Arguing constantly...advice please
Find a Conversation
| Tue, 12-19-2006 - 10:37am |
Thank you taking the time to read and respond. My fiancé and I have been together for over two years and I moved from Chicago to Portland because he is from there and I could transfer within my company. Since we moved a year ago, it was not easy for me learning the city on my own while my fiancé became a work-aholic (9am to 9pm Mon-Sun except most Sat night we go out) for his business---we began to build up a lot of walls with one another/arguing/fighting and I moved out at the end of September. We were bickering from April to August several times a week. I began socializing more with co-workers in Aug/Sept.
During the month of October, I immediately started dating a gentleman at the same company that I work at as he was a good friend hearing me vend about my fiancé, but I new I still had feelings for the x. After a week that I moved out, my fiancé wrote me a well-thought out long letter for all the things that he saw went wrong, we then sent several nice long emails back and forth followed by weekly coffee meetings and some dinners---it seemed that I saw more of him in the 6 weeks than I did living with him; I never stopped loving him, I just lost hope that we could forget the resentment/hurt feelings/things were going to change/go back to how they were in Chicago.
He tells me things constantly like I can accept that you are not everything on my ideal perfect list (I don't like partying until 4am three times a month(he is 39), I don't like being outside in the cold weather below ten degrees). It used to be that I was not petite either as I am five eight and 130 not five foot and 100 pounds, but he total accepts that now and says that I am the most beautiful person in the world.
I moved back in November and he is still working the long hard hours and the emails/text-messaging/phone call during the day has faded over the past week. I have asked (since May) for two nights a week (Saturday plus a weekday) for him to come home at 6pm and he keeps saying he wants to, but the business or he tells me fine he will quit everything, sell the house and live in an apartment. We have been in counseling and it seems to help. I love my fiancé more than anything, but we constantly keep fighting. For the past two weeks we have been fighting non-stop (I still kept my apartment while I moved back in) and he said on Wednesday to just go and find what you need so I packed up my car and went back to my apartment. Of course he called me an hour later (shocked that I left) and told me that I just don’t understand him and that he loves me and wants to work on us. Since we have been talking on the phone and we still get irritated with each other and he starts yelling at me.
I am sure this is a common-occurance with people, but it is like in my head I completely agree that this is not working and it is never going to end; but then when I see him, in the house we bought, dogs we bought together, my heart is just speaking so much louder to give it another try (but I have said this over 20 times in the past year). We are still in counseling. She can see that we love each other, and wants to commit on a hard 6 months together of work with her weekly and this was after I moved out again on wednesday to my place.
Any advice would be much appreciated and thanks for your time!

Pages
I didn't read any of the posts after the one where you said he says "carbs' so you won't eat more than one peice of bread.
This man simply views you as an extention of himself he does not view you as your own person.
Let me share about my sisters life with her husband who says things like "carbs" to her when she eats.
15 years ago when my sister met him she was a single mom that really wasn't doing all that bad. FOR HIM, she moved to another state, took care of his dying parents like a home health care giver would. They own two homes and an airport together but she has no money of her own. She gets a certain amount each week to buy groceries and run a household, put gas in the cars, etc. The amount has not changed in 15 years so she has made do with less and less.
When their child was born he would not "allow" her to have any pain medications while in labor. Whenever she got something to eat he would walk across the room and critique her plate. He would ask her if she needed "quite so much" to eat since he didn't want her "hanging onto the baby weight." Her milk dried up at 2 weeks because she wasn't eating enough. So she missed the joy of nursing her baby. Something she expressed to me often as I nursed my own. She now had to buy formula, somehow with the same amount of money she has had for 15 years. Understand H is a vegetarian that requires homemade meals because he won't eat pre packaged food or leftovers. His needs come before anyone elses including the child and she is not "allowed" to ask for government services like WIC for food. Her oldest son almost died of peritonitis when his appendix ruptured on a Friday and her H wanted to wait until Monday to talk to a dr. friend of his. It's the one time my sister stood up and said if you don't ake us to the hospital I'm calling an ambulance. Her son spent more than a month in the hospital , had 2 abdominal surgeries, lost many FEET of intestine and bears a scar from sternum to pubic bone.
My sister was given a car for her birthday 3 years ago. A Jaguar as her H put it "Noone feels sorry for a woman with a Jaguar." She has been "allowed" to drive her own car 7 times in 3 years. She has to dress a certain way when seen with her H as does their child. If the child acts up in a restaurant she has to sit in the car with ds while H continues to enjoy his meal. They are not "allowed" back in the restaurant except when my sis comes back to pick up her own to go container since he won't carry it to the car.
She has been asked for years to just be more patient about many things. An example- She needed to wait till the dog died to paint her walls. The dog has been dead 3 years she still has not been "allowed" to paint the walls. They don't have the money to buy a can of paint but he has a new car, Harley, leathers, big screen TV, tIVO, Cessna.
I am afraid that this is going to be your life if you stay with this very controlling man. You will reach a point that there is nothing of YOU left. I believe my sister suffers from battered womans syndrome and this man has just beat her down emotionally. She can't see that she has a way out. If the door to freedom was open she would cower away from the light and hide in the shadows.
Don't become this.
I'm here to tell you that you're not stupid, ridiculous, idiotic, or anything else you may have felt. You are intelligent, very intelligent and you are doing some very hard work. You recognize that what's been your relationship is not healthy and is not acceptable. You're doing some very hard work, work you only half want to do, to change that, to remove yourself from the situation. That's very hard to do when you're also struggling with the low self esteem and other issues abuse puts on you, when you don't have the support of family and friends, when you're confused and struggling. You're taking intelligent, appropriate steps by seeking out help, by educating yourself on the issue, by forcing yourself to look at the reality when you'd really rather not. You're also intelligent in seeing how your childhood and your relationship with your parents pushed you to this. All these things show you to be a very strong, very smart, very capable woman. Your family that puts you down is only doing what they've always done, they're not trying to change, they're not working to better themselves, you are. I doubt you were very surprised by your mother not seeing that she was part of the reason you were attracted to a control freak. I doubt very much she's open to anything that could possibly be construed as criticism or as her having done something less than good. I don't know about your friends, their upset reaction may have simply been out of not understanding abuse, out of frustration and not knowing how to react or what to say.
Time was that you wished you could go back to Chicago. It sounds like your visit was bad enough that you no longer want that, at least not right now. I'm sorry.~ cl-2nd_life
"Experience is what you get
When you don't get what you want"
~ Author unknown
"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
Pages