silencedu,
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I remember the days I treated my wife exactly the same as you are being treated.? I also remember the days when my wife retaliated against that treatment.? I understand your frustration; as those were some very lonely and dark times.
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It wasn't until years later that I realized why I was treating my wife badly.? There were two main reasons: 1) My Shame 2) I didn't trust myself.?
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My Shame made me a victim, as soon as, my wife called my behavior into question.? When I made myself the victim I lashed out at the very person I truly loved.? Not because I was mad at my wife, but because I wanted something from her that I couldn't even give myself.? This is where self-trust comes in; in order for my wife to trust me I have to trust myself, be authentic, transparent, and trustworthy.? Since I couldn't trust myself until I truly learned trust's value.? I couldn't be trustworthy.? So I embarked on a personal journey to discover the importance of trust in every facet of life (Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey helped). Once I learned what trust meant and why it was so important I began to see just how bad I hurt my wife.? This humanized my wife again, and had me look at her like a person instead of a mean and ornery object.? In other words compassion reappeared in my heart.? My shame had kept it out for so long.
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When I looked at her as a person the compassion from within me made her feel better about herself again. She didn't commit to trust me right away; however, she saw something was begining to change.
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I tried for a long time to pretend we had a good marriage, and the only thing wrong was my addiction.? However, it wasn't until I realized that it was my addiction that made our marriage bad.? It was all fruit of the poison tree per se.
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It takes two to work through this.? However, the intial steps were:
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1. Make God's word and Jesus Christ first and foremost.? Jesus was my very first accountability partner and He will remain my primary partner for the rest of my life. Without Him I wouldn't be here discussing these things. He made it possible.
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2. Get separate counselling for ourselves (for me to work on my shame and trustworthiness) (for her to deal with the devastation I caused to her self-esteem) ------ I could sense low self-esteem when you said, "you have to be when you with a witch." Please know you are a child of God - not - a witch!
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3. Get counselling together (It was easier to discuss the heavy subjects with a third party). (We also had to give each other permission to be brutally honest without retaliation after the session) don't get me wrong we still had fights afterwards but it gave us a boundary to work on.
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4,? Work on improving ourselves separately: Spiritually (sticking to daily devotion and reading God's word), Talking a walk (I take walks and just discuss things with the Lord), Read or just seek a place to be silent and pray....etc..
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5. Commit to spending at least 20 minutes a day actually listening to each other; with no judgment, condemnation, or little pokes and jabs.? (its tempting, but when we do these things we really are not listenting)?
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Number (5) was very very very very important. 20 minutes doesn't seem like much but it was magnanamous!!! I'm talking 20 minutes of no distractions (like TV, Radio, Kids, Dogs etc..) Truth be told - it drove me crazy - but the more I seen my wife as a person instead of problem.? It was all worth it 
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You know the old cliche' "Marriage is work" Newsflash it is not a cliche, its reality.
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My wife said it best, "It wasn't until I stopped obsessing over my husband, and started taking care of myself (first and foremost - hard since I'm a mom too) that I began to heal, grow, and feel better about who I am. The more stable and secure I became; the better the two of us got along.? I thought to myself we've hurt together now let's heal together!"?
Source: http://www.focusonlinecommunities.com/thread/25637
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