Sorry about this rambling message. I am tired and feel like my brain has been through a washing machine. Today I felt sad because it often feels like our relationship is not romantic anymore. It feels like he only gets excited/motivated about things with other people, but when we are together he is just distant and stares at his phone. We don’t kiss. We don’t go on dates. We don’t have sex unless it’s ovulation time.

I know I should have said something earlier but I didn’t until bedtime which made him

angry as he needed to get up

early. I said we need to talk because it feels like we’re becoming just friends. It doesn’t feel romantic anymore. He just immediately got angry and defensive and started raising his voice saying i was ridiculous and a psychopath and a control freak. I asked what he meant by that, and how that even came about based on what I’d just said as it seemed unrelated. Then he started yelling about earlier in the day me wanting to cancel a bbq because I was “in a foul mood” - I wasn’t, I just worried about keeping my daughter in late. I thought we were going to have an afternoon bbq, I didn’t think it would be a later/dinner thing so I said maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea, then I messaged again shortly after saying “fuck it I’ll just let her stay up because she hasn’t adjusted to daylight savings yet anyway”.

For some reason he decided to spin that tonight as me being a control freak who was in a foul mood. Completely unfair and unwarranted.

I didn’t yell at the beginning of the conversation, I didn’t have a go at him, I just said that was how I felt. I made it clear that I didn’t want to fight, just to discuss it honestly. He kept yelling, then ignoring me, then calling me names like psycho and control freak, and then telling me that everyone thought that, and then threatening to leave again. Then he told me that his family think I’m a control freak and they have thought so ever since they were here a few months ago. At that time I found out my husband had been hiding a meth problem from me while living with me and my 3 year old, and he was an alcoholic. His parents flew over and he went to rehab. I was literally trying to help him get off of meth and alcohol abuse despite him hiding it behind my back- that’s the only control I tried to exercise. His parents knew that too.

Every time there is a discussion about anything he does the same things.

1. He calls my problems ridiculous

2. He ignores me; and when that doesn’t work

3. He tells me I need help

4. He calls me names like psycho and crazy and control freak

5. He takes situations like the bbq thing and twists them into me being crazy somehow

6. He tried to undermine me by saying that because I haven’t had a relationship as long as his previous two that my opinion is somehow invalid

7. He tells me “I don’t know any other couple like this” or references his ex saying they never argued (I know they did, but not as often - but they had abnormally seperate lives, which he admits when it suits him) and he said it in a way that suggests that means I am the sole problem here.

7. He says that other people are talking about me and tries to make me question myself (and he has admitted before that this has been a lie after he has said it)

All this yelling happened for about half an hour before I got to actually say WHY I felt that way. It took me begging for him to stop being mean, every time I would cry he would make fun of me and do horrible impersonations of me, and tell me I was over dramatic and that I “need help”. I just wanted to be able to say how I felt and he wouldn’t let me.

I told him eventually that it was because he never instigates anything with me. He has been in a depressive hole for a week, but managed to come out of it three times to do things with other people. A gig, rehearsal, and playing a gig. When it’s just the two of us he stares at his phone and watches YouTube and goes to sleep early. I have to instigate everything. I’m the only one who tries to make time to spend together, the only one who ever wants sex, the only one who tries to instigate dates. And they very rarely actually happen. I just got yelled at for having feelings which I think are completely reasonable. I feel like this is mentally abusive. He justifies yelling at me because he says it’s him “sticking up for himself”. I don’t know what he has to stick up for because I wasn’t having a go at him, I was just trying to tell him how I felt. He was the one yelling at and bullying me, and it makes me feel like I can’t speak about anything. Apparently I am a grade A asshole. All because I would like our relationship to be a little more romantic and less distant, and I’d like to feel like he cares as much about doing things together as he cares about doing them with other people. Or about drinking. Or about watching YouTube. Or about getting drugs. Just anything really.

I think he’s going to move out. I’m devastated because I do love him to pieces. My daughter does too, and he loves her. I’m so sad that he thinks so many horrible things about me and talks to me that way. All I want is to feel like there is some romance left. He said I have unrealistic expectations of a relationship but I don’t know any other couple who doesn’t even kiss. It doesn’t feel normal, and it makes me feel invisible.