Hi all, I'm new to the forum so many apologies if I step on any toes. I'm at my wits end and I'm trying to get some feedback on my problem with my husband that has reached a head recently. We don't have any kids yet, but this issue makes me really worried about ever having any with him even though we both want them.
My husband and I have been married for a couple of years. He's always been really up and down - to the point where I've thought he might be bipolar. The other problem (although it can be a good thing!) is that he has one of those personalities that is larger than life - when he is happy, everyone is happy. When he's miserable or sulking he sucks the joy out of anyone near by.
I think it's not actually just a happy/sad thing though - I think it is more cooperative/uncooperative, since he can be sad and cooperative or happy (or manic) and uncooperative at the same time. When he is cooperative he makes an effort to see things from other people's perspectives, he's rational and objective, and he will do things that are important to other people (read: me, especially, but his friends as well) even if he doesn't want to. He is kind and supportive and thoughtful.
When he is uncooperative his behaviour suggests that he doesn't care about anyone other than himself - he is irrational and lacks objectivity. He says horrible things and either purposely tries to hurt me or just doesn't care if he does. He criticises literally everything I do (speak, walk, breathe, comport myself among others, clean, treat him etc), and brings up a long list of past grievances that he trots out at the slightest provocation. It's 'you always' or 'you never'. At these times, if I persist in engaging with him he says that he's totally miserable and is fed up with the relationship and is 'done'.
It makes it really hard to plan stuff or talk meaningfully with each other, because his attitude, stance and ideas change drastically depending on his mood. So, an idea that he is open to, or an event or trip that he agrees to when he is feeling cooperative is totally out of the question when he isn't. Sometimes this is something small like bailing on a friends' birthday party, but can be a lot more serious or expensive- such as our honeymoon. He agreed to the broad strokes of the trip in advance and then, as the time came nearer, he got more and more anxious and frustrated until he refused to go at the last minute (although in the end he did go, mostly because I stood my ground and it cost a lot of money) but I was punished with two weeks of sulking and blame followed by annoyance that we had to go home because he had such a great time. I am seriously losing my mind here.
I'm a really non confrontational person, and because when he's happy and cooperative I don't want to blow it by bringing up my frustration and negative feelings, and when he's uncooperative he doesn't listen or take me seriously, I've somehow managed to go two years like this. When things are good, I lose track of how awful and miserable I feel when things are going badly, and when things are going badly it's like I've never been happy in my life. I am afraid I'm losing my sense of my own self - my needs and desires are getting completely eclipsed by his and he complains that I emotionally neglect him! For the last couple of months things felt like they were getting better - he was cooperative more of the time, we were avoiding each other's stress triggers and starting to make changes to improve our lives together and separately. Then I went home to visit my family for a month and two weeks in, he has an epiphany that he's completely miserable, and we don't talk to each other, and he's had enough - we've got six weeks to fix it.
In some ways, this is a relief, because now even when he is in a cooperative mood he is expressing dissatisfaction - which makes it a lot easier for us to discuss the reasons why he is so unhappy (and there are some very legitimate reasons that I've been trying to address insofar as I can), and he has for the first time agreed to go to couples therapy. I've also felt more like I have nothing to lose by being open and poking the bear. But now the uncooperative jerk is rearing his head - he will go to therapy only under duress, and he thinks its a big waste of time and I'm being ridiculous - surely we can just 'talk to each other' and solve things on our own.
The problem is that I'm getting swung emotionally from one end of the spectrum to another, he speaks and acts one way at some times, and a completely different way at others. He's also really convincing and I end up spending all of our conversations apologising to him because his reasoning seems so sound at the time and it isn't until I get away from him and talk to someone that I think 'wait a minute...'
He's been finding these conversations very satisfying but I am not because I think he's so locked into his own interpretation of what has gone wrong in our relationship that he completely disregards my concerns about this jekyll and hyde problem. He acknowledges that he's fed up, but that is my fault for not being open and honest with him (I have been, but he doesn't like what he hears) and not being supportive of him (which I don't understand - I feel like I twist myself into a pretzel to be supportive).
We are supposed to be seeing a counsellor on Saturday morning but I am worried that he will work himself into a giant anxious mess beforehand or refuse to go. I don't really have a specific question I guess, but I live in a city far away from my friends and family and I've never been very good at being vulnerable to the people closest to me (which is one of my husband's biggest complaints about me). Does anyone have any advice on how to cope with this behaviour? Or how to talk to someone like this? This all just feels too big for me.