Hi — having trouble putting this into the model. I have been clear with my husband that I want to travel to see family members who are struggling and I want to be there for them. He put me off and told me not to talk about it (he has always disliked my family). I asked again and he says I’m nagging him. I want to just make the plans and go but I felt like I needed to let go and see what happened. While I was out last week he made all these plans for me to go visit my family and even handled air/hotel/rental car, etc. It was not exactly the timing but it ended up working well. I am grateful that he did all this as it made me know he understood my desires. I do not feel good about how it all went down. I feel controlled and even though he thinks he did everything to ‘make me happy I don’t feel happy about the process. I get to do the trip, which was the ultimate goal, but I would have rather we discussed planning together and worked it out as teammates. I often feel like a child getting a treat from a parent. When I express those sentiments, he disregards me as having ‘daddy issues.

I’m feeling a lot of anger from being in a marriage of almost 34 years which has these same issues come up over and over again. I asked, on the eve of our anniversary last August, for a divorce saying I didn’t think we were going in the same direction. He said that there were too many good things to be thankful for and he would try to do the things I was asking. He relented on me starting a business, which I have wanted to do for years, and that is starting to take off. He has also made some other changes. But overall, he is overbearing, not open generally to new ways of doing things and I feel stuck.