My Story of Marriage to Avoidant Husband

[bloomie]

Worthy of Care - thank you for sharing some snap shots of what you have experienced in your marriage. You are working through a lot. Doing a lot of good and difficult work and processing. That takes a great deal of resilience and inner strength. 

It takes a lot of energy to even begin to share in this way and we want to support you and be sensitive to the newness of some of these realizations and the weight of this work you are doing. Know that you don't have to explain or answer any questions posed here you are not ready to or are not inclined to. You can simply share and gain some strength as you need and want to.

A resource with a lot of free articles for understanding my own DH's often very painful and invalidating attachment style and how that plays out in our marriage and his adult relationships is here: https://www.attachmentproject.com

Keep sharing as you are able. We are listening and cheering you on as you make your way to a more peaceful, centered place in all of this.

[Worthy of Care]

Lauren, thank you for sharing. I have no idea what my husband thinks or feels about my withdrawal, because he hasn't said anything. My guess is that he blames my trauma.

I will learn more about "radical acceptance." I'm not familiar with that, only what I can guess from the words.

I tried to list some websites that were helpful, but I got a message saying: Sorry, you are not allowed to post external links.

I've tried the Yale communication method that you describe. He responded with silence.
We've tried marriage counseling.
Short answers or shrugs were the only responses he gave to the T.
He's walked out of the room in the middle of my sentence on more than one occasion.
He interrupts with a joke when the topic is uncomfortable.
He's given me the "hurry up" hand motion when I'm talking.
He's whistled, turned on the TV, turned up the car radio when I'm talking.

I have experienced all these. The difference is that when we went to marriage therapy, he would ask the therapist how to fix me (not using those words).

[Worthy of Care]

Poison Ivy & Bloomie, thanks for sharing those links.

Have you read up on insecure avoidant attachment in childhood? I like to understand things; maybe understanding its origins could be useful to you in providing some context for what he does.

Thanks, Square. I have read about the origins. In brief, to my understanding, the Avoidant was not allowed physical closeness &/or nurturing from parent(s). At an early age the child realizes/decides that he is on his own and needs to take care of himself. The child will be as near the parent as possible, eg. in the same room, in order to get what he can, but there is no closeness.

I can picture that in my husband's childhood. Knowing that helps some. Right now I feeling 26 years worth of hurt and anger. I hope that over time, my compassion for him will grow and the my awareness of his lack of love and tenderness in childhood, will help me to be more tender to him, even though it won't be taken in by him.

[Worthy of Care]

Bloomie, I'm very grateful for you support. Thank you.

[Worthy of Care]

SonofThunder,
Thank you for reading my story and for your thoughtful questions.

Looking back to your dating time with him prior to marriage;

1. How long did you date each other prior to marriage?

2. Do you believe you experienced AVPD traits in him during dating, or did he mask  them behind a facade-personality that otherwise projected what he thought YOU were looking for in a mate?

We dated a bit over a year. Looking back, I believe I saw AVPD traits. Of course then, I didn't know AVPD existed. I have asked myself questions about before we married. I have some understanding. I try not to spend much time there, because it is too easy for me to beat myself up for not seeing things.

3. In Part 5, you wrote:  "In my next session, my therapist helped me to see that there were options other than "live with it like it is" and divorce."

Will you please expand on that statement to include the therapist's explanation?

4. This thread is not in the 'religious' board section, so I will not expand on any religious topic on this thread.  But, for my own context in understanding your therapist's point of view in the expanded statement of #3, will you also state whether the therapist practices around the boundaries of his/her religious beliefs or a therapist that separates the practice from his/her religious beliefs?

My therapist is a Christian. I am also. Him telling me that there were other options other than "live with it like it is and divorce," wasn't based on a belief that divorce is out of the question. That isn't what he believes and he has let me know that if divorce is what is best for me than it is okay. He was helping me to know that there are other things to try in order to help live with an avoidant. He gave several suggestions; for example, to not eat meals together. I only saw two options. He is helping me to see other options for dealing with it.

[SonofThunder]

Worthy of Care,

Thanks for answering the questions, as they assist me in better understanding your writing, experiences and the foundation of what you have been advised. 

In your replies to others you wrote " I hope that over time, my compassion for him will grow and the my awareness of his lack of love and tenderness in childhood, will help me to be more tender to him, even though it won't be taken in by him."

In my own experiences, and now with my education into personality disorders, my uPDw and uNPDf, and protecting myself, being 'tender' and 'compassionate' has been, and will continue to be, a weird mix of emotions guided by very careful planning, calculating and self-protection.

For myself, I had to set out to truly define what i believe is the definition of 'love'.  Since I am also a man of faith, my studies were from that perspective.  I wont go into it here, because I have discussed it in full on my own threads.  My concluding definition of love became a new boundary for me, because as someone who was raised by a 'caretaker' (Fjelstads book) to be a 'caretaker', I was easily being manipulated by both my wife and father in the PD-perceived, one way twisted street of their understanding of what 'love' should be doing for them. 

I am not any longer being a 'caretaker' and although my PD's dont understand, nor agree with the changes i have made in myself, my new 'care', allows me to pull up close alongside my PD's and be compassionate and tender, yet fully protected by the toolbox and my own boundary guidelines of love. 

What you are desiring to do (compassionate tenderness) makes you imo, also very vulnerable to emotional and situational abuse because of your desired closeness, vs a more distant approach to a PD.  Therefore i want to recommend you stay very refreshed on the Out of the FOG toolbox to fully protect yourself, while you attempt to retain and/or foster compassionate tenderness.  I am required to wear my thick skin while ensuring my insides stay nice and juicy-tender.  Its a difficult balance, but for me, my goal in loving my uPDw and uPDf. 

Wishing for you, your goals for yourself,

SoT

[Worthy of Care]

I am not any longer being a 'caretaker' and although my PD's dont understand, nor agree with the changes i have made in myself, my new 'care', allows me to pull up close alongside my PD's and be compassionate and tender, yet fully protected by the toolbox and my own boundary guidelines of love. 

What you are desiring to do (compassionate tenderness) makes you imo, also very vulnerable to emotional and situational abuse because of your desired closeness, vs a more distant approach to a PD.  Therefore i want to recommend you stay very refreshed on the Out of the FOG toolbox to fully protect yourself, while you attempt to retain and/or foster compassionate tenderness.  I am required to wear my thick skin while ensuring my insides stay nice and juicy-tender.  Its a difficult balance, but for me, my goal in loving my uPDw and uPDf. 

Wishing for you, your goals for yourself,

SoT

SoT, I understand what you are saying and appreciate the caution. My hope is that as my expectations and hope for intimacy further decays (for the most part, I think it has died), I will be able to protect my heart and care for him (very different than what that would look like for me), while protecting myself.

[SonofThunder]

Worthy of Care,

I understand your reply and wish you the best in the balance of protecting yourself while caring for your husband.  Again, I'm SO sorry you have to deal with this in your life.

SoT

[1footouttadefog]

When you quit hoping for and expecting what cannot be, it's easier to do the rest of the job.

[Worthy of Care]

Thank you, SoT.

1footouttadefog, Your words have kept coming to my mind today. What you said encourages me. Thank you.

[1footouttadefog]

When I finally quit expecting normalcy, when I quit trying to fix things from my end my pdh's behaviour improved.

At some point I realized he was in able to have the adult emotional connection I deserve and expected. 

Once I quit expecting it and I quit being disappointed but importantly push quit failing to meet that expectation.

I realize this is lowering a bar and it's not what we want or deserve in our relationship.  However it's often the reality.  We can eventually see the truth if what will, can never be because the other is broken in this area. We can look back and see years, perhaps decades of trying and sacrificing more and more and more to make that right and it never happens

My spouse quit needing to use his negative coping skills as much when I quit setting him up to fail.

Some would see this as a letting off easy, but I see the it as accepting reality and not wasting my time and effort.


This was all a very painful process and involved grief on several levels.  I had to give the man I thought I had married.  He was an act, a projected version of reality used to protect the real man bedroom being known.  I had to grieve the time and efforts and the best years if my life that were never cherished as they should have been.  Souch was processed and alot of suppressed anger came to the top.

The anger was one of the worst things to deal with. I had never felt such before.  It was good to get to the other side of it. 

I even had a funeral for my marriage.  I gathered pictures, letters, and my wedding dress and burned then in the BBQ. 

[Lauren17]

When I finally accepted the reality of the marriage, my stbxh withdrew more and more.

Instead of my spouse no longer needing to use negative coping skills, he was able to settle deeper into his "natural state"

It got to the point that he didn't even say hello when I walked into the room. We would go days at a time with no more than a dozen words spoken to each other.

However our spouses respond, it's in our best interest to accept the reality of the situation. Do the work on our own issues. Seek to find our own happiness.

It's a tough road and I'm so grateful for the support I've found here.

[Worthy of Care]

However our spouses respond, it's in our best interest to accept the reality of the situation. Do the work on our own issues. Seek to find our own happiness.

It's a tough road and I'm so grateful for the support I've found here.

Agree.

I don't know that my H is withdrawing more as I withdraw. I'm probably seeing more clearly what has been true, as I stop putting most of the energy and work into the marriage.

The anger is hard. I want to be on the other side, but right now the anger is pretty consuming.

[Lookin 2 B Free]

You are worthy, and I'm very sorry for your pain.   It wasn't like this with my PDx,  but the husband before him (traits, but I don't believe full PD) had that avoidant attachment style.  It drove me crazy.  I dragged him to therapy, had "talks" with him, stewed in resentment.  Nothing changed the dynamic . . . until . . .

I turned the focus off him and onto me.  I had what they used to call an anxious preoccupied attachment style.  Someone suggested the book "Facing Love Addiction."  This was in the 90's.  Boy did it explain our dynamic to a T -- what we were doing and why.  This may not be relevant to anyone here, but I felt like I'd been sprung from a prison.    I got busy working on me, my issues and what I wanted for my life.  I started taking action to heal my old trauma wounds and bring more connection into my life through other people and other activities.  By the time the marriage was over (it ended for another reason), I was completely different and so was our dynamic.   

And in the two relationships I've had in the many years since then (one marriage-like to my PDx), I've never been burdened with that again.  Other things, for sure.  But not that.   I never want to feel so hopeless & trapped & disempowered again!   I'm not suggesting this would be the case for anyone else;  each person and relationship is different.   But it was a life changer for me.  Good luck to all here who are suffering in this way.

[Worthy of Care]

It drove me crazy.  I dragged him to therapy, had "talks" with him, stewed in resentment.  Nothing changed the dynamic . . .

That is 100% me. Thank you for sharing and for your compassion. I ordered the book.

[EternalHippo]

WOC,

I appreciate you sharing your story.  I have gained a lot from your vulnerability and from the others sharing here. 

I wasn't ready to see or acknowledge my H's avoidance but now I am. 

I think I am in for a painful road ahead and appreciate knowing that others are and have been there. 

[j.banquo]

I've no question had a mainly avoidant, disorganized attachment style since I was at least one year old, so I know what I'm saying: there's no reason for you to have to be understanding of or support behavior like that, ever. It's abusive, it's a refusal to compromise and contribute to the relationship, refusal to communicate, and even acknowledging problems and that they're negatively affecting people they love, and then refusing to work on those problems.

If he's going to change, he will have to face the consequences of knowingly ignoring problems. It sounds like he knows the consequences, and he thinks he knows what they're going to feel and play out like. He likely doesn't, but he can't know that without visiting that place.



I'm really, really glad to hear about the way you're handling it these days. You've been really patient, and what you've been going through in this relationship is a lot to have to deal with. I can tell you care a lot, and only want to do the best thing for him. The best thing is to give him the chance to feel the results of his choices.




Since I'm trying to represent the perspective of someone with disordered attachment, I'll go on to that for anyone interested. [/size]



I once told someone "I can't do it for you, but I can keep you company." It hasn't happened yet with him, but he liked the sound of that at the time, and I bet he thinks about it sometimes. Having heard his stories, there was no chance he'd end up with anything but disorganized attachment. The thing he wants the most is for that all to change, but there are people in his life that keep reinforcing the attachment style. It's the only strategy under those circumstances that allows you to function.

We all know that ongoing abuse causes people to lose their ability to trust, question their sanity, feel foggy and lost. Everything feels wrong, but nothing explains it, and you're brainwashed too. I'd sit in therapy at times, and not be able to say anything. Not because I didn't want to, I just couldn't choose which thing to talk about, and I was already so overwhelmed, I'd freeze trying to figure it out. With abuse that's ongoing, you have no energy to do any work on your real problems, either. My attempts to work on taking walls down and how to interact like other humans were interrupted over and over by episodes of depression. During those, you have to focus on the depression, but you also aren't capable of even remembering what the interpersonal problems feel or look like. They're irrelevant anyway, since you're completely isolated.



I haven't always known where the ongoing abuse was coming from. Once, I ran into an ex-friend who had said some of the most damaging things any one has ever said to me, then turned around and tried to turn all mutual friends against me. What they did when I ran into them (7 years since I'd seen them) was so psychologically damaging, it took me 9 years to work through it. From a 45 second encounter.

I endured harassment from co-workers almost everywhere I've worked. I'd feel the effects, but since I didn't know what was causing them, nothing helped.

Honestly - there have been very few years of my life that didn't have a really abusive person as some part of my core support network. It was so damaging. Many of them, in my deepest moments of vulnerability, would wound me as much as possible. I haven't dated (in the developing a relationship sense) since 2009, because every single person I'd been in a serious relationship with up to then had been horrible to me, and I usually saw it coming, too. At the same time, the reason I still haven't is that I trust my intuition and respect my own boundaries, and most I've met via online dating basically might as well have been wearing red flags as their entire wardrobe.




I read often that I didn't learn critical emotional skills. It would make perfect sense, but it feels not quite right. I needed to be taught extra emotional skills, because I've always been a natural target for PD people. I'm friendly, open, often enjoy compromise more than getting my own way, and respectful by nature. The type who stops briefly and talks to a homeless person to see if they're okay. Nothing excessive. PD people, they see that if they can get close enough in the right timeframe, they can attach a hook to the respectful and cooperative part. I know I've said this, but they all conditioned me to ignore my emotional skills and social impulses, and I thought I had poor social skills.

In order to protect my ability to trust, I needed to be taught about specifically about red flags, why it's okay to trust your intuition (it comes from knowledge from past experiences), and how to recognize the symptoms that suggest someone's enduring abuse.




You can only help so much, literally.

My friend, who I said I'd "keep company": that's where my line is, personally. If they don't take themselves the rest of the way, I disengage.

I may choose to do my best to give them what they need to get there. Share articles. Tell them how I feel, boundaries, always bring it up if there's a problem, apologize, proactively try to fix problems when I've made a mistake, and tell them when I'm concerned about them. I just act like I normally do, but aware I'm modeling behavior they don't have much experience with.

Shut down and distant? I make sure I'm respecting their boundaries while pushing a little if they react okay to it, making sure they know their opinions matter to me, giving them a lot more space than I myself would need, and feeling just the same as I would if they could be closer, but trying to internally match the level of emotion they're showing.




How I learned to take down walls

For me, all it has ever taken to change unhealthy relationship behaviors (like not being able to communicate about difficult subjects, putting up walls (so, so, many walls, oof), and allowing people to draw me into drama) was maybe one comment from somebody, or a couple months of introspection after noticing a pattern or having a relationship melt down.

One time someone told me it would be less confusing for people if I would look happy to see them, and I could even hug them. I had had no idea people wanted that. I thought they actively did not want either of those things. So I just thought "oh thank God" in my head, and started doing it.

I was told once "I get why you seem to snap at me when I ask you a question, but it actually feels really horrible, so please stop." Someone who reported directly to me at work said that, and while I had the normal "whoa that's not typical behavior for that relationship" response, I quickly got it, and was happy to have someone like her working under me. I realized much later that she had given me one of the most valuable gifts anyone ever has: a reminder that someone's perception of another's emotional state is often way off. I'd be annoyed or stressed out, get interrupted, and sound mad at the person. So the second part of the gift was I learned to be more mindful of what my emotions were communicating to others.



The only thing that helped me to the core, though, was learning about CPTSD, because then, within a year or two, I knew how to treat the symptoms I had, and they started to get better, immediately. It felt incredible, because I hadn't been following my instincts or intuition. Suppressing my altruistic, affectionate, and joyful impulses because I actually thought that was what people wanted me to do, or they wouldn't like me anymore.

Hope this helps some folks out there. Most importantly, it's always okay to protect yourself from abuse and mistreatment. Everyone has a right to expect another to invest equally in any relationship too, and to expect compromise and empathy. Almost no diagnosis excuses disrespect or abuse.