Anger

Husband has been oddly good at taking my anger and not being defensive. But it's interesting, when he sometimes has enough, he tends to do something like self victimize. A behavior I recognize in myself as well. See both husband and I grew up with abusive parents, surprise surprise. My mother physically abused me and his mother, though not outright abusive was emotionally neglectful and fucking insane-- borderline, bipolar, and OCD/- hoarding type. She was way too into her hoarding, shopping, and being generally out of her fucking mind to pay much attention to husband. My father-in-law didn't stand up to her, just allowed a crazy person to lead the household. For that reason, husband learned to dissociate while she was raging and going nuts. Which was often. She also had no boundaries. In fact, when husband and I got together, we were at their house once (they live about a 7 hour drive away, we rarely see them) and husband was in the bathroom and his mother just walked in and started talking to him-- while he was taking a shit. He was 35 at the time. He just talked to her like there was nothing wrong with it. I once showered there and locked the door and she started pounding at the door and trying to get while I was showering. She's out of her fucking mind. So, we don't stay there anymore. If we're going to go visit them, we stay at a hotel. I should have compassion for her, being a shrink and all, but I fucking hate her. I hate husband's father too, for not taking care of husband and his sister. He just let shit happened. He should have left her and taken care of his kids. Or at least sent her away. She's out of her mind. You can't expose your children to that.
Anyway, I think my anger must be hard for husband. Sometimes he randomly starts to cry or say that his back hurts or he has a headache or he's grumpy about something totally unrelated to my anger. This is so I'll take care of him rather than be mad at him. I'm not sure quite what to do here. Usually I tell him that I'm still angry at him, but I'm open to chatting with him about what he's feeling or rubbing his back or getting him water and advil. He's aware that my process is challenging and probably more so than his own, me being the betrayed, he being the betrayer. But yet, it's hard for all of us. I found myself binge eating while reading some entries on the Junkies' Wives Club. That's a very old behavior for me, bingeing and restricting. I stopped myself and called husband and told him that I was eating handfuls of cashews and I needed to give him my grievances. He was amenable.
Husband isn't a bad guy. He's actually a good guy. But he's also a big fucking asshole for lying to me and doing this to me for two fucking years. He's an asshole for trying obsessively to have sex with other women, he's an asshole for choosing cybersex over me, he's an asshole for masturbating compulsively when he was supposed to be storing his sperm for baby making reasons. He's an asshole for having a sex addiction when he should have had more control. He's an asshole for avoiding his exams to run after women (18 year olds) on the internet, he's an asshole for limiting us financially because he was too busy stuck in his world.
He's trying now. He's on a path with his recovery. He has a sponsor and he goes to meetings every single day. He cooks dinner with me each night. He goes out and buys the ingredients, comes and picks me up at work and then we cook together at night. It's what I always wanted from him. I always asked him to come meet me at work because I work until 9 most nights and I don't like to walk home in the dark. He always acted like it was such a big deal and he was too busy. And if he did do it, he acted pissy and annoyed about it. It's because he was resentful that I was disturbing his acting out behaviors. And for that, he's an asshole too. I don't forgive him yet, and even though he's working a program, I'm not proud of him. I'm disgusted by him. I think he's vile and pathetic. But I love him and I think that at some point I'll be less angry and maybe in a place of forgiveness, if he can prove to me that he's trustworthy. He's been doing recovery for 6 weeks. He's been a sex addict for many many years, so he will have to do this for a long time before I can trust him again. Maybe decades.