One about a sad pregnant lady married to a sad angry man.

[izchaz]

Before I start, please don't read this and say "divorce him, he's a shit head", much as that might be outstanding advice it's not an option I want to engage with. What I'm after is help in turning the negatives in my relationship into positives. How do I let go of the grief and hurt, and how do I persuade my husband to stop beating himself up over the protracted affair he had with my best friend (no longer)? I try every day to push the positives in our relationship: we're a good team, we can laugh and have fun together, we have an incredible group of friends that we share, we are going to be parents to a much wanted baby, and when we are both behaving we have glimpses of what used to be - it's easy to be together and we can both see how much the other loves us. However whenever times get tough - work stress, the whisper of tightening belts, having to multitask or balance multiple issues at once then the whole house of cards crumbles and one of us reverts to recriminations and aiming to wound the other. He is under a huge amount of pressure with work, an impending family bereavement, the worry of my earnings disappearing when I go off on maternity etc etc, and I try so hard to keep him afloat. On the days when I fail, as yesterday he rails and I cannot help but bite back. Last night we fought from 9 at night until 3am, and only stopped because our lodger came home. Once he has started he will follow me from room to room, verbally attacking and prickling me until I re-engage the fight. I am desperate to stop the cycle as I am conscious that our marriage is tiny and frail (married 11 months, his affair was on/off for the first 7, and when confronted twice he lied about it) and I do not feel it can stand up to such punishment without becoming a very twisted paradigm of what we wanted when we got engaged.
Please, help me to figure out how to break the cycle of bad behaviour we have both sunk into, I am miserable with him now, and would be miserable without him, but we had something so good and so precious not so long ago, and I want to find a way back to that.

A mistake I have made, more than once, is trying to turn a bad partner into a good one. I'm fond of upcycling clothes & household things - treating a human being (and their relationship with me) as if they were a set of old chairs was extremely stupid. I insulted both myself and them.

I think that if the compatibility isn't there - and it isn't, if you have different approaches to your marriage - it is kinder and wiser to divorce, and seek more congruous partners. Your mother was wrong.

She is your most influential role model, however, and it's hard to break out of that. You haven't got to be a modified version of her, but believing it can be a bit of a hold-your-nose-and-jump act of faith. A good counsellor's invaluable in this respect ... and so is Mumsnet, as it shows you so many alternative models for relationships :)

You do sound a lovely person; I'm not surprised you've so many good friends! Tell us what this lodger bloke really thinks of your marriage?

Have you shown your lodger friend this thread?

I'm sorry, I know that's not what you want to hear, but I really think you are hoping for a magic solution, something you can fix nd the truth is he's just not a good man, he's not. And you are worth more and you're child is worth more. YOU can't fix him and he shows little sign of even recognising that HE should be fixing things, or indeed that he has broken them in the first place.

I'm sorry, but the one thing that jumps out from that post is that you are doing what your mother did. It's almost as if because infidelity was part of your parents relationship, you seem more accepting of it in yours?

I really appreciate what you are saying about some things being an aberration and about letting your husband 'wash his vows clean' but... it's very hard to see how he is doing this, with the 6-hour rows and the continuing to put some blame on to you.

I don't have experience in this area, but the safe word sounds potentially good.

Even ignoring all the other shitty things he does, the deal breaker for me would be the fact that he is unable to take responsibility for his own actions. I cannot believe that he is making you feel in any way responsible for him fucking someone else. So neither of you saw how mentally ill she was but that's your fault? And you were meant to guess he was having an affair and lying to you but because you didn't you're to blame for it continuing? If he has no conscience of his own (there's a name for that) and you're responsible for keeping him on the straight and narrow you know this isn't going to end well.

You are pining for the man you thought you married. Do you think he really exists?

Well, that's another exhausting post full of what you've done and you've decided and said and what you intend to do in the future to save your marriage. I trust he graciously accepted this ultimatum, and understands that it involves him not shouting at you for hours again?

In my extensive experience, safe words don't work. All fine if you're working together on a shared communication problem, but my partners and yours are all about winning by overriding your feelings. I have another little story about this, but it concerns physical violence which isn't your issue. Give it a try, and see how long it is before he ridicules your safe word.

If you're looking for advice, here's mine: Don't cry, don't argue back, don't plead, don't agree for the sake of it. In short, practise breathing for peace and remain unruffled. Look vaguely interested. Don't interrupt. When he breaks for a reaction, feed back his assertions like Jeremy Paxman my idol. "You think I'm expecting too much, I see," "You feel I don't understand you," "Yes, it's late and you've had a hard day. You must be tired." Offer nothing back. This can prove most enlightening.

When he asks you for something during a rant - a cup of tea, forgiveness, a cuddle, an opinion - say no. Calmly and politely. This is a good workout for your patient assertiveness.

Relate, relate, relate.

What, Relate, so the moderator can accuse OP of 'castrating' her husband and failing to keep him sexually interested?? Nah.

Not Relate, jeez, the stories i've heard had my blood boiling, including one when a Relate counsellor effectively told a woman, her husband should be allowed to rape her.

I need to hide this thread now. I have never ever seen a woman so deluded on Mumsnet. Ever.

I wish you the best of luck, OP. You'll need it.

Repost of something Dahlen said right at the top of the thread:

IMO if you won't entertain leaving, your only option is to develop coping strategies to put up with this for the rest of your life.

Which interestingly is what it seems your mother did, and what it seems you are doing with the safe word idea.

Izchaz, have you heard of Transactional Analysis? Its developer, Eric Berne, would have loved your thread title. It's a game set-up. In TA, we're shown that all of our interactions follow scripted 'games'. These game scripts occur throughout our lives, in all aspects of life. Some of the games are highly dysfunctional and damaging.

Through a TA prism, you're in a three-handed game or drama triangle. Your mother, too has chosen a three-handed modus vivendi. It's hardly surprising you've perpetuated the pattern. You, your mother, and the men in your lives play the games [[http://www.internet-of-the-mind.com/relationship_mind_games.html#NIGKM "Now I've Got You, you Son Of a Bitch" (NIGYSOB) and "Kick Me" by turns. Because the game is three-handed, another third player will be along soon for you and H. In the meantime, one or both of you will stand in for that role as well - you're currently playing with Mad Friend as temporarily absent, but this will feel unsatisfactory.

Here's the book. It's an easy read; I think everyone should have it.

The only way to stop a game is to step out of it. My 'calm as a cloudless sky' advice, above, is meant as a first step. It should help you to observe the game instead of joining in.

A safe word for arguments! That is so fucked up I am gob smacked.

You left the room because you didn't want to argue. That is clear enough. He chose to follow and harass you for 6 hours.

A safe word is not for arguments.

It also puts the onus on you again to monitor and control him like he is a child who is incapable. Rather than realise that harassing a pregnant woman and verbally abusing her for hours it wrong (what does that tell you) he is making it your responsibility to stop him when he next does it.

He is taking zero responsibility for himself.

This is so sad. Good luck, you are going to need it!

Oh, FFS!!

Through a TA prism, you're in a three-handed game or drama triangle. Your mother, too has chosen a three-handed modus vivendi. It's hardly surprising you've perpetuated the pattern. You, your mother, and the men in your lives play the games "Now I've Got You, you Son Of a Bitch" (NIGYSOB) and "Kick Me" by turns. Because the game is three-handed, another third player will be along soon for you and H. In the meantime, one or both of you will stand in for that role as well - you're currently playing with Mad Friend as temporarily absent, but this will feel unsatisfactory.Here's the book. It's an easy read; I think everyone should have it.

The third party, incidentally, plays a game called "Rapo".

Oh. Op.

What everyone else said. You sound so lovely, so intelligent. But you are a 'fixer' you think you can fix things, people. Maybe you can , but should you? And at what cost?

Having a baby will affect even the strongest relationship, it fucked mine seven ways sideways.

We had a very slight imbalance within the relationship but nothing like what you describe . pre dc I drove and moderated things, he'd do/ say silly stuff and I'd step in to keep him on track.
But when you have a baby, you don't have time for that shit, you don't have energy to be the moral compass, or to say don't speak to me like that.

We nearly separated. We still might. I've lost a lot of respect for him that I may never get back.

What I'm trying to say is, this is hard work now, as things are. Throw a baby, pnd, post birth trauma into the mix, he is just the worst thing that could happen. He will take the piss every which way.

That post newborn time is so precious. You will never get it back. He will ruin it.

You don't have to ltb, but do take time out. Especially after the birth. Don't stay with him. Please.

Good luck. I hope it works out or you.

I'm no relationship expert, OP, but to me it sounds very much as though you are making a tremendous effort to make a square peg (your DH) fit into a round hole (what you need of a husband to make your idea of a marriage work). Are you sure, really sure, that your DH has thought as deeply or profoundly about what he believes a marriage should be?

You simply do not seem to be well-matched to your DH, and no amount of counselling you have will change that.

I fear that the only word to describe the huge efforts you are making, is futile. I'm so sorry.

so, i keep trying to imagine what it would be like to deal with a newborn while somebody was following me around verbally abusing me for six hours, and even the idea of it makes me want to cry. i think this scenario should be uppermost in your thoughts while you consider the future of your relationship - in the abstract it is easy to underestimate how hard the first few months of your child's life will be for you, but it is an immensely demanding time, and if you can limit other emotional demands on yourself during that time, it will make it easier.

Rapo, TA prisms.. it's all a bit

How did you know I had eggs??!

OP

my main worry for you, is that statistically you are in the "likely to get PND" category

sorry, but you are!

I 100000000000% think you need to get a good counsellor and focus on you, and keeping yourself strong

I can, and wont answer for your marriage

but you need to take the focus of HIM, and the marriage and think aboyt what you need to be able to cope with being a mom and staying strong

time after time I read that women with PND, suprise suprise, are in an abusive relationship

arguing all day, is not good for you OP

you cant change him, but you can get help for yourself to get you STRONG

good luck, my heart goes out to you XXXX

mum, not "mom". !!!

The OP is too intelligent, unfortunately, to read all these posts with true humility. She thinks she knows best and uses words and articulation to fight through the fog of bullshit which is her life. What the hell is a lodger doing there? Kick him out and kick that sociopathic husband out, too. I, too, am hiding this thread because I am losing all sympathy for this deluded woman.

A 7 month affair so soon after marriage is not merely an expression of weakness but that there is something fundamentally wrong with the relationship.

In order to be able to stay in the marriage you have needed to demonise the OW as 'evil', to exonerate your H. This a falsification of what occurred. However crazy you now believe her to be, he is as responsible as she. He was not a victim, he was a cheat.

Putting all the blame on the OW implies that you do fundamentally believe that infidelity breaks a relationship, and the only way to preserve it is to alter the facts.

Deceiving yourself is a dangerous strategy, and you must be prepared for the narrative you have created to fall apart.

There is difference between excusing your H and him actually repenting sincerely and redeeming himself.

You will be stuck in a situation where your conscious mind has chosen to forgive him, but in your heart you know that he has not fulfilled the conditions required for a genuine & thorough forgiveness.

You will be in constant conflict now between what you choose to believe, and what you know to be true.

You will thus fear further transgressions, and continue to be angry with him, not just for his affair, but because he is still behaving badly, and because he is, fundamentally, not the man you thought you had married.

It makes a great deal of sense to hear that your mother put up with multiple infidelities. You have learnt coping strategies for infidelities from her, whereby infidelity is not a deal breaker but something to be assimilated. And you have apparently inherited low expectations of men.

So the rows will continue, they will worsen after you give birth, and you will either a) put the baby first & get so furious with him that you end up chucking him out or b) he will be unfaithful again to put an end to the exhausting conflict. Or both.

A man who does not stop rowing with a woman because she is pregnant, and he is a decent person, is not going to stop simply because you say 'cheese'.