i feel worse after he has apologised (long)

[adaorarda]

me and dh had a rocky start. we met and married young (under pressure to) and had a lot of issues. we were both awful to each other at times. we also come from a very very conservative/backward community, which we escaped together. when we were still stuck in this community, we were really all the other had. we made a lot of bad habits. we acted accordingly. he could be controlling and quite sexist/shaming (not nearly to extent of others in community, but still) and i would roll over and take a lot of things, tell myself certain things were ok, try to reform/change myself, swallow whole parts of myself in an effort to please him (again not nearly to the extent that others in community, but still damaging).

after leaving community, we had and made a lot of changes. exposed to new influences. his behaviour/attitude changed very slowly over several years. i was glad of this. we didn't really talk about it (v v painful break away from community and we both just wanted to move on and be happy)

anyway i could keep going on forever. suffice it to say the other day he took me aside without prompting and basically quantified a lot of things that he did, and explained how he regrets them all and that he wants me to know he has been and will continue to work on the issues that led him to act like that. there is no question that i believe his words, because he has backed them with action for several years now.

and of course i appreciate that he has had insight into his behaviour and that he has developed empathy for me. and that he genuinely is a much better/nicer person/dh than he was. i love him and he IS a good person, from a terrible background (one that i share) with a lot of things that his parents instilled on him that he had to sort out over time.

but i actually feel worse after he said all this to me.

it's like a floodgate has opened. i resent things so much more. it's much more real. i stuffed my feelings/opinions down for years and now they're all coming out. i can see it all. and it's horrible.

i've told him that although i accept his apology that i don't actually have much trust in him yet. this was very painful for me to admit to myself, actually. i want to believe that we are closer than close, but there has been a barrier put up over time. there are certain things i stopped doing/talking about because of years of arguments/pressure; i don't yet trust him enough to suddenly start talking/acting freely in his presence. it will probably takes a year or more, i think, for me to gain that confidence/trust. he accepts this and says i should take my time in the way that feels right to me. that it's up to me, he just wanted to let me know how he is seeing our past.

but this makes me sad somehow. even though he is being good to me, and is trying, and being supportive, i now have to admit that i HAVE missed out on things, on happiness/a sense of freedom, due to our relationship. i was abused as a child (as was he - again, that community) and had many chances at happiness denied. and now... i have to admit that my marriage contained some of the same things, and even though that is now out in the open, there may still be many months or years before i FEEL freedom. i've wasted so much time feeling like i was less then.

i changed for him. i became the person he wanted. now, irrationally, i feel like he's saying "i want you to back to that person you were before." even though, in a sense, i DO want that person back. and even though he has explicitly told me that he isn't looking for me to change, that he loves me, and he only wants me to feel that i am free to change according to my own conscience and that he will no longer try to give me grief, but will rather support me and be a positive person rather than an obstacle.

and tbf we have, together, even before we aired all this, made incredible strides towards arguing well, managing our emotions, being a team. he is a very, very good dh and has been for at least the last 2-3 years.

and yet i feel shit. sad, down, cut off.
so the upshot is, he's apologised to me, and i feel worse than i did before.

for some reason i feel like i can't talk to anyone about this. i don't want to talk to him about it. it's like i have this instinct to go through the feelings alone.

does anyone have any thoughts? why is this so difficult?

My view: get some professional counselling. You seem to be pretty unique here in that your husband has independently recognised that the way he behaved was wrong and has taken steps to put it right.
Now it is your turn. You need to let go of those things.
You've already explained that the way he behaved was driven by the way the other members of the community behaved. He was raised to see this as normal and yet he had the strength to break away and change his attitudes. On this basis, it is unfair to blame him for the past, even though i completely understand why you feel this way.
If you've not coloured this story, dressed it up to seem better than it is, then i would say you are lucky to have this man. He is strong, not weak, like abusive men and my feeling is that if you can get past this, you will live long happy lives.
Get some counselling. I think it's worth it in your case.

sorry distracted by the evil spam bot above but wanted to say that even if things are great now with your husband and you've moved forward etc there is bound to be GRIEF. for yourself, for the things you missed out on, for the things you were put through etc etc etc.

i think that's a pretty natural stage and maybe him acknowledging what he has has somehow made it 'safe' enough for the floodgates to open on it.

thanks for replies. it is grief i suppose. i think i do need counselling but it is not an option right now due to issues of time (small DCs, both FT+ work and, of course, no family help). i will try to look in to online counselling or something like that. i think i do just need someone to talk to. feel very isolated and numb.

i haven't coloured the story. he has his bad points and so do i, we argue though infrequently (used to be almost daily, with silent treatment, etc. now maybe four times a year and we resolve it), but we are a team and have a lot of good times together. we understand each other better each day.

he is also a very good parent who is very thoughtful/introspective and holds himself to a high standard. In the same way he does in terms of being a dh, i suppose.

i suppose this is a grieving process. maybe i will look up a book on stages of grief.

just feel very sad. and feel angry about being sad because i've worked for so long to be happy.

It feels like you've finally been given 'permission' to feel all of the rage. Seems normal to me.

You really REALLY need to speak with a professional who specialises in post-cult living (excuse the word cult, I'm using it to talk about an area of psychology, not to label the community you come from). If your DH is serious about wanting to support you he will bend over backwards to ensure you have the time and funds available for this help.

i think that "cult" is probably a word that comes closest to describing this community. it is very difficult to explain. but i am not at all offended by the use of the word. we are definitely in the aftermath of a cult environment.

the time issue is not one that my dh has control over. i work a v demanding job with inflexible hours where i am often on call. have looked into counselling a few times past, no appts available while i am off work.

it's very difficult. i think if i had more access to counselling i honestly would have gone already. feel ground down and stuck and know, deep down, that i should talk to someone. ugh.

i may phone our company EAP and see if they have ideas.

not sure why i am rambling. feels good to just talk about it a little bit. feels like the monster under the bed really. the more i talk about it, the less scary it seems.

hi adaora - i wonder if there is a group online of 'survivors' from that community who support one another? it may be great just to read others experiences and feel that click of recognition if it has been just the two of you struggling through.

i worked in a role where i would see people who were struggling with problems to do with their faith communities (a young girl going through hell after her quite mentally poorly mother got very drawn into the jehovah's witness' springs to mind as well as a young muslim girl who was under enormous pressure to give up her studies and fall in with her families plans for her). i did find that sometimes there was little i could do other than be a listening ear and trying to reassure them that it was ok to find their own way/voice/values etc but that when i could put them in touch with others who had been through the same they found a lot more peace. worth a google.

i would try talking to people who've gotten out of the same community before trying a counsellor to be honest - if nothing else you can pick their brains about their experiences of counselling and whether counsellors seemed able to understand and work with the issues, whether there was a particular school of therapy that helped them etc. just talking to others who've been there can be massively affirming and purging though so it'd be my first port of call.

don't know what the community is/was or i'd look for you.

i 'think' when you are brought up to have a strong sense of community and belonging leaving that can be terrifying. even if you totally want and need to there's still a sense of loss or of being 'without' something you've been raised to believe is essential. i think what getting in touch with others who've 'gotten out' of that community can do is allow you a connection with it and with people of a shared identity (because whatever we reject it's still a part of who we are as we were raised that way and not all of it will have been bad etc) but who, like yourself, got out. you are community based on both that origin AND your journey to get out and build your own life.

that's people who can understand better than anyone i guess.

thank you THB. i will see if i can find an online community to read along. i have one in mind but i will need to comb it... i need to find people who are dealing with the interpersonal fallout, rather than the intrapersonal stuff about my identity etc. or the endless bitching about community leaders. this is more about him and me, and my memories of him after we left the community but before things got better between us.

this is hard for me to say but he WAS abusing me. he was controlling, jealous, unreadable, withholding, i walked on eggshells for years and years. i used to cry in the shower about how hard it was to change, but i thought i was doing the right thing, because women must submit to husbands and there was something wrong with me that needed to be different. i really believed that! i used to be an open person who sometimes put her foot in her mouth, i was considered a rebel. now i am SO controlled and measured, i so rarely let my guard down.

i can't just put my guard down. i admit i am too scared that it will happen again, that he doesn't really mean it, and i'm too afraid to risk it. it will take me such a long time to get there. and i am angry with him for making me so afraid. he knows this, i told him. he cried and said he could imagine that, and that he was sorry and regrets it terribly, and wishes there were something he could do to help. awful awful awful.

the worst part is that i realise i am sort of dead inside. my inner life is quiet and still. i'm not sure whether this is sort of normal, when i am comparing my 18-year-old self to my thirties self. i think it might be: i was quite tempestuous and it's not actually something i would like to go back to. it's just that i have to sort through everything and learn to accept who i am now, rather than hankering for some parallel universe where i had a different life. i could have spent ten years shagging around ibiza and still become the person i am today; but i will never know.

i think this is like an early mid life crisis. where i realise i can't go back. i only have now. i don't think i've come to terms with that yet really.

about the sense of community; i was actually always an outsider to it. like i said i was considered a rebel, a problem. when i left it was a huge relief for me. i have nothing in common and miss nothing about the community.

the pity is that i brought some of that with me when i left with my dh.

dh realises this and i think is even more horrified by that than i am. it's not something he intended. it just happened because we were so young and just muddling through.

I have had a similar experience to you and your emotions sound familiar to me. I did have counselling, which helped a lot. I also found an online recovery group which helped me spot patterns of behaviour left over from cult- think.
My inner-self is still finding her way back. I feel the same pain about stifling myself to try to fit a role someone else had decided for me. I'm trying no to have regrets, but there is still a grieving and recovery period.
I'm a lot older than you and my cult life had not left me in a good position re employment etc. I hugely regret that. All the creativity, time, resourcefulness that I put into the cult, could have built up a good career.
I admire your husband for realising what he had lived like and how it affected you. Mine went through a similar thought process. I also felt angry with him.
At least you're not raising your children in that community. I did .
They too had to recover, to differing degrees.

you know, and i don't say this lightly but just in case it hasn't actually occurred to you, if he is genuinely sorry he should be willing at your request to move out and give you some space for a while.

if you want it that is.

some time to yourself to process and some time in which he proves himself different and a gradual relationship rebuild.

just a thought.

i've thought about a moving out scenario but it's not something i want. he has been a very different person for the last 2-3 years. i'm not concerned about him proving anything about himself to me. he's only giving voice to things that changed some time ago. our home life is happy.

i'm just having to come to terms with all the lies i told myself, and all the fear i've felt that i've carefully ignored. i'm glad he brought it all up, otherwise i don't know if i would have had an outlet for any of it. i would have ignored it for much longer.

he is great and has been for years.
i just haven't caught up with the change. it's not either of our faults. it just is what it is. fucks me off though.

just wanted to update saying that i managed to find a counsellor who could take me at a time that is vaguely workable and i have an appt for next week, looks like. been feeling a bit worse some days. keep waiting for PMT to pass, then it does but no relief.

and also i managed to talk to dh twice about my feelings, since starting this thread, and that is a major step forward. no issues talking about it. of course he wants to "fix" it/take it away so i don't have to feel bad, but has acknowledged that he can't, can only listen etc. it's hard because we both end up quite triggered and sad after talking. but as he pointed out, the alternative is to skirt around it and he never knows why i'm acting sad and offish and it could all get worse...

we have shared a lot about our respective parents and how we feel about them. i realised that i am, right now, at the exact age that my mother was when things started to go properly wrong in our family. my eldest is also the exact age i was at the time (i was also eldest). i feel sure that this is also playing a part in triggering difficult feelings. i feel some envy for my eldest based on his childhood vs mine (not that he knows that!) and carry a lot of fear that i will devastate his life like my mother did mine.

funny a lot of the feelings have moved away from past dh/relationship issues and towards my mother, who i held a candle for for quite a long time after we left the community. i may finally be coming to terms with how badly she let me down. have also recently had a call from one of my siblings who seems to be slowly breaking away from the community. am trying to remain detached but supportive to prevent disappointment. very hard.

i'm just blathering now. want to keep a record of it all i think. still very resentful (not sure who of, tbh) that i can't just "be happy".