Living in a dual nationality marriage - Aboriginal / White Caucasian

[Wombat*3995]

🙄  Hate to say for my first post....but I am experiencing trauma, living with an Indigenous Aboriginal man I married some 30 years ago......but right now, his excess baggage with his past trauma, he is being verbal in a dictatorial way, don't get me wrong, I have a tongue and I can speak.....Just quickly, I myself have taken 1 step forward as a person, I have made 1 step forward in strength and am trying to stand in my own strength and boldness of myself.....little bit hard, when hubby, bless him, he gets flustered, and caught up, in turn, turns to me and is a bit like.....say, he spells it out, do something what I say, right now, my way....in other words, he feels I need verbal directions daily in a authoritive kinda loud tone, a) I have hearing aids, but can hear, b) I'm his wife, and finally c)...I don't accept the bigatry or condescening tones, usually........so I'm in the process of finding the words to say, ie.  Hey A....look, I did hear you, and yes, your things will get done, please don't get upset....I will do them....don't worry.......sort of thing....has anyone else experienced this in a bi-racial marriage/relationship or just experienced what I've experienced from their life partner/boyfriend/girlfriend/sister/brother etc....??????  Thanks for reading my opening post, it is posted with due dilligence and care.  Thanks from Diane. 😎 🙊

[Croix]

Dear Diane~
I'd like to welcome you here to the Support Forum. It's not working properly at the moment, and I think that is the reason you have had to wait so long for a reply. It's not you, and it's not the subject matter of your post - just bad luck

OK, look first one can readily understand there is past trauma your husband would have had before. It can stay with one all their life.

You did say you had been together for 30 years, has always been this way?

I have PTSD and other problems relating to past trauma and one of the reactions was to be over-controlling and needing to be 'on top of' everything. This is extra hard on family. It is however well known symptoms

If anyone is being disparaged and told in exact terms how to do everything - with no reliance on the person to be a capable adult and do things in the right way anyway. Then I guess it is something one can only deal with for so long.

The long-term way of dealing with this is for you partner to have skillful medical care used ot dealing with trauma of the sort he has experienced. A GP, then a psychiatrist or psychologist.

Looking back to my past, I'm not sure anything anyone could have said would have halted me. It's a very strong compulsion, not based on logic. Arguing can just escalate things

May I suggest simply saying "I wont be spoken to that way" and walking off might help? I dunno, I hope so.

Do you have anyone to support you? A family member or a friend who you can talk about all this with ? They do not have ot fix everything, but just listen and let you know they care? Trying to cope with all this in isolation is not good.

I hope you come back and we can talk some more

Croix