Oh no no no…you know this man is insecure, so you are already schooling yourself in how to walk on eggshells before you are even married. You can’t make even simple requests, or even discuss a mundane desire like wanting paint a wall YOURSELF, without him getting upset at you or feeling you are manipulating him? He is using what he sees in other people’s marriages, which may not even be accurate by the way, to justify reacting badly to you. He automatically assumes that the relations that lead to husbands doing what wives request are negative.
This guy has major, severe issues with the concept of marriage and in the way he relates to you. I am comfortable saying, with all you have already posted, that this guy is not ready to get married.
Why are you willing to hem yourself in and accept these things? Why do you want to be married to a person you can’t discuss things honestly and rationally with? Believe me, issues way bigger than wall painting are going to come up. If you can’t talk about those without him accusing you of manipulating him, then how will you talk about the really serious stuff? Like when your financial base caves in after a job loss, or a child has a serious health issue, or you have to decide whether you should move, and to where? These are all things that have come up in my own very stable, open, and relatively calm married life. We don’t look for big issues, but they find us anyway. The only way we have gotten through them is because we can be open and express ourselves without reservation to each other. We don’t always see eye to eye, and there are things we sometimes do that set each other off, but we are not afraid to bring up any issue to each other. We know we can literally say anything to each other, including, when it’s needed, “you’re wrong” or “your attitude is damaging our family.” Do you think you could say that to your intended without risking him walking out on you? From your previous posts, I don’t think you could.
You need to do some serious evaluation here of whether this guy is someone you can really count on. When you hand power over your life and well-being to someone else, as you do in marriage, you must be able to completely trust that they are a person who will be worthy of having that much influence. You have to trust that even when things hit their worst, that person will be a support to you, not a further difficulty. You have to know that you will be facing everything together, not being immobilized by fighting between yourselves.
Whomever is doing your pre-marital counseling needs to know about this issue, and the fact that you have already started trying to change yourself to accomodate his behavior. I think they will also tell you that this is a huge red flag, and that you need to slow down and take the time to evaluate every part of this relationship to discern whether it should progress to marriage at all.
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