and there’s still a big disconnect between what you think and what you feel. To truly move on you have to connect with your feelings/body and allow yourself space to feel the anger and grief. It doesn’t necessarily follow that outward changes in relationships etc are needed, but as someone connects with their feelings they may come to realise that they’ve made lots of little and big choices in life that aren’t aligned with what they really want. So only your H is in a position to say whether your relationship is compatible for him.

From your side, if you’ve been aligned with your feelings you may be in a position where your relationship feels compatible to you.

If the two of you don’t agree, there’s a grief process for you to go through.

I think for you the interesting bit is whether you’ve fallen for someone who isn’t really emotionally available for you, why that might be and what you feel about it all. It’s easy to get yourself wrapped up in what’s going on for him, but what’s going on for you is your only work.

Yes, I grew up with an overbearing/abusive mother and an absent father, both narcissistic in their own ways. So people pleasing to keep myself safe from mum’s abuse, and a lack of attention and emotional nature from both parents meant I grew up with little sense of what I felt and who I am.

It takes a lot of space and time to ‘find yourself’ and tbh I’m not sure I would have managed it within marriage or a relationship - as it was, my husband died by suicide which was the catalyst for me to get into therapy. I didn’t cope very well with it at all as we were codependent - I’d oriented my life around him and didn’t have any supportive family to hold me through the loss. In an ideal situation I think you’d have years of attentive parents in childhood to help you get acquainted with your feelings and how to manage them. It’s difficult to emulate that extended ‘womb’ in adulthood, but psychotherapy has come a very close second for me.

Just about your BPD wonderings - There’s an valuable podcast here about how we can all have BPD tendencies to some extent:

https://www.rickhanson.net/being-well-podcast-understanding-borderline-personality-tendencies/

You said something about feeling you were drawn to him because you felt a connection with him that you didn’t feel with anyone else.

If he’s a people pleaser this makes sense, because what you’ve probably been experiencing through him is a connection to yourself.

From experience being in your H’s shoes, it would be very difficult to find himself while in a relationship. Either a period alone or with a counsellor would be best.

I would think about what you really want from him (sounds like it’s connection to yourself) and whether he’s able to provide that (sounds like no, because he’s now aware that you were using him for connection to yourself and there’s no him in that). And focus on your own inner work.

I do feel like he’s entitled to feel resentful but the timing is all strange given this stuff hasn’t happened for a long time. I do think you could be right that I’m buying into his narrative about growth too much. I have wondered if he’s maybe going through a midlife crisis.

Sometimes it takes a period of stability and safety for real needs to come out. And midlife crises happen when you wake up to how precious life is and the ways in which you don’t want to live anymore.

Don’t focus on labelling yourself with BPD or anything - likely you’ve been drawn together because you both have similar traumas and they just manifest in different ways.

Op I think he needs counselling and a visit to the GP if the strain is so huge on him, but it is also stressful lying and cheating and can create precisely these kinds of problems.
It smells fishy, it is fishy. The timing, the excuses none of it adds up, I would say to him cut the crap and tell me the truth.

@PPSWife

Both him and I recognise that the reason for my behaviour was what he did in the first place but at some point I also feel like I need to take some accountability and I can’t place the blame entirely on him

No that’s fine. But you seem to be taking all the accountability. And he is holding onto some things you did four years ago under great duress as a reason to punish you.

It doesn’t add up OP. Why would he have made peace with your behaviour (which was a reaction to poor treatment by him), only to decide after several years that he actually hadn’t made peace with it.

Hes using it post hoc as an excuse for poor behaviour. You are bending over backwards to examine your own behaviour and not looking enough at his and asking what his real motives are to do this.

I don’t know if there’s another woman or a breakdown or what is going on but there’s definitely more to this than he is telling you.

I dunno, I think some people are doing mental gymnastics to make your felly there the bad guy. This is Mumsnet so yeah...that happens.

You admit you treated him like crap for a long time, took advantage of his good nature and indulged your anger. Maybe now as a mature adult it has left a sour taste in his mouth that he can't wash away.

I'm afraid it strikes me as B.S too OP! You've said you've both made mistakes in the relationship, but I think giving him 6 months to make up his mind would be a MASSIVE mistake. He doesn't want to consider counselling at this stage, so he clearly doesn't WANT the marriage to work out. Therefore in your shoes, I would be telling him in no uncertain terms, no counselling, no 6 months trial separation, you either want it to work or you don't, but you don't get to go off for 6 months doing goodness knows what, only to find that the grass isn't greener, and then expect to come back, while I meanwhile have to put my life on hold. Reminds me of the song by Beautiful South - A Little Time! If you don't remember it I suggest you Google. I'm so sorry that this has happened to you, but as others have suggested, time to get your own legal advice.

I agree with this. It's difficult to completely understand with all the pyscho-wibble, but it does sound like he wants 6 months to see if things will work out with someone else. He calls himself a 'people pleaser', but this doesn't seem to include treating you well.

I agree. Get legal advice immediately. Copies of everything and don’t assume he hasn’t been planning this for months. He is way ahead of you already, and has said as much.
Don’t let him carry you out and blame you for it.

If you aren't going to couples therapy or actively working on a plan to reconnect in a positive way then I don't think the relationship will survive. You said he wants time out for half a year before he will even consider counselling and he has worked out plans around divorce, the children and finances. He has been thinking about an exit plan for a long time.It takes both of you to actively be working towards saving the marriage and despite what he told you about not wanting to see "if the grass is greener" it sounds like that is just what he is sizing up with the option to come back and go to counselling after half a year.

Can you afford for him to leave? Will you be left with dealing with the family whilst he gets to explore "his growth" for half a year. He's done a number on you - he has you feeling sorry for him and blaming yourself. Perhaps he is reluctant to go to counselling as it might show up that your reactions to his behaviour were logical. I'd be getting all your documents together, checking benefit calculators and seeing a solicitor (don't tell him). He has his plans in place and you have been caught on the backfoot and need to catch up. You need to know where you would stand. He's playing nice for now but might cut up rough later in terms of finances. He wants you to "play nice" and agree to all his plans whilst he has you convinced he is a victim.

I know you love him and must be heartbroken and grieving but you need to catch up and stand up for your DC and yourself. This man is no longer your friend.

His ‘honesty’ will include finding his authentic self with someone else. Please prepare for the worst. It’s not often I say that.

Op you can’t beat up someone for something that happened decades ago. This is an excuse! It’s clear you have apologised and have owned your less than perfect behaviour. So to initiate a divorce now is ridiculous.

Where are the buzzwords coming from?

I am sorry but I think he has met someone else and he is looking to put the blame squarely on you. Stop accepting blame and start questioning his motivations and deflections.

@PPSWife

I mean this as kindly as possible but I think you're being far, far too kind to him and you need to find your anger. You say your behaviour was "unacceptable": who gets to decide what was unacceptable? There are two sides to every story and clearly your behaviour was intemperate but what about his? This hasn't happened in a vacuum.

You may have freaked out and lashed out at him: it may tactically have been the wrong thing to do but sounds as if he's deserved it? He's thoroughly betrayed your trust and strung you along on several occasions. Now he's bleating on about how he needs to get away from you to achieve "growth". I call bullshit.

You've now internalised all this "growth" stuff which he's feeding you as if this excused his behaviour. Take a step back and ask yourself what he's trying to achieve with all this?

There's nothing wrong with self-reflection and ownership and therapy would probably be a good idea but you seem to be unquestioningly buying into his narrative on this. You had very good reasons to be upset and angry. Instead of turning all this in on yourself, you need to ask yourself why someone who is supposed to love you and have your back has dicked you around over a period of many years and is now blaming you for the fact he wants to leave.