Not actual self harm, but urges to self harm are discussed. Mostly just seeking support/venting, though. 

Yesterday my wife and I had a giant fight about the fact that I want to spend today with my best friend. See, she had given me permission to go, and then a few hours later she got really sad about it and also needed to tell me how sad it made her. This is a recurring theme (which I pointed out— she didn’t appreciate that) in which I include her in my decision-making, seek and obtain her approval, and then she throws an emotional wrench in the plans.

It’s not that I don’t think she deserves to feel her feelings, at all. But what I needed her to understand is that giving me permission means those plans are a GO— I am telling the person/people I’m supposed to hang out with that it’s going to happen (which is quite rare, given the aforementioned theme— I usually don’t even bother asking if I can hang out with someone else). She doesn’t have friends—I mean seriously, she has zero social life, all of our social interactions revolve around the friendships I maintain—so when I leave, she’s 100% alone and feels very abandoned. 

When she tells me it’s upsetting her, my immediate reaction is to fix it and not go. This creates anguish for me because I’m bailing on the few people who still want to hang out with me despite my very disordered brain and my controlling marriage. 

What’s harder for me to deal with, though, is that she insists I keep my plans even though she’s upset. I can’t make her understand that the cognitive dissonance created by those mixed messages (she’s upset, I can fix it, but I’m being told not to fix it) is super triggering for me. When I tried to explain it to her last night, she told me that it was cruel. 

I don’t understand how to operate here. I don’t understand how telling her about my SI is cruel to her. Does this make sense to anyone else? Are there skills I should be using here that I’m not remembering because I’m too activated? How much of this is actually my fault? 

For background, I also have a PTSD diagnosis and am pretty sure this marriage is abusive 😬 at least according to my friends and providers...