Callin' a thing a thing

I didn't believe my husband was going to change.  

Not this time.  And not the dozens of times before that.  I didn't trust a single word he said, because his words and his actions never matched.

It's time to "call a thing a thing", to quote Iyanla Vanzant.

My husband is passive aggressive.  He has been obstructive, procrastinating, withholding, forgetting, and under-performing for our entire marriage.  His crowning passive aggressive achievement is withholding sex, the one thing I can't do without him...although I've considered it.

He has acknowledged that he is passive aggressive, and that in order to remain married to me, he must work hard to understand the reasons for his behavior and eliminate it from our relationship.  His behavior has definitely improved, and so has our communication about it.   I really believe he's working on this.  Unfortunately, the one thing that has not changed, despite a great deal of communication, is that he still completely withholds sex.  And there isn't a damn thing I can do about it short of ending the marriage.

My husband is also an alcoholic.  He has been sober for 15 months now...the longest span in his life.  He says he's not an alcoholic anymore.  I think that's a dangerous attitude.

But the most important thing I've learned is that I cannot change him.

I can only change ME.

This article, "How to Cope with a Passive Aggressive Mate", by Deborah Khoshaba, changed how I interacted with my husband.  I read it in 2012, and despite my earlier blog posts, it helped me maintain my sanity for the last two years.  I learned that every act of passive aggressive behavior needs someone to react to it for it to be complete.  I learned how to avoid engaging and reacting, so that the behavior had no impact.  My husband was left holding an empty bag of his own misplaced emotions...and I was unscathed.  

I also recognized in reaction to my husband's alcoholism that I was co-dependent, and had been long before I met him.  Those coping skills were critical to my survival during childhood, and I used every single one of them in my marriage.  It wasn't easy, but I detached from my husband, quit trying to control every situation, and let the pieces fall where they may.  I started taking care of myself and making that my priority instead of something I thought about after everything and everyone else was taken care of.


That's the gory truth, about him and about me.  I don't know what's coming next, and I don't know how this will end.  I will diligently do what I can to make this work until it is no longer in my best interests to continue to do so.

And so, the waiting continues.