# Need time alone; feeling smothered



## flowers4ever (Mar 20, 2014)

My husband & I have been married 34 ys. He's in home construction which is a bad area to specialize in right now. He hasn't worked all winter. He didn't work much last winter, or the winter before. He is home all the time. We are opposites in most areas, so when we're together, there's conflict. It's gotten so bad that I told him I wanted to separate and asked him to move out (I have been prepared to move out many times, but he recently told me that he would move out if we decided to separate). We have a 23-yr-old son living at home who works full-time and just now has started paying rent. So, having the house to myself was an impossibility until just recently as Sunday eve., after returning from a Christian women's retreat, while I was feeling so full of God's peace, comfort, healing, & desire to work on our marriage--long story short, we clashed as soon as we got together which eventually ended in us separating and him leaving. Background: Husband and son do not have a great relationship. Husband gets angry with son and then I have to hear the lectures, feel the tension (I try not to, but it's difficult when someone's obviously really stressed), & I'm in the middle. The night before husband left, I tried to have a conversation with husband, and conversations usually involve two people talking, right? However, when I had talked for about 40 seconds, husband was actually using hand signals and saying, "you don't have to do this." I was stunned and questioned him about what "this" is, and he told me "apologizing"--that I don't have to apologize all the time. All I was doing was sharing my feelings about something that had happened between me and our son. I wasn't whining, I wasn't using expletives, I wasn't yelling, there was no attitude in my voice. Here's the deal, my husband does not like "listening" to me. He talks up a storm, more than any woman or man that I know or have ever known. He's been interrupting me so he could talk throughout our marriage that I have let him do most of the talking and have somewhat "shut down." Well, after 34 years, I now can't stand his trying to keep me down, keep me under his thumb, keep me quiet. I told him 2 weeks ago that we had to get into counseling, & his answer was that we could counsel ourselves since we can't afford counseling (however, we have 2 rental houses and plenty of money in investments and enough in the bank, plus I have my own business and work part-time). Of course, you see what happened from us "counseling ourselves," he's now out of the house. Throughout our marriage, husband hasn't wanted me to talk, he tells me not to repeat when I'm at work the very few jokes I have told him or funny anecdotes I have said, he's kept me from talking with his friends, he tells me "You have no sense of humor" (I crack my friends up all the time just by being myself). He recently told me not to even call one of our tenants to ask them the name of their new baby girl....Do any of you out there identify with what he is doing? He takes care of all of our banking, he has a separate trust account that I am not on, he even bought one of our rental houses & only put it in his name (I later told him if he didn't let me put my name on the deed to that property, it was tantamount to his wanting a divorce--he then let me put my name on the deed via an attorney). But it's the not wanting me to speak and keeping me under his thumb that has been so detrimental to my growing as a person. I cam from a very abusive background (incest, abandonment, emotional abuse) which caused me to be the "pleaser" type. That's a whole other topic. But husband's treatment of me really stunted my grown. I have felt that I must not be very bright and so should not talk very much, that I don't have a sense of humor, that I irritate people when I talk so I should keep quiet. I've been told I have a warm, engaging way about me, that I'm a good listener. My voice is not scratchy, not whiney, not too loud. I connected with women at the retreat very quickly & exchanged phone numbers with one of them. Can anyone relate out there to husband making them feel they have no "voice"?


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## jdoe9 (Mar 25, 2014)

This is abuse. Just so you know.


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## jdoe9 (Mar 25, 2014)

6 Types of Abuse | Project PAVE


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## appletree (Oct 9, 2012)

If he talks and talks and talks, just go out of the room, But that is too late now anyway. Get your finances sorted out. And did you ever had counseling because of you family background? Your son might need that too.


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