Its only now, in the smoldering ruin of my marriage that I realized how much I was really ignoring.

I was ignoring myself, not like not listening to my body for my health, but more like not listening to my heart. I was doing this for most of my life, and when I finally realized it… its like a door was opened.

The floodgates opened and I was swept away, into events that led to the opening of my eyes to things about my relationship that would have been glaring red flags for so many other people.

Now that my eyes are open, I know that I was doing the emotional regulation labor for my husband on top of having to regulate for myself, raise a child, and work a full time job. I know that he is passive aggressive and always has been. I realize that I’ve been dealing with both of these things in the household as I was growing up. And its clear that some unconscious part of my brain recognized something familiar in the relationship… that familiarity is his need for emotional regulation provided by someone else.

Unfortunately, now that I refuse to play that role for him, he is trying to rope our child into it.

I haven't spoken to him since Saturday night, the same day that I informed him that he couldn't come in vacation with us because we needed the week to process the changes from the week and we wouldn't be able to regulate and digest this properly if we were in that space together. That night he passive aggressively occupied the couch (where I've been sleeping) while also having the bed covered with his clothes.

The next morning he stayed in bed til after I had left with our child, for vacation. While our daughter was driving my mother up north for vacation he called her twice but she couldn't hear him so he text her later to… apologize for forgetting her birthday yesterday… that has been in the same date… for 20 years. He followed it up asking if he was a good father.

It is all so much BULLSHIT! I refuse to emotionally regulate for him and he's reaching out to our child to fill that space. He drove her to tears, and that enrages me.

I didn't expect this process to be easy, but JFC! I'm hoping it will be somewhat better once I set up a bedroom in the office so I can have my own space. It obviously won't fix anything, but it will eliminate his ability to passive aggressively impact my sleep at least. If he wants to destroy himself and what relationship we had left, that's on him.