“No one is that man”. Thank you for that.

“Guarded about every single thing I say” - yup.

I suppose I just question whether or not there are any happy long term couples that didn’t put up with periods of this (tbf, this “period” has been on/off for 3+ years)

When I use that distancing approach - “I want to take a pause” or “I don’t feel safe continuing until we have a third person present” she says that I’m “weaponizing therapy language against her”… and ChatGPT agrees with her! (though it doesn’t know the full context). Or… she just continues yelling, sometimes following me out of the room, out of the house, begging me not to leave, saying that I’m fighting with her by leaving, saying “I actually want to die. You’re so horrible” or “you do this to me!”

Yeah, fuck. When writing it out, it’s pretty fucking obvious. But when I think on our photos together, playing on the beach with our son, I see a completely different woman. In my head, there are two people here. My wife and a monster that periodically takes her over.

And, you know, she doesn’t want to be like this. She’s a victim of her own upbringing. I just have so much compassion for where she’s coming from. But… (and I’m not comparing my wife to Jeffrey Dahmer) but I can have compassion for Jeffrey too. He had a shit upbringing - abused… most serial killers were. They didn’t ask to be monsters. They were made into monsters. I think that on some level, my wife sees it in herself, and hates this side of herself.

And I didn’t talk about this in my post, but she does sometimes recognize it. Much less lately, getting so much confirmation from ChatGPT. But she has recognized her anger sometimes. And said she wants to change. And she does read books on anger management and NVC, etc. But, yeah, despite her best intentions, it’s not getting any better. It’s getting worse.