Can I please get some advice from the ladies?
I don’t particularly want to share this publicly and hope things shared in this community are at least not publicly viewable (without being logged in here) but I’ve been struggling with something in my life that I don’t know know my way through anymore. I keep praying to god that I will find a way, and I keep getting pulled back into this same challenge that has felt like it’s the main thing blocking me in my life right now. The challenge is that my wife won’t stop yelling at me. And it feels like the further I’ve moved on my journey of healing myself and my past the more adamant she gets that there are things wrong with me that need to be fixed. For example that I have terrible ADHD and keep forgetting things—like, this morning I forgot to put the towels in the laundry. I don’t blame my wife for being frustrated living with me because I do have terrible adhd and I struggle with executive function while she’s the queen of executive function. It cuts into a deep wound from her perspective about how “women carry all of the burden while men just expect them to do everything,” and she’s right that women are expected to do more than men in many ways and do have an unfair burden placed upon them in society. But it’s like she sees me as the source of every burden that’s ever been placed on her and the reason for every ounce of anger in her body. I keep requesting that she stop yelling because it leads me to feel like I live in an unsafe environment, and I then have to invest ongoing effort into regulating and calming my nervous system. I grew up with an abusive stepfather (after losing my father to suicide), and so the main thing I am healing in my life is my nervous system—the constant feeling that I am not safe. I try to tell my wife that if she were to stop yelling and being angry at me all the time it would help me be a better and more thoughtful partner, because I wouldn’t need to be constantly investing my energy in regulating myself. But then she says that I’m telling her she’s not allowed to be angry—which isn’t true, it’s about expressing anger in ways that are healthy, and not blaming all of it on me. When I make this sort of request, she also tells me that I am blaming my problems on her. She keeps telling me that she will stop being angry at me when I start “showing up more”—is how she puts it. Yet from my perspective, having a spouse who is always angry at me is a major part of what is standing in the way of me showing up better in the relationship. I feel trapped in this dynamic, have at times felt like I’m losing my mind because I have been open to looking at myself from every angle, but however I look at myself it never leads to resolving the issues and so I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know if I’m just being lazy like she constantly implies, and childish like she often says, but I feel like I’m working as hard as I can at being a better person, and partner. But it’s never good enough.