Am i asking too much or is my partner rude?

My husband told me recently he was going to hang out with a local friend he often goes to see. It got very late and I heard nothing from him. Tried calling and texting. Stayed up all night thinking maybe he was dead or injured. Logged into our cell phone account to see if I could find any recent location and discovered he had talked to someone on the phone that night but he was like 2 hours away from home at that time. And also saw a phone number he was spending hours on the phone with every day. I had been confronting him about his secrecy prior to that and he kept telling me it was this friend or that friend, or he was just taking the dog on a long walk or having a fire out back. He finally called me back in the morning and I yelled at him. He told me he was randomly with two friends from longer ago and had gotten drunk and passed out, and hadn't told me about these plans because I had a heart surgery a few weeks prior and health concerns and he didn't want to stress me out. He told me the phone number was a girl that he related to on trauma factors and that he views like a little sister. He said he didn't tell me because he was caught up in his trauma spilling of events he didn't share with a single person since they occurred to him 35 years ago, due to feelings of shame and anger, and that he thought I would view it as emotional cheating. I told him it really could be viewed as emotional cheating and in principle, honesty shouldn't be dependent upon the outcome... lying isn't justified because I would be upset by the truth. Since then, he's been more open with me and tells me when that girl is calling, talks to me about their conversations, answers her calls when I'm present. I talked to him about boundaries and things I'm uncomfortable with or bothered by and he changes those things. Especially because I have trauma from an emotionally abusive ex, having him lie to me when I directly questioned him about what I was perceiving or experiencing and telling me those experiences weren't real, when they actually WERE real, has really messed me up. Now when he wants to hang out with a friend, I don't trust it. But I'm handling these feelings in destructive OCD ways. I spend literally the entire time he's gone thinking and thinking and thinking about what if he's lying or what he might be doing instead of what he said. I call and text him intermittently and feel like all of my obsessive thoughts are confirmed if he doesn't answer right away. I'm always checking the phone history. The driving toll history. Scrutinizing everything. I cannot get out of this mindset. It's like this horrible mixture of emotional flashbacks and OCD. I don't want to live like this. I want to work on my relationship in productive ways. I want to be able to use my own time while my husband is gone. Even if he lied to me and is somewhere other than he said, I don't want to lie in bed just thinking and thinking and thinking for entire days and nights. I'm not sure what I'm really asking here. This is just the only place where I feel like I can share this without people thinking "wow she's crazy".

My all-consuming compulsion is to coddle someone who shows opposition to my boundaries. My boyfriend and I love each other dearly. In fact, he's going to propose soon. But we're working through some really difficult things. When conversations get difficult for him, or he feels the slightest bit of guilt, he totally freezes. He can't talk or make eye contact for awhile. I've been incredibly compassionate about his coping mechanism and his needs (he grew up in an emotionally abusive household), but at the same time, I have needs that must be met, too. The conversations in which he freezes up are ALWAYS ones in which I'm expressing discomfort/hurt about something. What I NEED is to feel validated, to have the space to feel hurt/uncomfortable WITHOUT judgement. Because I am super attentive to him and always ALWAYS validate his hurt, even if it affects me personally. But whether it's big or small, he KEEPS getting really hurt and affected by the things I bring up. His mom is not nice to me, she hasn't been since we met. He's not responsible for her actions, but he IS responsible for defending me when his mom is being super judgemental and rejected me outright, multiple times, even though she didn't even know who I was. I just automatically wasn't good enough. I should be able to trust my boyfriend with valid concerns of mine/expect him to apologize when he's caused discomfort, and he unintentionally invalidates me by guilt-tripping me like crazy. And I've talked to him about this stuff, which is SO HARD. I explain what is and isn't helpful. I brought up therapy, because I can't make him go, but he says he's been trying to ease off his coping response for years to no avail. For this and many other reasons I think he needs professional help (I'm seeing a therapist myself. We both got chronic mental illness that needs addressing somehow). I explained my feelings, I explained what I need. He's starting to try harder to give my emotions space, and say things that validate me. I appreciate it cuz I know the freezing response is something he's trying to fight. It's SO HARD for me not to fawn. My OCD is screaming at me, telling me that I HAVE TO accommodate my boyfriend's feelings, oh I must have hurt him SO BAD, oh imagine how horrible things will be if I DON'T give him reassurance!! But this isn't about him. These conversations with him start because a boundary of MINE has been crossed!! Even if he has a whiny reaction, or has a freezing response that stems from trauma. It STILL causes me too much emotional distress and places blame on me in an unfair way. For example (this is a BRIEF explanation), I've made it clear that I don't want dogs. I've never even had dogs and he knows this. And my boyfriend got really pouty after I reiterated this once, because he thought his dog back home would come live with us after we got married. Mind you, he's NEVER brought this up with me before. I had no idea he wanted his dog to move in with us. The dog has only ever lived at his parents' house. His parents assumed I'd be fine taking on the responsibility of an OLD, SMELLY DOG!!! WITHOUT EVEN ASKING ME!!! And when I explained my frustration about this assumption to my boyfriend while ALSO sweetly acknowledging how SPECIAL his dog is to him, he broke down and shut down!! It's SO FRUSTRATING when he does that, it's so stressful, it's SUCH a burden on me when my boyfriend doesn't have the capacity to validate my feelings the way I do his! Holding back and not compulsively fawning is SO HARD!!!! But I gotta stand firm---it's NOT fair that I have to edit my true feelings because he's not equipped to be more emotionally present for me.

Hi all. I’m writing this because I can’t stop spiraling and I don’t know who to talk to without feeling judged. I (27F) have OCD, so emotional safety and perceived red flags are something I hyper-analyze. My boyfriend (24M) and I are in a long-distance relationship, Im just on vacation right now . We’ve had our ups and downs, but overall, it’s a loving connection. That’s why this particular moment is bothering me so much. Last night, we were on a video call, flirting. At one point I said, “Go to the bathroom first,” before things got more intimate (he has a roommate and wanted privacy). After a few minutes, he came back and said, “Okay I’m alone.” But I hesitated. I was acting playfully shy and holding back. That’s when he said something like, “You said if I went to the bathroom, you’d show me something. This isn’t my (my name)—she’s not shy with me.” He said it smiling, and I was smiling too, but later it started to gnaw at me. My OCD kicked in. I started spiraling: Did that cross a line? Was that pressuring? I brought it up to him, and while he tried to be supportive, I could tell he was caught off guard. He said something like, “I’m trying my best to support you, but I feel sad that you would think I’d ever pressure you like that.” And then, in what he admitted later was a “dumb joke,” he said: “I’m not like your dad—I won’t get mad if you say no or disagree with something.” (For context: I’ve told him before about my father’s anger issues from my childhood. It’s a very sensitive topic.) I got upset and told him never to bring my father into things like that. He immediately apologized and said, “I realized it right after—that the thing I said as a joke to get you out of overthinking was serious. I’m so sorry again, and I feel really bad right now. I respect you and I respect everyone in your family.” After that, he was very gentle. We stayed on the call for a while longer, I felt heard, and we ended things with “I love you.” But today I still feel emotionally sore. Not because I think he’s abusive or manipulative—he isn’t—but because I felt something shift. He saw me cry like that for the first time, and now I feel exposed and over-analytical. My OCD brain is stuck on what if this was a red flag? Even though he apologized and explained himself, I still feel unsettled. What’s making it harder is that I haven’t even told my best friend. I usually tell her everything, but I’m scared to bring this up. I know she already has reservations about him (she’s very protective of me), and I feel like if I share this, she’ll just add it to the “reasons he’s not right for you” list. But I don’t want her judgment—I want clarity. I’m scared that sharing it will make things worse instead of better, and that’s an isolating feeling. I want this relationship to work. I don’t usually cry like that in front of people. I don’t usually feel safe enough to. And he did show up in the end. But now I don’t know how to trust myself—is this a moment to work through together, or am I ignoring something important? Would love some kind, grounded perspective. Thanks for reading.