I think that is what scares the bejesus out of my DH about me really. He has never known true unconditional love. His mother's love was super conditional, "Mommy dearest loves you honey, just so long as you do x,y, and z and never buck up and never question Mommy," BM, well, she never loved DH, she just used him, and he never loved her. I come along, he falls hard, as do I, and we are each others life boats out of feeling all alone. I have loved before and I have known what it is like to have a parents unconditional love. With DH, love is something to be used as barter. Love is something that can be dangled in front of you and then taken away at the slightest infraction. His mother is a religious nut and warped him.

My family and I have been thru so much. My closest life long bond is with my sister and yes, we can fight, say awful thing, treat each other like shit, but in the end, it does not matter, we get over it and the love is still there and would fight to the death for each other. She is my blood, the closest thing I have to my own self. We have no one else but us in that regard. That being said, when I joined my husband in matrimony, I felt the same way about him. He is my husband, my family. I would have done anything for him. Operative words being WOULD HAVE. Not anymore. I love him desperately or I would have been long gone a long time ago, but I am done doing and taking anything for him or from him. I am at that breaking point.

Your Dh sound so much like mine. He says he will go to counseling with me but I have no faith in that as he is also the master of empty promises. He does not want to examine his own shortcomings. It would be too hard to blame others if he did. He does not want to accept responsibility because then he would be asked to make a change.

I do a lot of selective talking and listening these days just to save myself the misery. I know he loves me but I don't think he gets what that means either.

Recently, when I was talking with my sister about the collateral damage caused by some of the things DH has said to me in anger, she just said 'sometimes people say horrible things in arguments, they don't really mean them'. On the one hand I was oddly taken aback by what a pragmatic comment that was, but on the other my sister has no experience of the stress and distress that stepparenting brings. Sometimes those things that weren't meant cut so deep in terms of disrespect for your efforts that its hard to write them off as not meant. My DH bottles stuff up to avoid arguments and because confiding doesn't come easily. The trouble with doing that is that it creates more pressure and when the lid comes off the situation is so highly charged that it ends up as derogatory and irrational comments instead of any kind of constructive or thought out discussion.