Thanks for all your comments, I really appreciate it, and it was very useful. Today was a lot better than last night. He approached me in the morning a calm, loving, and forgiving way, and it actually melted my heart. I just felt a lot better after that (because I was still contemplating not being with him). We do argue about the same things, so maybe identifying those would be helpful. I just don't know how to stay calm in the moment when he says something I do not like. I start raising my voice, and being so aggressive, it's like I can't control it because he hurts me. Then he apologizes right away and asks me to forget about it, and I try but it takes a few hours.
It sounds to me like you are wanting a divorce mainly because of some of our own personality, communication, and anger issues. It also sounds like the chances of your having found a husband better at dealing with these things was probably pretty low. You need to work on your own anger issues. Maybe he's got some things he could learn to know how to relate to you better, but you haven't given a lot of detail about those things.
It would really frustrate me if, when I got into some little disagreement with my wife, that she starts talking about divorce. For one thing, it shows a lack of commitment to him. He may think you love him so little or care so little for him, that you want to divorce him. Basically, your thought process in thinking of divorce seems to be that you are treating your own temporary feelings of anger or frustration as more important than your relationship with him. That could be a very hurtful thing to him. It also seems to show a lack of commitment to the Lord. If you know that when you marry your husband, you are supposed to stay married no matter what your emotional state, why would you throw out the 'D-word.' You've got to stop using the D-word in your marriage and really commit to being married to your husband.
I would imagine that the fact that your husband is committed to being married to you and dismisses these suggestions of divorce probably is comforting to you, makes you feel safe, and makes you feel like your marriage is staying together. It probably puts a feeling of stability into the relationship, or at least makes you feel more confident about the relationship, and gives you confidence that you are staying together. At least, if you suggest divorce one day, and he doesn't go along with it, the next day when you are calm, you probably feel safer. But think of the emotional turmoil that you cause him by suggesting it when you get angry. Think of how unstable it makes him feel? It can make him feel that you are uncommitted and that you don't really love him. It's good if a husband can be an emotional rock for his wife, but men have feelings, too.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't sound like he's going out of his way to hurt you, but he says things that you don't like that seem hurtful. I hope that's the case rather than him saying something intentionally to hurt you for no reason other than to hurt you. Sometimes difficult, but necessary conversations can be hurtful. And people can say hurtful things unintentionally.
If he doesn't believe in marriage counseling, respect that. But he may be open to other things. Some people are open to meeting with a pastor but not a psychologist or trained marriage counselor. He could be open to Sunday school class, Bible study, or Christian retreat focused on marriage. Your going to counseling alone could help. Some counselors teach communication techniques, how to focus emotions, and useful skills like that.
Then he apologizes right away and asks me to forget about it, and I try but it takes a few hours.
I can relate to this. My wife takes longer to cool down that I do. She's actually gotten a lot better about this over time, which is good. I can remember several years ago, we'd have a discussion where we disagreed about something and she'd get hot under the collar. I'd wonder why we couldn't disagree without her being angry. If I got a little irritated or upset during a discussion, I usually cool down in five or ten seconds. But she'd take a lot longer. I didn't understand why she didn't cool down right away.
Finally, it occured to me that the Bible says not to let the sun go down on your wrath. My dad's advice after our wedding, which wasn't bad, was not to go to bed angry. But the passage doesn't say that. It says not to let the sun go down on your wrath. A lot of couples argue after 10 o'clock at night because they get cranky when they are tired. I used to try to resolve conflicts before bedtime. But it doesn't say that. It says let the sun go down. We both still have some energy at sundown. If my wife is upset at night, I let her sleep it off sometimes now without pushing too much to reconcile. Of course, that is extremely rare these days. But the principle I've learned is I give her some space to sort out here feelings.
Several years ago, when my wife was pregnant with our last child, she got to be rather hard to get along with. She'd get upset over small stuff, and then she'd be real sensitive to things I said. I put the dishes in the dish washer one time, and she rudely bumped me aside and started putting them in her way. I stood there aghast at how disrespectful that was. It occured to me that I hadn't been praying consistently for her about this trait and decided to do so.
She kept getting upset over really small stuff. She was carrying our child, and I knew there were hormonal issues. One time we were talking at night and I said something so unoffensive, so normal that I couldn't see why it upset her. But she was upset about it. It was something so unremarkable I can't remember what I said. I wish I'd have written it down. But I was surprised when I couldn't find her in the apartment and looked out the window and the van was gone. She called me from her older Filippina church friend's house. She said she'd talk to her friend and spend the night and pick up the kids in the morning. I said okay. Her friend had convinced her to call. This was a godly older woman she was speaking with, btw.
A few days before, my wife had told me about a word of knowledge she'd gotten for a woman in her Bible study group, and then how the woman said something that showed that what the Lord had told her was spot on. So I prayed and told the Lord if He could talk to her about these other things, He could speak to her about the respect and other (I Peter 3-related) issues in our marriage. I had along detailed list of about 7 things I hadn't really felt free to discuss with her, really detailed stuff, even stuff like asking God to show her how the way her dad and step-mom interacted caused her to think I had to act a certain way in how we interacted with each other. It was really detailed stuff I was praying. I also had this faith that was unusally strong at the end of the prayer, when I prayed that the scripture says that if we ask according to His will, we know He hears us, that I knew it was God's will for His daughter not walk holy in these areas, so I knew He'd do what I asked.
My wife was going to this 'life change' class at church that was meant to root out deep-seated issues in people's lives. They had a Bible study at a table, same gender groups, and a speaker each week. One week, they were dealing with anger. My wife told herself she didn't have an anger problem. The woman at the table said, "If you get angry at the way your husband does dishes, you probably have an anger problem". She may have listed a few other issues that really hit the nail on the head for my wife.
It seemed like every time I'd talked to my wife for several weeks, we'd argued and bickered. After she got back from the Bible study, she asked me to sit on the couch next to her. Oh, no, I didn't feel like fighting about something. Wait a minute, she's got a nice sweet expression on her face. I sat down next to her. She started off telling me I was a good husband and she was sorry for how she'd treated me.
I'd prayed in faith, but I was still overwhelmed by the results. She took me through the list of about 5 of the seven thigns I'd prayed. She told me that the Lord had spoken to her about several things. I'd prayed a paragraph and she had about two pages worth of things to say about each point I'd prayed. Over the next few weeks, she mentioned the Lord speaking to her about the other two points I'd prayed.
I wrote this up in something with a title along the lines of 'Amazing answers to prayer' in a post around 2012 that I made in this forum. Some of the contents of my prayer would probably be deemed 'off topic' due to the forums restrictions that have been placed on discussing the Biblical responsibilities of wives in marriage.
Anyway, after that, my wife had much less of a struggle with anger and disrespect. We argued a lot less. She also learned to forgive or drop small stuff, or whatever you want to call it, a lot more quickly and easily. She used to get upset when disagreeing with me about something or push to have her own way more before this happened. After, she was a lot easier to get along with. She went through a couple of weeks when I'd see her standing in the house crying about soemthing. I'd ask her why. Then she'd tell me she remembered saying some mean thing to me and ask for my forgiveness. It was a time of repentence and transformation for her.
She also told me she had so much more peace after getting past some of her anger issues. We had a time of renewing our relationship. I remember staying up with her until 1 or 2 AM just talking and enjoying each other's company.