I love my husband with everything I have. But at the same time, I don’t know if I’m healthy enough to maintain our relationship.
He cusses all the time, and I generally don’t cuss as much. I’m not like some puritan, but I just don’t cuss very much.
When he cusses in any sort of negative way, it’s incredibly triggering. I feel so small, like I’m a little kid again with all those horrible things being said and done. He knows all this, but he still doesn’t stop cussing.
I try to just let it go, but sometimes it’s just too much. Especially when it’s directly at me, my brain just shuts down. Today, we were doing something pretty frustrating, and he started throwing around the cussing again. I started getting triggered, but tried not to say anything. Eventually, I start shutting down because it’s too much, and he notices that I’m acting different. He can never tell when I’m scared, he always thinks I’m mad for some reason. So he starts getting real snippy with me, which makes me shut down even further. Eventually he cussed directly at me, basically I handed something to him from too far away. It hurt his back to reach that far, so he snapped at me and said “that shit hurts!”
That was pretty much my breaking point, brain function stopped entirely and all I could do was stand there mindlessly. But then he started hammering me with questions, “why are you doing this? Why are you acting this way?” And all I can do is half heartedly say that I was just trying to hand him the object. I was standing too far away because I was scared of him, but of course if I’d said that, everything would get much worse. So I just stand there. We move on and finish our task, and he goes to the bathroom and I take the opportunity to cry and get all the terror and hurt out of my system.
I know that he just doesn’t understand, he can’t read my emotions so he doesn’t understand that I’m afraid. It’s hard to change habits, especially stuff that comforts you, so I get that cussing when he’s mad isn’t some switch he can flip. It just hurts so much, I’m so sick of having to cope with fear constantly. He deserves someone stronger, who can handle something as simple as some bad words. My chest aches, I hate that feeling of seeing him as all those monsters from my past. He’s not those people, but my broken mind warps him into them when he scares me. I just wish I could scrub my brain clean and be normal. I’ll never get to be the strong, well adjusted person I could have been, and I hate how much it haunts me every single day. I hate being triggered by the person I love, because I know that it’s the last thing he wants to do. I just want to run away and hide, and never be seen by another person ever again.