In a previous blog post, I wrote about wives with BPD, NPD, or sociopathy, and just plain mistreatment of their husbands. What seems to be going on in these marriage dynamics is this:
The wife has unmet needs or trauma from childhood that were never resolved. She experiences the echoes of these unresolved issues in her marriage from time to time. Instead of voicing them in the marriage, she hides them, and instead looks for something to blame-shift onto her husband, maybe his porn addiction, his drinking, his too much time pursuing a hobby, or spending time with friends. Or she'll blame his lack of communication skills as the culprit, and say they need to go to couples counseling.
While they're at couples counseling though, she'll work to get the counselor on her side that her husband is the one with real problems beyond just normal lack of communication. If the counselor falls for it, the husband will be convicted of crimes he didn't commit, and the wife will be absolved that her unresolved childhood issues are not the problem, because she never told the counselor she had those childhood issues.
Of course this is a lie of omission, and the wife has just kicked the can down the road for when there's another blow up and the husband seeks counseling for whatever issue his wife and the previous counselor convicted him of in the first iteration of couples work. He'll work and work and work and resolve all his issues, and still won't be able to figure out why he blows up at her from time to time, or he'll long for a divorce because he has an unsolvable problem. The problem isn't with him though. She's hiding from him her unresolved childhood wounds that she knows play a starring role in their marriage problems and her behavior problems. His reactions to her behavior are normal. She's manipulating him and provoking him to anger so she can label him as "the problem". He's reacting as any sane person would when mistreated in such a way. That's why he can't get past switching between anger toward and complete detachment form his wife regardless of how much counseling. That's also why he can't truly get close to her. His reactions are normal to being mistreated, and he knows he's being mistreated by her, but he can't change her, so he keeps trying to change himself in hopes that it might change something in her. It doesn't. It won't. It can't.
So she keeps it a secret indefinitely and he suffers from tremendous loneliness and rejection for as long as it takes for her to finally choose to do something about all the unresolved hurt she's been carrying throughout her life. Sometimes it takes years. It often takes decades. There are things a husband can do to stop the bleeding, so he's not perpetuating his part of the cycle. Sometimes this has the effect of forcing her to confront her issues because she knows deep down inside that they're there, and the husband is no longer taking responsibility for them or enabling them.
