My husband yells at me or the kids at least once a day

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06/16/2022 14:15

Subject: My husband yells at me or the kids at least once a day

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Anonymous

I feel like I know the answer to this, but am putting it out there anyway. My husband loses it on me or our daughter at least once a day. By that I mean he yells, loses his cool, and blames me/her for losing it. She and I are both ADHD and he gets really triggered if we don’t hear him, or we miss something he said, or we are distracted, or any number of reasons. I admittedly have anxiety, a history of depression/PTSD, etc and often being concerns/worries to him. This annoys him because he says I am just venting or being negative or asking him to solve my problems. He is also a perfectionist so he constantly criticizes me for not making independent decisions and running things by him, but then if I do things on my own (even if it’s just cooking dinner) he will find something wrong with what I do. If I go to the store, he gets angry if I forget a staple or items we needed, or I can’t get back in one hour because it only takes him an hour to shop. If I cook dinner, he gets mad that I used too many dishes in cooking and made a big mess, or the meal was not served on time. If I pack the diaper back and try to run through all the items we need before we leave, he will get mad and tell me to just figure it out and then stop running things by him. But if we get to where we are going and I forgot anything (like maybe I brought a snack but it was only crackers and not a cheese stick for our older kid, or I forgot to pack bug spray or apply it to the kids) he will criticize me for that. If I ask him to stop yelling at the 5 year old when she eats slowly in the morning or when she won’t get dressed or brush teeth and I decide to intervene, he will scream at me that I can take her to school because he has always had the responsibility for it and we lose track of time (which is right, time management is hard for us).

Today on the car ride home from our pediatrician he lost it on me because I was trying to go over the guest list for our older kid’s birthday party and figure out a few extra kids to invite because we have space (at a play place with a set limit of guests). When my mother in law was here last weekend he lost it on me because he made us a nice dinner, barely sat down because he was cooking and then went to change a diaper, and I threw away the food on his plate (1 piece of broccoli) because he said he had told us we was not done eating and that I have no consideration for him (despite me offering to change the diaper and thanking him for cooking our meal). He yelled at me in front of my mother in law (he yells at her and they argue with regularity) and then the next day when we were out walking as a family he stormed away from me when he got mad after I tried to bring it up to him, and refused to speak or respond to me in front of our daughter and my MIL. I confided in my MIL how embarrassed I was with his behavior and how he loses it regularly on me and the kids and she agreed with me that it was not ok and said he is still not over a lot of his childhood issues (addictions, multiple divorces, verbal/physical abuse). My FIL who is divorced from her has visited us and seen some of his angry outbursts and even reached out to my MIL about how he needs to calm down.

I feel like I have the support of both sides of our families when it comes to his behavior, at least in the sense that he’s being inappropriate, but I don’t know what to do. I told my MIL I have begged him to go to couples counseling and he has adamantly refused and says the issues are all mine. He says he has no interest in relitigating childhood and psychoanalyzing it. I feel so beaten down and verbally abused and controlled by him that I find sex a chore and it difficult to enjoy intimacy - I feel like he’s just invading me and it’s not arousing at all to kiss him, I just want to get away but I give him pity sex every week or two and somehow I think he thinks that and apologizing can fix this marriage, which feels rotten at the core to me.

I cannot afford to divorce him and maintain my own household in our neighborhood, and we recently bought a home and the kids are finally settled. I guess my question is, is this emotional abuse? And if so, what can I do about it? I know I cannot change him, only myself. How can I protect my kids? I don’t want to get divorced, but the idea of him yelling at me and the kids the rest of my life feels unsustainable and toxic. He won’t admit to an anger problem, and instead always says we make him yell because we don’t listen to him any other way. I am now so accustomed to it I feel I have lost perspective on everything and don’t know what to do…