Could be long, but I don’t want to drip feed.
Not long after we were married (16 years ago), we went to another couple’s wedding where my DH drank with the intention of getting very drunk (entitlement might be a theme here...). His mood towards me changed from loving and gentle to fumbling and physically clumsy to the point of hurting me. We got a taxi back to the hotel we were staying at, and he became verbally abusive and I was frightened that he was going to hit me. I locked myself in the bathroom until he passed out in a chair, then the next day I told him that I had not married that person, and would rather be single and happy than married and miserable, and that he had two choices - counselling (and giving up alcohol and telling everyone why) or a solicitor. He chose the counselling. After a few sessions of counselling it came out that he had been repressing very strong feelings and memories stemming from being raped as a child (We had discussed this, so I did know about it.) and how badly his parents had dealt with it when he’d told them years later, etc.... Because this was huge and I loved him, I put my own (very valid) feelings about his behaviour at the wedding/hotel aside to support him through this, and we went on to have three beautiful kids, his career skyrocketed, along with his self-esteem (and ego). I moved with little children from city to city and to the other side of the world to support him while he developed his career, and tried really hard to be a positive team member, even though I was often isolated and lonely. Sometimes frightened and left vulnerable - especially while navigating different medical systems, different cultural expectations, different education systems, etc all in a language I never really grasped. Now.... the thing is, he always knew that I had a pretty shit childhood too. That my parents were genuine narcs, and that I was raped too. When my mother died and left her estate in such a stressful mess (that we are still dealing with 2.5yrs later), and my daughter turned the same age as I was when I was raped, I started having flashbacks. He had been out of work for nearly a year, and I had supported him financially and emotionally through this time, and he had returned from overseas to finish preparing our house for sale there, and I hadn’t achieved as much packing up of the house we were living in here as he had expected. When I tried to talk to him about this - he knew I was having flashbacks and was seeing a counsellor about them, he snarled at me about it “all being a convenient excuse....”
I thought we were a good team, but I think I was living a lie. We were if it suited him. I can’t get past it. It’s been nearly a year. I have tried to tell him that I don’t feel valued and that I feel like all I am to him is a human app. I don’t trust him with my feelings at all. I cannot comprehend how you couldn’t put that first.
Can I move on from this? How do I start?