DH was a huge jerk to me today and I don't know what to do next
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Anonymous
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We've been married 10 years. He's sensitive, communicative, and responsive to my needs most of the time. He's a totally involved, gentle dad. But twice this week he's snapped at my verbally in ways that are shocking to me and pretty out of character. On Wednesday I had worked a really long day, he had done a lot of heavy lifting on childcare in ways that I really appreciated, and then he called me "lazy" for not jumping to help him with a request that night after I got home ("help me find paper" in our house). The first time he apologized a few hours later and we talked about it and how it made me feel and how inappropriate he was. Our typical argument dynamic is he storms away to another room for a while, I follow wanting to resolve things right away, he needs time, and depending on how that goes we usually come to a place of talking about things calmly and feeling better within a few hours or so. That's basically what happened when he called me lazy, but the name calling still stung.
Today, two days later, he shows up in the room I'm working in complaining about a piece of furniture we just placed and insists we need to move it now because it's driving him crazy. I tell him I like it where it is. He says it's really important to him that we move it, I say I'm about to get on a work call, and he huffs and pushes the table over to where he wants it, in a rough and aggressive way that is atypical of him. After my work call ends I go to call him out on that and he doubles down, says I was being unreasonable by refusing to move it, etc and then somehow things spiral into him swearing at me and calling me an a-hole three times. Which is WILDLY out of character for him. WILDLY. I then start moving his stuff around-- we've talked for months about him clearing his clutter off of a table in our room and he hasn't prioritized that, so I put it in a pile on a bookshelf in the same room. If he's going to move something around urgently because it bothers him, I'm going to finally tackle the thing that has been bugging me for months, which he has never prioritized doing, despite agreeing with me that it looks messy. He responds by taking all my stuff out of the bathroom and depositing around the house. Like a child throwing a tantrum. My toothpaste is on the couch, my face lotion is on the floor. It was insane. I can't even believe the words I'm writing here. We are both WFH today and I've been ignoring him. I picked up my stuff, put it in another bathroom, and went back to work. We were supposed to go out to dinner tonight, have a babysitter bringing the kids home at 5. I don't know what to do. I'm not cancelling the sitter - I'll go out alone for a few hours if we haven't resolved things by then. I just literally don't know what to do next. I'm still furious and so gobsmacked by his behavior, and hurt and confused. |
Anonymous
| That sounds like some hormone imbalance or medication reaction. Is he taking steroids or singulair? |
Anonymous
| It's OK to make mistakes once in a blue moon. It sounds like he may need some understanding if his emotions are on edge. |
Anonymous
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He was wrong in pushing the table, you responded passive aggressively by moving his stuff and now he is giving you tit for tat.
You both lack the communication skills required for a healthy ling term marriage; however, you can only control you, so please get yourself into individual therapy and improve your communication skills and contemplate your marriage. |
Anonymous
| How's work for him? Either parent declining in health? How does he normally handle stress (outside of your dynamic)? |
Anonymous
| Ask him if he's taking testosterone. |
Anonymous
| When was the last time you had sex? |
Anonymous
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OP here. He has something stressful going on at work, involving a personnel issue that he's overseeing. Which came up in his apology on Tuesday, citing that as contributing to really high stress levels. But life is stressful, and we surely have more stresses on the horizon as our kids get older, parents get older, etc. Both of us tend to handle outside stresses well as they're occurring but then let them overflow into our moods at home. It's not like I'm going to divorce him over an outburst, but I don't want to normalize today at all.
I appreciate that I too have my own conflict responses to deal with and improve on. I know I provoked him with my passive aggressive cleaning of his clutter, but his response feels way disproportional. He's not on any new meds or testosterone or whatever, and our sex life has been fine (a couple times a week) so if this is REALLY all just about some issue with someone who works for him I don't know how to help him. |
Anonymous
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The harpies in this sub forum will undoubtedly urge you to escalate.
They hate successful marriages. |
Anonymous
| Sounds like you both had stressful weeks. How fortunate it's Friday and you have a date night. Go clear the air, have a good time, and move on. |
Anonymous
Oh for Pete’s sake. EVERYTHING is not a medical condition or disorder Sometimes people just lose it. |
Anonymous
| I’d watch for a pattern but if it’s really out of character and he is a good husband and father, I’d find some grace and be patient with him. Assume it’s temporary and stop exacerbating the situation. If it becomes a pattern, then seek help from a counselor and schedule a doctor appointment for him - could be low testosterone levels or something else. My husband is a dick a lot (ADHD) so I experience that type of behavior weekly and it’s exhausting. I’m sorry it’s been a hard week. |
Anonymous
+1. Go out tonight and have some fun. Have some wine. Try to laugh about it- you both behaved embarrassingly, like petty kids. And then move on. |
Anonymous
| Keep quiet and keep watching. Don’t discuss it too much. Let him realize his mistakes and come to you. If he doesn’t, or if he continues this behavior, then take action. I can forgive and forget acting out a couple of times during a period of acute stress (since there was no physical harm). But if it is recurring then it needs to be dealt with |
Anonymous
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If I had to guess, he's stressed out or hurt about something. It's not an excuse to act the way he did, but if it's so out of character, then something is up. Did you ask him what's wrong?
You also need to do some self-reflection on your reactions to his behavior. You didn't share what you said in response to either situation and your whole post is pretty one-sided. You're super focused on how YOU feel and what he said and did, but it doesn't sound like you're actually trying to understand WHY any of it happened. Moving his stuff on the shelf during the table argument is also passive-aggressive and petty and did nothing more than add fuel to the fire. When you have BOTH calmed down, you need to have a discussion to find out what brought all of this on. If you find yourself following him into another room in order to resolve it in your preferred time frame, rethink that approach. He has to be ready to discuss it and his time frame may not match up with yours. And you need to listen to what he says to you when you have this discussion. Really listen. For example, you claim that you're so appreciative of the heavy lifting he did the other day, but then he called you lazy for not helping him. That tells me he's NOT feeling appreciated. You both share blame here, but you can only control your own reactions and responses when something like this happens. |