Dear Roe,
My husband and I are in our early 40s. I love him, but I feel like we’re stuck in a cycle that’s slowly poisoning our relationship. Whenever something big and difficult comes up – money, future plans, even how we handle stress – we avoid talking about it. Instead, we pretend everything is fine until one of us inevitably explodes, usually me. By the time I bring up what’s been bothering me, I’m so anxious and resentful that it comes out in a rush of anger, and he immediately gets defensive. Then it turns into a fight about how I’m always “rehashing old wounds” and making him the bad guy, rather than actually fixing anything. The worst of it happened last year when I found out he had been lying to me about money. He made some reckless financial decisions that affected both of us, and when I confronted him, he was remorseful – but only for a little while. Now, if I bring it up, he accuses me of holding it over his head. But how am I supposed to just “move on” when the financial betrayal shook my trust in him? At the same time, I know I’m not handling this well either. Because I’m scared of his defensiveness, I let things fester until I reach a breaking point. Then I explode, he shuts down, and we’re right back where we started. I don’t want to be in a relationship where I’m walking on eggshells, afraid to talk about my own feelings. But I also don’t want to turn every conversation into a battle. How do we break this cycle?
I will give you some advice, but patterns that are this enmeshed take a lot of time and effort to undo. On top of the financial betrayal, you and your husband would likely benefit from some couple’s therapy, as the focused attention could help you look at the existing patterns, underlying emotions, and give you ongoing support as you learn some tools for how to handle conflict better.
Right now, both of you are prioritising the avoidance of discomfort. Neither of you are good at addressing big issues; he’s not open to hearing about the impact of his past behaviour, and you’re not able to express your emotions when they’re at manageable levels out of fear of disrupting the peace. But you don’t actually have peace. You have a bedrock of distrust, fear, anxiety and unmet needs, over which is a thin facade of peace. This isn’t just about communication styles, it’s about emotional safety, and until you both address that, you’re going to have issues.
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Regarding the financial betrayal, your husband needs to give you space to bring it up when necessary. It impacted you, probably on many levels, and true accountability means sitting with the discomfort, hearing your pain and actively working to rebuild trust. That doesn’t mean you get to attack him endlessly, but you are allowed to express your continuing anxieties or the impact of his actions. Revisiting an old issue to simply evoke guilt or punish or lash out isn’t healthy – but not all revisiting is just rehashing. When we revisit topics to process them, to address their enduring impacts, and to ask for reassurance, revisiting becomes repair. When we are allowed to bring up past issues, express our emotions and be heard non-defensively by our partner, we build trust and intimacy. When there is trust, openness and mutual respect – the respect needed to bring up an old issue without lashing out or blaming, and the respect needed to listen – it becomes safe to process old hurts, as many times as needed.
But you and you partner are caught in a cycle where that type of communication isn’t possible. I have no doubt that your husband’s actions have caused a huge rift in the trust and safety of your relationship. But there are two of you co-creating the dynamic of conflict here, and you’ll only be able to solve it by addressing both of your roles in it.
I’m guessing that your partner is feeling guilt and shame around his actions, and so it feels vulnerable and scary for him to hear about how you are still affected by it. He thus reacts to you raising the topic by becoming defensive and shutting down, leading to you feeling unheard, unheld and neither respected nor reassured. You then are left alone with your emotions, until you can’t take it any more and explode – which leads to you becoming more angry, extreme, blaming and disrespectful when you do finally address what’s bothering you. When you hold everything in and then finally let it all out in an explosion, it’s easy to generalise negatively and spiral into extremes such as “You never listen”, “You always dismiss me”, “I can’t trust you at all”. This extreme “explosion” of emotion then proves to your partner that whenever the topic is raised, it’s going to be an angry, blaming discussion. This heightens his defensiveness around ever addressing the issue – and the cycle continues.
While your pain is valid, this pattern makes it even harder for a productive conversation to take place. Before you address something big, give yourself time to regulate. Go for a walk, journal, breathe or talk to a trusted friend. The goal isn’t to suppress your feelings, but to give them enough space so you can express them in a way that serves you.
Even better, instead of waiting until you’re on the verge of an explosion, try setting a regular time to check in with each other – before things reach a breaking point. This could be a weekly or biweekly conversation where you both get to voice concerns in a calm, proactive way. The goal is to make tough conversations feel normal, not catastrophic.
Both of you are going to need to work on recognising your self-protective mechanisms. When we’re in conflict with a partner, we’re often choosing between two options: connection and protection. Protective measures are designed to keep us from feelings of discomfort, upset, guilt, fear, and shame. They can look like defensiveness, shutting down, being critical or blaming, intellectualising, physically distancing, invalidating, jumping to conclusions or engaging in black-or-white binary narratives of right and wrong. It sounds like both of you are engaging in protective measures right now.
The other options is to engage in connecting measures, which could include empathising, validating, expressing vulnerability, taking responsibility for your role, asking for a break when overwhelmed, re-initiating the conversation, apologising, listening, expressing curiosity about the other person’s experience, and offering the benefit of the doubt.
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Your husband has a lot of work to do in this arena, to be able to sit with his discomfort and guilt and the ongoing impact of his actions. But there is work that you can do here, too, on creating a space that feels less dangerous for him to sit with that discomfort. Shifting toward connection doesn’t mean excusing his behaviour. It means taking a step towards the kind of communication you want in this relationship. But for this relationship to work, he needs to follow you there.
If he remains defensive, if he refuses to acknowledge how his actions have affected you, and if you’re constantly having to manage your own emotions and his, then it’s time to ask yourself whether this a relationship where you can truly be seen and heard. Again, a couple’s counsellor will be invaluable here. Remember that you shouldn’t have to choose between expressing your feelings and keeping the peace. Love should allow room for honesty, growth and safety. You both deserve that.
