Husband's childhood trauma
I'm beginning to feel like my husband's childhood trauma is destroying our relationship. He dealt with a lot when he was a kid (abuse from his parents, violence on the streets, bullying, etc). I'm by no means blaming him for those awful things that happened to him. However, he's 30 years old and he's never gone to therapy or even confided in anyone about his past. I'm the only one who really knows about everything. When we first started dating he exhibited a lot of concerning behaviors and I came to the conclusion that he probably has Borderline Personality Disorder. I brought that up to him last year and he agreed that he probably did have it. Well, over the past year he's made some progress in different ways, but I don't think he can genuinely start to heal until he goes through some kind of therapy. I tried to get him to talk to someone a year ago and he refused. He said it wouldn't help. Then maybe three or four months ago, he took it upon himself to reach out to some therapists and try to schedule an appointment with one of them. I told him I was really proud of him for taking that step. Unfortunately, he never ended up going. A couple of therapists reached back out to him to schedule an appointment, but he never got back to any of them.
We got married a little over two months ago. We also moved into our first place together last month. We lived together for about a year prior to our marriage, but we were staying with his grandmother so we weren't "on our own" yet. Things have been rocky since moving into our apartment, which in my opinion is kind of expected. I feel like moving is always stressful, plus we just got married on top of it. It's an adjustment period. But his behavior has gotten worse. Any little thing I do that he doesn't like, he turns it into the biggest deal. And I could swear til I'm blue in the face that I'll change or work on whatever it is, but he refuses to believe me. Then we'll argue, he'll tell me that I'm exhausting and insufferable, he'll tell me that he's been through so much in his life and that I'm just making it worse. Then we'll talk things out and try to move forward, or at least I think we are. Then, boom, out of nowhere, he's pissed at me again.
I was minding my own business yesterday morning and out of nowhere he started an argument with me. I asked him what I did wrong. He said I'm the "root problem" so even if I didn't do something wrong in that specific moment, I'm the cause of his suffering in general. So he feels he has the right to lash out at me any time he pleases because I'm the one who "hurt" or "angered" him to begin with. We literally argued for 10 hours on and off yesterday. And the craziest part is that he was acting like everything was fine this past Friday, Saturday and part of Sunday. We had a huge argument last week but we talked about it and told each other what we needed to work on. Then yesterday, I was sitting on the couch doing my own thing and he decided to bring something up from that argument last week, totally out of the blue. And it just snowballed from there. Toward the end of the night, he literally told me that the only reason he kept arguing was so it would ruin my day off. He said I hurt him last week so he wanted me to have a bad day too. I feel like this is yet another example of his unresolved trauma putting strain on us.
I don't know if anyone else feels the same, but I feel like his reactions to things just aren't normal. When I hurt or anger him, I don't do it on purpose. I never have bad intentions, but he insists that I go out of my way to upset him. I don't. But then he decides that I deserve payback, so he says the worst things he can think of and literally ruins my day on purpose. He has this notion that I'm always out to get him. Meanwhile, I'm typically unaware that I'm even doing anything wrong until he brings it up to me. He says I have no self-awareness. Maybe that's something I need to work on more. But how could I be purposely hurting him if I have no self-awareness? To me that's contradictory, but he insists on it.
I really don't know what to do. He always says he struggles with things because of all of the trauma he's endured. I feel bad for that, I really do. But I have a hard time believing that him purposely ruining my day is a healthy response. He literally goes out of his way to hurt me- I don't do that to him. I feel like all of this stems from his childhood and I don't know what I can do about it.
Posted Oct 28, 2025, 11:51 AM UTC