Hard to give this a title that sums it all up, name changed so not to out myself.
It's a long one, sorry.
Been with DH 18 years, married 13.
Now I'm at a point where I've started putting my own feelings and mental health first and started looking back on things without the rose tinted glasses, I haven't really felt happy or secure at all the past 17 or so years.
Then I think how it began, he couldn't get enough of me, compliments, surprise gifts, surprise birthday party, hours of messages and phone calls, he put me on a pedestal I'd never experienced before and I felt amazing.
But once we moved in together that changed. I was unreasonable for being annoyed he hadn't washed up when he was a student at home all day and I'd been out working full time. If I got upset about something, I was either told it didn't happen at all, didn't happen how I remember, or that it wasn't that bad and I'm over reacting, and if I dared to still stick to my guns, then he'd walk out and refuse to speak to me, sometimes for days, until I'd end up going to him to smooth things over. His go to responses were always shouting and defensiveness.
Too many examples to share on one thread.
Fast forward to now, as the kids have gotten older, they started to see these things and behaviours too. When my daughter was in her late teens, she called him out on something, and then later I was told that the kids are only saying these things because I've been saying stuff to them about him (I hadn't) - so again my fault.
He has recently been to individual counselling as says he's realised he's been selfish in our relationship and he wants to do better. He went for 4 months and his counsellor suggested couples counselling for us (which we've done twice before, but I've agreed to go again)
But now I know it's coming up, I've started thinking over everything that we're likely to discuss and I've kind of realised that actually not only has he been selfish, he's actually just not been very nice to me a lot of the time.
I am not really sure what I'm asking here. Has anyone been through anything like this and actually been able to make it work?