Thank you for all the replies. Tyler, I looked up "gaslighting" and found it very interesting, and I'll have to mull it over more. And ShortinSeattle, we did go through a few years of counseling, likely more than average, both personal and family, and we learned a lot about family and teamwork, but you pointing out that he is trying to be controlling again sounds very accurate -- one of the better counselors said a main problem was that we were all alphas (he used to travel a lot for work, usually in charge there, and I ran things at home to keep transitions smooth, but he'd want to be in charge when he was home, causing friction. Even our children were raised a bit too independent, taught to always question, learn, and think for themselves -- not conducive to following rules as a teenager -- maybe too much so then but they are smart, independent young adults now).
As far as the gambling, that's interesting, too. He's always acknowledged that he does have a more addictive personality than me, definitely more thrill-seeking as well, but he's channeled it into things like sports knowledge, fantasy sports teams, surfing, fishing, etc. It's clearly coming through here, however, and maybe helping him see that will relieve some of the pressure between us. I guess I'm not noticing that part because to me it feels like a personal attack -- he really seems to believe that I'm the one damaging us here by playing it too safe. Marty998, I tried that specifically, and it didn't work. We compromised at the time and he put half in dividend stocks (I wanted to pay down a rental property with it to lock it in), but when he lost the first half, he just sold those and bought more options. It's like he doesn't understand the concept of balancing risk at all. We've both done a lot of the same research on investments and retirement, but he obviously took away a different lesson than I did. He truly believes that since we won't need our investments for another 10-15 years, they should all be as aggressively invested as possible. I think I got through to him, a tiny sliver of light, anyway, last night after I wrote my original post, when I mentioned Meredith Whitney, who was the golden girl for a moment a few years ago but recently closed her firm showing 3 years of no profit (we used to watch a lot of CNBC). Even professionals who do it for a living can get it massively wrong after being so right, so why does he think he's going to call it right enough of the time to risk it all? Anyway, I saw his brain turning on that one a little. If he feels this strongly about it, though, and so do I on my side, not sure how a compromise is going to come about on this one. We're usually much better at finding a win-win when we disagree.