What does it mean when your 'loving' spouse is more rude and disrespectful to you than he is to perfect strangers?

I feel like I'm watching the slow deterioration of my marriage and I try to communicate with him but he wont; he shuts down. I think he's lying to me about something again but I can't guess what and when I asked him who he was texting earlier he got super defensive about it.

Then when I asked him why... why he works so hard to hide things if there is nothing to hide he said, "because I like to see you make a fool out of yourself."

How can someone love you if they want to see you look and feel stupid? I feel like I'm at the end of a horribly painful epiphany in which I figure out that you can't love someone that you don't respect.

That this last time, it didn't even hurt. It should hurt, right?

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ozgirl512 · 26-30, F

Yes, it should... But I think we grow calluses to protect ourselves ... Might be time to bring in a councillor to get to the heart of the issue .. I think what you're seeing and fearing are just symptoms of something else ... Good luck

Angelfire21 · 36-40, F

@ozgirl512 That's my big fear. That it is in my imagination. He has spent a lot of years conditioning me to assume that when he gets caught, it's just my crazy but we have various things in our history that are pretty clear.

It's amazing what you can get used to.

ozgirl512 · 26-30, F

@Angelfire21 true.. what they call the salami approach .. Just thin slices of reality stripped away that you never really notice... Maybe you need a break from each other to do some thinking ... Hard as it may sound ..