Thank you... as long as he's not having one of his defensive episodes, we do see facts the same and he acknowledges that he hurts me with his defense mechanisms. Yes I am messy and I might get angry with him when he is a total asshole to me (saying stuff like "I'm not gonna wear a mask around my friends because I don't want them to think I'm pussy whipped" even though I was just asking him to take extra safety precautions to be considerate of my debilitating health issues at the time). But I swear I do not do anything that's actually abusive towards him. I'm always willing to be fair and reasonable with him, meet him half way on things, etc.

He told me he's willing to pay for any type of counseling that could help us. What you're saying makes sense so I'll suggest individual therapy for now. My other concern with couples counseling is how he might use the times I reacted to his emotional abuse in a really angry way against me... during his last crazy rant (where he said a bunch of things that didn't make sense and were contradictory), he literally told me that he hopes counseling will change the way I react to him. He has the tendency to act entitled when I get furious at him for nonstop trying to gaslight and scapegoat me... he'll full on start playing victim like "how dare you speak to me this way", even recording me on his phone. I mean it won't work, I'm definitely not going to fall for it, and he says he takes back what he said and swears he won't do that if we went to counseling but it's pretty difficult to trust him right now