losing respect towards your partner

[sharlott]

I am writing to find out if someone else has had experiences in your attitude towards your partner changing with therapy. I have now been in therapy for five years and I really feel I have lost most of respect towards my partner. Here is why:

My partner is a on regular basis accusing me of being selfish, uncaring and demanding. It might be that I perhaps am all these things, but to me it sometimes seems like he wants me to help him solve his issues with low motivation (expecting me to for instance know his deadlines at work or other things), be non-judgmental listener for his venting about the rest of the world (who seems to always be single handedly responsible for his problems). When I try to point out that he might have influenced some situations with his behavior, he tells me how I am being unsupportive and mean. I however feel like he wants to take zero responsibility for his actions. This has also come out in the relationship where it is constantly me who is responsible for the issues. Now he has slowly started to accept his part in problems, but I feel that my feelings have almost totally vanished throughout all the years of blaming.

When I try to bring up future and children with him, somehow we always end up talking about my abandonment issues. He tells me to work on my stuff so that I would not be so desperate about kids. I have been extremely patient along this issue and now it starts seeming to me, that well, he is just trying to hide away as to avoid having to take another responsibility because he cannot even handle the ones he currently has.

Finally, I feel like he is constantly compaining about me. It is so tiresome. I feel like he on one hand wants all the control in the relationship - like determining the speed and the future, but he does not want to take any responsibility.

Earlier things were different, because a) I really thought that I was at fault for most relationship issues and had so much development to do and noone else would not want me anyways and b) I could see my abandonment as a big issue and work with it. Now that I have addressed a lot of it, I still feel like my abandonment fear was just a neat way for him to avoid discussing future.

As I am writing these lines, I feel to myself extremely judgemental. My aim with my therapy was never to develop such a judgmental position towards my partner, but rather to improve myself so that our relationship would be better. Now, however I find myself in the position where my partner just looks like whiny and blaming kid to me most of the time. Of course he has tons of good qualities as well which I have not mentioned here. I guess what I am asking is, can it happen that with therapy you change so much that you can loose attraction towards your partner or is it just some phase of my therapy (overly critical one) which is going pass? I am rather confused about my negative feelings towards him and judge myself for being a bitch.

[Stephie]

Sharlott,

I have only just started therapy so I may not be the best to respond, but wanted you to know that I've heard you.
I do not think you are being a b*tch or anything else.
It seems to me, on just reading this post, that perhaps you are growing and healing and seeing now all the little things that you didn't before.
We survivors tend to get into not so great relationships and with growth and healing notice the toxicity of them. Maybe talk to your T about what you're noticing.

I was in a similar relationship a while back. It sounds very very familiar to me. You may try looking up information on narcissists.
For what it's worth I DO NOT think you are being selfish or uncaring. My ex used to say the same things and it was all manipulation. It took YEARS for me to see it as it was and I carried guilt for a long time about leaving because I believed her when she called me those names and described me in such a manner.

Hear if you wanna talk.
(((hugs))) if ok
-Stephie

[Serenity]

Hi Shallott,

I really like what Stephie said:

It seems to me, on just reading this post, that perhaps you are growing and healing and seeing now all the little things that you didn't before.
We survivors tend to get into not so great relationships and with growth and healing notice the toxicity of them.

I do know that, for me, when I started healing and learning about healthy boundaries and finding at least a small sense of self-worth I started looking at my relationships very differently. It's not an easy road. I definitely agree that you should bring your concerns up with your T. And, try to go easy on yourself.

With care,
Serenity

[wabbit]

Huh, I thought was just me. Glad you wrote this. Its like you are writing about my wife. Now that I am waking up and healing, all my relationships look different. Even the one with her. I plan to still love her though, but I don’t think she knows how to take my changes.

That part about your partner complaining really resonated with me. You right, it is tiresome. While I take responsibility, I am now seeing some of that is just her complaining.

And it is a double standard, she has the license to rant, but I’m supposed to just be there for her and not have any problems of needs or I am some kind of bad guy.

Ever feel like that?

[wabbit]

You know, I apologize for what I said. Have realized that I own more of the problem that I thought.

[1000miles]

I'm learning that in my own life, my relationships have fallen into patterns of interaction. Unhealthy patterns can be self-reinforcing. Both partners contribute something to them. Sometimes there is clear blame. After my divorce, I went through peeling back the layers. On the surface, this was my fault, that was her fault. But then we ended up there for some reason, and that reason had other causes. I finally came to see that we were both at heart kind and well-meaning people, people who had started off loving each other very much, and that we both brought our problems from childhood, and a few basic incompatibilities, to the table. After almost twenty years, there were longstanding patterns.

My journey of recovery didn't begin in earnest until after my divorce. I don't think it could have. One thing that began to precipitate it, though, was feeling like somehow she didn't really know me. That was not her fault, per se. But its strange, because after almost twenty years, I had developed a tendency to see myself through her eyes. I came to a crisis point, where I wanted to see myself through my own eyes, to discover parts of me that at the time I only suspected were there somewhere. I had to spend time away from her to try to do that. Then I would talk about who I really was, and what I felt, and what I was trying to discover about myself. I think she was already really unhappy. My new assertiveness probably brought new insecurity to an already-troubled situation.

There's no way to talk about it without grossly oversimplifying. We both had our faults, and our relationship, which had been forged in love, slowly grew unhealthy and estranged. If I had seen what was happening, I could have taken steps to correct it. But then, if she had seen what was happening, she could have taken steps to correct it. Neither of us did. Each of us did things for which we are culpable. Now, when all is said and done, I just feel that it's sad how our relationship disintegrated.

I have a clear feeling, though, that even just my desire to rescue the child in me--my sense that he was there behind a wall--was disruptive to my marriage. In our case, it seems highly unlikely that the journey I'm on now could have happened while we were married. She, too, worked through issues related to an abusive parent after our divorce. I'm happy for both of us that we're growing healthier.

1000miles