Husband feeling hopeless.
We've been together for 13 years, 3 kids. We've had such a good relationship. Our marriage is the envy of everyone we know, and they're right most of the time.
But this seems to be getting worse, and in these seasons, these weeks... everything changes. I think the worst part is that when she's in this place, any ownership she's taken for ways she's been toxic in this relationship is gone. Situations she acknowledged and owned and apologized for get twisted and weaponized into evidence of whatever wildly rude assumption of me and mischaracterization she's trying to make. I don't know how to cope with this. Even when she gets to a point where she's like okay, I realize I'm in an episode and that's contributing to what's going on... it doesn't change anything. She stays on the attack and she does immense damage, playing back our relationship and shitting on so many things, painting me in such wildly unkind and untrue lights.
If I engage with her and take her at her word, my strength and masculinity is challenged as it's my job to just hold space and be unmoved by her attacks, I'm supposed to just take it. But if I do that, just eat it, not engage, and try to dodge conflict during these moments, that triggers her even more and she'll push and push and attack and attack until I just end up walking away, which is then weaponized as the great evil I've done. There's no escape.
We're both somewhat hypersexual and tend to have sex pretty much every day, but it gets so complicated on these weeks! I can feel her TRYING to get herself to want to, so I try to make space for it to be okay for her to not want to, and she reads that as rejection and gets mad. And GOD FORBID if a few days of this kind of tension and conflict impacts MY libido and I'm not super interested in even just one specific sexual thing she tries to initiate, all hell breaks loose and I hate her and she's so rejected.
For genuinely the first time in our relationship, it's like I can feel the way this relationship could end over this pattern. I have NEVER doubted this relationship, never regretted it, never thought about it ending, but as time goes on and we learn more and grow more, there's just more to feel get set on fire in these seasons, there's more to damage. I don't want it to end and I don't expect it to, but it's super painful to feel that it could, and how.
How do you engage in healthy conflict when you know that any apologies or ownership will be gone within a month? How can there be balance in a relationship when one person's job is to manage and mitigate for the mental place of the other rather than true authenticity and balance? How can we spend almost a quarter of our life together in a place where the other 3/4 of our life is going to be put to the fire?
ETA some notes for info: She's 34, I'm 35. Kids are 8, 10, 12. We've done a lot of therapy, both individual and couples, with the most recent engagement ending back in January. She has not seen a psychiatrist or been prescribed any psychiatric meds to this point, and has also not yet tried birth control. She is working with her GP and has gotten a lot of bloodwork and labs and seen various specialists related to her cycle and what comes with it.