Working on our issues but would like advice

[togo1004]

My fiance and I are working on our issues. I’ve posted here previously and he’s been helping more around the house which is really helping.

i have a worry that I’m making him sick. He’s been losing weight, and he won’t eat a lot anymore and says he full after a few bites. He doesn’t seem as positive as he used to be lately.

we seem to get along for a day or two and he acts insensitive to my needs and we have a fight. For example, today he asked me to do him a favor. He said the water filter person is coming tomorrow at 1pm and he has to go help his grandmother file some taxes so he won’t be around until 3pm. He asked me to open the door for the water filter man and if he has any questions, he can call him. I didn’t answer him right away and just froze. I have some social anxiety and sometimes it’s hard to even meet the delivery man to receive package at the front door. I told him why can’t you reschedule? He said babe just open the door for the man to do his job and call me if he has any questions. So I told him my anxiety is bad and I’m afraid he will start a conversation with me. He said why would the water filter man start a convo with you, you will be working on your computer and I’m sure the man just wants to do his job and leave. I started crying because he was being insensitive to my feelings and didn’t feel validated.

then he pointed out a fact that I went out to meet a stranger for coffee and dinner last week, and spent the entire evening with a new friend (his friends and he knows I have no friends and I often complain that I have no friends so his friend met someone outside who wants to learn Russian, I happen to be Russian and I wanted to learn Korean, she happens to be Korean so he got her number so we can chat and become friends). He said if you can do that you can open the door for the man and let him do his job.

he told me he doesn’t understand me. He said how can you be an introvert, but love going out with my friends to bars and clubs meeting new people to make friends but cannot open the door for the filter man?

he says he’s introverted and if he hangs out with his friends he needs alone time to recharge. He thinks that I’m not introverted, but extroverted but just has some social anxiety.

I eventually apologized to him because I realized I was giving him a hard time. This man does a lot for me, so I felt I needed to apologize.

he said he’s super tired of fighting over small things.

how do I stop fighting with him every few days? I’m having a hard time dealing with his insensitivity and feel that I can’t bring anything up with him.

I’m a worrier, I tell my H my worries and he doesn’t understand, it doesn’t mean he is invalidating me, he just had has a different mind set. He says to me, why worry until it actually happens? I’ve always been like ‘Chicken Little ’, who anticipates problems before they do/or don’t happen. It’s not a case of he’s right and I’m wrong, it’s just we both are different and I have to find a way of self soothing.
I find the video of ‘Elastic Heart’ by Sia, puts me in mind of fear, you have two people in a cage, the bars of the cage are wide enough to escape, but they keep inside, out of fear of the unknown. Even in the cage, that feels so safe to them, they aren't protected against their fears, but they are too scared to escape and face fear head on and find solutions. That squeezing through the bars, there is a new way to live that is easier.
Your disorders are caging you in, @togo1004 stopping you from facing your fears and it’s controlling your life.

You don’t seem to validate his feelings at all. He is less good at expressing them than you but that doesn’t mean that they are not important. Just as important as yours.

For example when he wrote the list that showed that he does a lot more than you what he is actually saying is “I feel that I give an enormous amount to this relationship, get very little back and not only do you not recognise or appreciate that you constantly get angry with me for not meeting standards that you have set that no human can meet.”

'But I cannot help the feeling at all. Deep down I know, so everytime he goes out'

Right. But you know what a healthy person does in that situation. They feel their feelings but they don't pass it on as a problem for someone else to solve.

Sure you can say, I feel lonely when you go out...and then the next step is...I think I need to find freinds. You don't keep indulging in these unhealthy feelings and expect your partner to walk on eggshells round them. They are for you to resolve.

You've been told multiple times. I hope your partner manages to get away from you. Maybe then you'll get the help you need to be able to have a relationship in the future.

You’ve described a man who won’t even eat and you’re still picking fights with him whenever he refuses your DEMANDS to “validate your feelings” by not telling you he’s sorry for how you feel, even if he hasn’t done anything wrong and you’re upset about an imagined scenario like cheating. You expect him to put you above all others, even future children, which says SO much about your maturity levels. You expect him to be the person responsible for managing your anxiety and drop everything, no matter what he is doing. You refuse to work on yourself unless he accompanies you to therapy, although you’re happy to watch unhelpful videos on the internet and rigidly demand he follows the advice in them. You call him insensitive but he financially supports you, gave you a place to live, is trying to support you with your diet and sleep, is encouraging you to seek mental health support and tries to find ways to work through your problems. He describes you as judgemental and critical of him and you are critical of even his attempts at dating you because they don’t meet your standards. You’ve clearly communicated to him that you expect total surveillance of his phone. trying to isolate you from his friends because you don’t want to be alone.

Surely you can see reading that in one go your behaviour is at best unhealthy and toxic and at worst abusive? Have you ever considered that maybe there’s a valid reason why you don’t have any friends? It must be exhausting to try and be your friend with your rigid demands about how everyone interacts with you. You without a doubt need this therapy so I hope it works for you and that if your therapist doesn’t agree with every word you say you don’t feel invalidated and walk out.

I also think you need to seriously consider ending the relationship. If he is punching a wall then his behaviour is also now abusive and will likely escalate with the increasing pressure. That will require you to be independent though and you sound so codependent I just don’t knowing you could archive that now.

was this necessary? I'm not some evil person.. I will give you guys a detailed post of my therapy session today.

I am doing online therapy btw because cost is real to me.

Validating feelings is important in a healthy relationship. However, i think the part you're missing is that shouldn't be a constant thing. It's well known that anxiety makes you seek validation for every thing, little and big. This is unhelpful! Your partner only has finite emotional reserves, its not surprising he's run out of patience. It's also bad for you, all the time you spend seeking external validation doesn't teach you how to validate yourself and to self-sooth - and these are what build resilience.

You need to work with your therapist to find more appropriate ways of dealing eith your worries, so that you can (for yourself) filter out those which are unreasonable/insignificant.

I've been through this myself, and with the help of s therapist I can now much better differentiate and self-rationalise. It means when something is really worrying me, I can talk about it with my DH. He takes it seriously because im not constantly seeking his validation, so he a) knows its important and b) isn't emotionally knackered himself by my anxieties!

I hope the therapist can help, your partner has rvery right to see his friends, you are totally dependent and obsessed with him, this is not a healthy place to be, you can't see further than obsessing about everyone validating your feelings, he must be exhausted and feel smothered, it may not be deliberate but you are at risk of destroying both your lives and your relationship.

What standard that i set? that he listens to me and makes me feel heard? that I want to feel safe emotionally in our relationship?

I do understand his feelings are important, I know he does more than me but I also do quite alot myself. I'm just so tired physically more than him, that is all and he helps more because he has the energy.

I try not to do it often but it seems like every 2 days or so I bother him with this. We made a pact that we won't get loud anymore, but I have such a hard time keeping this promise especially when he cuts me off, then his response is that I also cut him off all of the time.

See? I can never win an argument because he keeps saying that I crucify him for the same things that I do. And of course I have nothing to say.

I have very frequent panic attacks, some days less than others.

My fiance also has his episodes, from time to time he says that he's burnt out. I try to be understanding because he financially supports his grandmother in a retirement home, and he also financially supports his parents, and he supports me as well.

He said sometimes he just feels like folding, but its not often i say around 2x a year where he looks, feels slump and just becomes quiet.

Everytime this happened we fought though, because I felt like he was ignoring me, and wouldn't talk to me about it. When I finally dug it out of him he said he feels like he has the world on his shoulders sometimes and need some quiet days to decompress and doesn't want to complain because he doesn't want to hear negative words come out of his mouth.

But I told him that he has to be open with me and let me know next time because otherwise I'll over think that he's intentionally ignoring me all day.

That sounds rather self absorbed. You’re an adult not a child. He must be very patient as I couldn’t put up with the inconsistency. It seems if it is something you want to do then you can do it but if it’s something for your partner, it becomes tears, neediness and validation.

I'm really trying. I know that I'm too attached to him. If he's not next to me I feel so alone.

Our relationship is definitely hanging on a string, he knows it and I know it. We will also do couple counseling and I hope it can help alot to see what im doing wrong and what hes doing wrong and how we can compromise.

Read this back, can’t you see that you even make his mental health difficulties about you and your needs?

The standards?

To constantly validate every single thought and feeling you have no matter how busy he is or how hurt your feelings might make him feel.

To keep the house exactly as you like it.

To fill in all the gaps that are missing from your life because you have no friends.

To not comment on the fact that the reason you are so tired is because your diet is terrible and you don’t go to any effort to take care of your health.

To do dates exactly as you like them

To do the lions share of work in the house, earn all the money and accept you complaining that he doesn’t do enough.

To take you along when he goes out with his friends even though other partners are not invited and to constantly worry about if you are ok.

To put you first all the time.

To accept that you can’t even open a door to a tradesman.

I’m exhausted just thinking about what the poor bloke has on his plate.

Is the hair poster? The one that comes on here multiple times needing constant validation from her long suffering bf?

Wow. Poor guy.

But seeking validation from him every 2 days or so is insanely excessive - can't you see why that would be burning him out? This is why you need individual therapy, to learn techniques to build your own resilience so you're not going to him so often.

Also - can't you see how damaging you are being here? You see he's burnt out, and he says he needs peace and quiet, but because you feel ignored you keep poking at him and it turns into a fight. Why can't you respect his need for quiet in those times?

My god. I just want to cry for hom. Poor bloke. He must feel like he has the world on his shoulders all the time and no one cares and everyone - particularly you - just wants to pile more and more onto him.

He is exactly the sort of bloke who would suddenly have a complete breakdown or harm himself and everyone around him would say “but he seemed fine!”

You’re trying to take over his mind, make him live only for you and take away his needs and wants and replace them with yours!
Do you come from an enmeshed family? Is this how you were brought up? If so, you need to tell the therapist, as your upbringing was unhealthy and you need to explore what healthy is.

first therapist meeting her thoughts are that I have too much stress that hasn't been resolved

1. My life moved too fast and that and I had no time to process any of it
2. I was married at a young age and got divorced 6 years ago.
3. Living in a foreign country
4. Not speaking my native language
5. Not fully addressed my childhood trauma (I didn't meet my father until I was 12 and my mother was a heroin addict and I saved her from suicide when I was 8)
6. Ambitions and goals and that I don't reward myself if I do something good.
7. She said I never rest even if I'm laying down I'm constantly over thinking.

She gave me some work to do for next week..

An emotional vampire.

You had a tough start in life OP, hopefully a good therapist can help you. Think about why you have no friends, do you drive them away and if so, how?

I know I have a problem with this, my fiance pointed out many times that the world doenst revolve around me and that not everything is about me.

It's just so hard to recognize when I'm doing it..

I have no idea, his friends seem to like me quite alot. But that can be because out of respect for him.

But I had a hard time having female friends my entire life, I had 1 friend since childhood but she abandoned me when she got married..

oh dear OP. You have had a lot to deal with in your life. I have a lot of empathy for you now that I know these things. Your anxieties and impossible demands are understandable. However, it’s interesting that the therapist did not list your partners ‘failings’ as issues for you. All of these things are for you to process with support from your therapist.

Can you see that it is the awful things that have happened to you in the past that is your real problem. Not your partner?

I know he's a very good man. He rarely EVER shows his emotional side and just says it's fine and smiles.

He's very guarded with his emotions. He was also previously married before we met, and his ex wife took him for a ride, literally was embezzling funds from his accounts to fund her life style while she had another boyfriend on the side.

He never said much about it but from our mutual friends I heard after the break up he lost alot of weight from stress but bounced back in 3 months, which I find unbelievable because I would've died..