Dear Coleen: Husband brings up my past when we have an argument

The woman told Coleen: "I don’t need to justify myself, I’m starting to resent him."

Dear Coleen

I feel like I’m at a crossroads in my marriage and could really use some advice. I’ve been married for eight years and we have a five-year-old daughter.

The past few years have been stressful – raising a child, Covid and money worries – but we’ve struggled through.

We argue a lot, though, and every time we do, my husband brings up the past to hurt me.

Before we got together, I blew up my best friend’s marriage by sleeping with her husband. This obviously happened a while before I met my husband but he uses it to score points and the message I get is that I’m a bad person who makes bad choices and can’t be trusted.

Why is he so fixated on this when I didn’t even know him when it happened?

I don’t feel I need to justify myself to him and his attitude is making me resent him and not want to be with him.

We do love each other but this meanness is totally out of line in my opinion and has nothing to do with our issues or our relationship. What can I do and can we move forward?

Coleen says

I think a lot of people do this when they just want to win an argument. If they think they’re in the wrong or losing and things are getting heated, it stops being about the issue and becomes about hurting each other and winning. I think that’s what your husband is doing.

It shows a lack of emotional intelligence. In future, if he brings up the past, walk away.

Tell him you’ll talk about the real issues later but you won’t talk about ­something that happened years ago before you were even together. The thing to get across to him is that if you always end up arguing over the past, you’ll never move forward.

You need to find a way to communicate better and a good way to start would be not to have an ­important discussion when you’re angry because, when you’re angry, it’s easy to lash out.

Have the discussion in the morning when your daughter is at school or in the evening when she’s in bed.

And start positively by pointing out the good things – you’ve been together eight years, you’ve overcome tough times, you have a lovely daughter and you can get through this, but you have to do it together. Tell him you’re afraid of getting to a point where you can’t fix things.

If you’ve reached a point where you can’t listen to each other, then you could try counselling.

Think of it as having a mediator, who can help you listen to each other.

Maybe this thing from your past plays on his mind and comes out when he’s angry and this is something he could work through in counselling.

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