Testing absolutes

In class when we talked about destructive games, it definitely hit a chord for me. I was married when I was 23 and divorced at age 28. Looking back, I do not think that my husband actually loved himself and definitely had issues with his family of origin. He used to play the "what if game". He would set up scenarios of life possibilities and then make me answer what I thought would do. As this continued, if a situation that he described came up he would pin me to that answer "You said you would do this if this happen!" He kept trying to push me into the behavior he wanted he wanted, and in that way I would prove to him that I loved him. I was in school at the time to become an x-ray tech. He was fired from a position and he felt that I should stop school and go back to work. I had 9 months to go out of the 24month program. So I took out a student loan, trying to get us through until he got a job. For the next year, I had to deal with a pouty child in a grownup's body. We ended up in counseling for the next two years. He could not see that my going to school was about making life better for us financially. He just took it as a sign that I did not love him enough to sacrifice what he thought I wanted and loved (school) for him and that I did not mean what I said about being with him in sickness and health, poorness and wealth, etc. He felt that he was always under stress working to support us, while I was in school, and that I should want to relieve him of that stress. The counselor tried to make him see what he was doing, but he would nor or could not get this neediness and game playing under control and whe drifted further and further apart, until we were two strangers living in the same house.
One thing I would recommend is couples taking something like the FOCCUS premarital testing and actually paying attention to where you may have troubles . We took it but we discounted what it was telling us. I honestly beleive that the best way to prevent a divorce is to lay all the cards on the table, and if we cannot work things out - DONT GET MARRIED. He and I both had expectations of what each other's role was supposed to be in the marriage, but we had not told each other. Both of us were disappointed when the other one did not fill that role. I will be better able to spot some of the games in my future client with the knowledge that this class is giving us, along with the things I have observed through my life and the lives of those around me.