Dealing with insecurity/ control issues

[kissinKateBarlow]

I am DH best friend and only friend now (his oldest and closest male friend killed himself last year and had been living in the states for 6 years before that).

I have friends and acquaintances and a very large family. DH has a good relationship with his parents but when there are problems he will of course share them with me even if he has been asked not to as he wants to talk to his wife when there is a problem. This is fine I am happy to be there for my dh.

Unfortunately he expects me not to talk to anyone else about issues he brings to me even when they effect the both of us. I do not gossip and I am selective about with whom and what I share. I think as I was brought up in a big and messy family that I am much more used sharing news and problems. While dh had a small family and a relative that caused horrible problems with malicious gossip in a tiny village - this left him with understandable trust issues. He trusts me utterly but doesn't trust many of my friends.

This I can empathise with but it can be very trying - DH gets to share with his best friend and I have to bottle it all up as I don't get the release that DH gets from sharing iyswim. Maybe I need to start a diary? I am not sure I am going to be able to change him without therapy but I need to explain my pov and am struggling with it.

What kind of issues that affect both of you is he expecting you to keep secret?

Anything that involves him and his family and that he could find embarrassing/ personal nothing shocking or awful

And do you have a best friend that would keep your confidence? Or does DH monopolise your time?

I do understand he is a private person I do respect that but I am different

Lots and I spend time with them I enjoy socialising dh happy to facilitate by staying at home... he doesn't stop me seeing or talking with my friends he just is very clear what he doesn't want me to share with them. I don't, out of respect for his wishes but it I occasionally feel resentful.

Then you have to be honest with him. Essentially the message is that you respect his privacy and that his method of coping with personal problems is to share them solely with you (because he has no-one else) . But at the same time he has to respect that you are a different personality and your method of coping with problems means you occasionally need to share them with selected others. He has to trust your judgement and understand that you'd never deliberately cause him offence or embarrassment.

If he has a problem with that message then he should not tell you anything at all.

Also... what kind of embarrassing/personal things are we talking about? In any relationship/friendship there are always some serious pieces of information, secrets, confidences etc that everyone agrees go no further. But when that's a blanket instruction for the trivial as well as the serious, it loses all meaning and becomes oppressive.

Thank you - you are right cog I do need to talk with dh. He is not completely insensitive - quite the opposite - I have to take care as he is easily hurt but he does appreciate me for the fact I am so different ... we would never have lasted if we weren't opposites. But that comes with its own set of complications. I can't really say more about the issues he wants to veto aside from the fact they are entirely unremarkable family type quirks and mole hills that are only mountainous in the fact they are being given the 'for eyes only' treatment.

I really don't see what the issue is here. I also don't know why you've titled it insecurity and control issues. Surely it's as simple as you can share whatever you want about yourself , but your husband prefers that the things he confides to you , don't get repeated to your friends and family. By your own admission these things are unremarkable .

He certainly doesn't sound like he needs therapy. If I'm talking about something personal to my dp or friends , I don't expect that to go any further.I don't understand why you see it as your having to bottle things up. Many people talk to me about personal things and I've never felt like I'm bottling it up or that I need to share it with other people . It's non of my business.

There's nothing controlling about what he's doing , he just doesn't want you repeating stuff , and it sounds like most of it is about him or his family , so nothing really to do with you anyway. I wonder if in fact your being controlling. Your post suggests he's got control and insecurity issues. It also suggests he needs therapy and you basically say you feel resentful because he doesn't want you to repeat stuff. You said it's anything about him and his family that he finds embarrassing or personal.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me and I think you should respect his feelings about it. Surely it's for him to decide which aspects of his life he wants to share with your friends , not you.

I can see your pov ballerina. Certainly it sounds like I want to gossip about his family, but honestly that is not it. I am his family his parents are my in laws their issues directly affect me. I am not wanting to discuss random facts - but I do want to feel able, when necessary, to talk about my personal life and relationships with close friends or family without it being viewed as a betrayal. I totally accept dh has a right to be a private person and he just needs to trust me to be appropriate. It is a bit about control - the control of info, and about insecurity - the fear of being talked about'

I don't want to be resentful that is why I need to talk to him about how I feel but I am worried about how to broach it tactfully.

I have a slightly different observation. Most people - and I am prepared to be corrected - don't usually ask their partner if they can repeat some information. They make a judgement call about what's trivial enough to share with selected others and what's sensitive enough to hold back. Mistakes can happen admittedly but, by and large, I don't think most people would seek specific permission.

You say he's not insensitive so what is it he says to you exactly when he tells you anything? Does he always preface it with 'this must go no further'? Are there hints at dire consequences? Was it an instruction made a long time ago or is it repeated? What do you think would happen if he found out that someone knew his mother believes in fairies (or whatever it is)?

I dont think your necessarily entitled to information about your in laws , nor entitled to repeat it. On one hand you want to be able to talk about these issues , whatever they are , but your in laws for whatever reason don't want you to know.

The in-laws have told the DH. The DH has told the OP. If the DH's family is as paranoid as it sounds, surely they'd keep it all in house and not even involve the OP? I note the DH has 'trust issues' & specifically doesn't trust the OP's friends. 'Trust issues' suggests a MH problem that could do with looking at and that he thinks the OP is a very poor judge of character.... not very flattering

No-one is entitled to repeat personal information but, by the same token, no-one is actually entitled to demand it's kept quiet. If we love and respect each other, all we can hope for is a little intelligent consideration and judgement. That's why I ask how these requests are made and if it's a blanket ban or more specific.

I agree with ballerina. It sounds like these are issues personal to your DH and his family, and only your issues by association. I think he has every right to ask you not to share them. Unless it's something supremely upsetting or stressful to you, I don't see why you need to share them.

I note that when asked if you have a best friend you replied 'lots'. It may be that your DH wouldn't mind if you had one best friend that you confided in, but perhaps he knows that if he lifted the lid you would be confiding in multiple people and that makes him uneasy. Again, I do think that's fair.

I don't agree that we shouldn't have expectations of privacy with our partners. If anything, my husband is the one person in the world I trust to keep my things private. If I couldn't trust him to do this I would never have married him tbh.

But it's not ok for one person to 'dump' their worries/ anger at another onto someone then expect that someone not to 'dump'/ air their annoyance onto their scapegoat.

If that is what is happening.

However if it is just family tittle tattle ignore it (but why does he feel the need to repeat it?)

the thing is we don't tell x that we've confided in y in order to be able to support x better. so long as trust y and y is reliable there is never a problem.

so i'm not sure how this comes up unless as suggested your partner makes a big point of telling you you mustn't tell anyone anything about him (which would be strange but we've all got our quirks).

how does it become an issue OP? does he state, 'you must not tell anyone this but....' or does he ask you if you've told anyone or get paranoid or what? think more context is needed.

agree dozie. i think people are overlooking that factor of his expecting her to be EVERYTHING to him whilst she has maintained a broader support network. that's a lot of pressure and realistically if you're not allowed to talk about anything that involves your partner that's a hell of a lot you're not allowed to talk about if you're married and live with them. if they're a partnership none of it is just his business but affects her too and most especially so if she is the sole bearer of it all.

obviously some things are deeply private and we need to keep to ourselves but they are rare things when we're talking about adults and their close friends and family ratehr than school kids and randoms in a social group.

I can see your DH's point. He doesn't want his private life discussed with other people and that's fair enough. But on the other hand it's stressful for you dealing with it yourself. Can he not go and see a counsellor at work or even through his GP.

But the OP said it was "Anything that involves him and his family and that he could find embarrassing/ personal nothing shocking or awful"

That doesn't really sound like anything so stressful to her personally that she needs to unload on someone else, which is what makes it different. Dealing with your own family is always more stressful.

I honestly don't understand why this would make you resentful. I am happy to be there for DH when he needs to talk about family stuff, I don't see it as 'dumping' on me or as something I then need to turn around and let out. As long as he's not telling you not to share things about yourself, I don't see the big deal.

Op you clearly state most of these issues are unremarkable , and that the other things is stuff that your husband finds embarrassing or personal. Why on earth would you WANT to share stuff that is unremarkable , or things that he would find embarrassing ?

I think this statement from you is quite telling , I am his his family his parents are my in laws and their issues directly affect me perhaps this is the problem and why the in laws go out of their way to not tell you stuff. I'd be horrified if one of my in laws had this attitude.

I think one person's 'unremarkable' can be another's 'excruciatingly embarrassing'. It is VERY subjective. It sounds like the problem is two very different cultures of information sharing in two very separate families.

I have a friend who draws excessively on family and friends whenever there is any relationship problem, radically oversharing every detail - and who then relates the (naturally supportive) comments her friends make back to her partner in a power game, which naturally leads said partner to feel belittled, humiliated, and judged. This behaviour, I would say, is not healthy either for the relationship or for wider social relations in the group.

Of course, it is not necessarily a good thing to be either completely buttoned up either - being able to talk about things that are really troubling is vital. Idle gossip or revealing something that someone would find really embarrassing is not OK, though - it is a betrayal of trust.

i'm lost - you'd be horrified if your inlaws saw you as their family and cared about and were effected by you?? really?

i'd be more disturbed if they didn't.

we don't know enough basically. i totally get what people are saying about what's wrong with not wanting your partner to discuss your private business BUT i find myself focussing in on the fact he has no friends, he doesn't trust people etc and thinking about how isolating it could be to not be able to talk about your life with your friends. and i agree that your partner and his family and stuff going on there is YOUR life too, not just his and if you need to talk about it then you need to and ???

My husband is similar doesnt share hardly any personal thoughts and doesnt know how to respond to mine its other way round here though feel i speak to my friends about probs more than him where i would rather he was honest and open and he understood my insecurity. Hugs

What's there to be lost about ?

I wouldn't like it if a in law felt entitled to information about me.

The Op didn't say she was concerned or that she cared about them. She said the information was unremarkable and stuff her husband considers embarrassing. It's also clear the in laws don't want her to know.

Maybe she should take it up with the in laws