My H and I have been together nearly 15 years. We're both late 40s. We've had a rocky couple of years due to a number of factors, one of which is my peri-menopause. We both bring our good points and bad points to the relationship.
I've noticed a pattern though. I've noticed that the more I express a need for support or need to rely on him emotionally, the more he does the complete opposite. It doesn't happen every time I'm having a shitty day but it certainly seems to kick in on the extreme days. There have been more of those recently due to hormonal factors out of my control. It's like he needs to compete on who is having the worse time of it. Or he is subconsciously punishing weakness. Or he's trying to get me to stop relying on him by making it untennable when I try to.
We're quite good a working through stuff like this but with this one he'll apologise but rationalise his behaviour in a way that doesn't make sense to me at the same time.
Anyone got any insights into this dynamic?