DH was a huge jerk to me today and I don't know what to do next

[Anonymous]

I think you should both go out alone, personally. Do something fun for yourself, go for a long walk, whatever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Thank you, I appreciate this advice and other responses. I'm sitting here at my desk not getting any work done and just stewing, and trying to stop myself from going back over to him and reopening everything. The thought of going in and assuming we're on for dinner together and acting like he didn't curse me out is also totally unappealing, but I will try to swallow my pride and open up the outing as a chance to talk. Testosterone levels would have never occurred to me, but good to know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

OP here again, and this too is good advice. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

What are you asking here? Are you looking for sympathy? Reassurance? Advice? He told you work is stressful, but here you are minimizing it because life is stressful. This is apparently one work stress that he's not handling as well as the others--it happens. You've told him you don't appreciate the way he treated you. What more is there to do at this point? If he apologized, you can either choose to continue to be hurt, or you can choose to move on and try to have a nice night with him.

[Anonymous]

Op, the cursing at you would be something I’d bring up. If my husband ever curses at me, there would be a Come to Jesus talk. We don’t speak to each other that way, and never have.

[Anonymous]

I think you should take the lead. This is not about who is right or wrong, this is about setting course for a better way next time.

Go to him now and say we need to get out and have some fun. Whatever happened this afternoon is not the best of either of us. Let't go out tonight and focus on having a good time. Say to him, that you had no idea how stressful this situation is at work and ask him if he wants to talk about it.

This is NOT about rewarding him for his behavior. Someone has to change the pattern and it can be you. You need to build the bridge back to him. Then after you have a few days space, talk about how he (and you) need to manage your stress better.

Last year I had the day you had. I am not sure where I found it the "yes", but he suggested we go try a new restaurant, i was not quite dressed for it (in my head) and I was still salty but i said yes. We sat at the bar and were close enough that we had to make up almost. The next day, we were hit with the worst crisis of our married lives and we felt like a team to deal with it. Since that day, I have reflected on what if I had dug in and not accepted his suggestion? Someone has to suggest it. Go suggest it to him.

[Anonymous]

I must have missed where he cursed you out. You both lack serious communication issues. He seems like the type who hyperfixates on something instead of dealing with the actual issue (hence why he freaked about the paper and furniture). You seem to have your own passive aggressive issues going on and you're also stewing and tempted to open everything back up.

Both of you need to chill out. Order take out tonight and have a lazy night. No dishes to do. Kids can relax and bedtime can be less structured. You're both stressed and on edge and once that calms down, then have a discussion about your communication. Acknowledge your own wrong doing. It sounds like he will do the same. Then figure out how to avoid this from happening again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Juggling marriage, young kids, jobs, household and finances is tough. It seems like you two are a good couple, value and respect each other. If one person looks on edge, make more space for them. If a table is in an odd place or there is some clutter or something is annoying, let it go. Talk about ways to communicate better, without aggression on passive aggression. Its not worth it.

[Anonymous]

Don't cancel the babysitter. Sounds like it was going to be an early dinner if thr sitter was bringing them home at 5. Get out of the house for a couple hours and let you and your husband have some alone time. It sounds like neither of you are in a place to have a conversation about what happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

Thank you, I appreciate this advice and other responses. I'm sitting here at my desk not getting any work done and just stewing, and trying to stop myself from going back over to him and reopening everything. The thought of going in and assuming we're on for dinner together and acting like he didn't curse me out is also totally unappealing, but I will try to swallow my pride and open up the outing as a chance to talk. Testosterone levels would have never occurred to me, but good to know.

DP. Give yourself another 10-15 minutes of stewing. Maybe write down everything you want to say to him. Then when the time is up, refocus on something else--work or whatever. You know no good can come of reopening things right now. But this too shall pass, so try to keep things in perspective.

In this instance, I'd probably go up to him and say "Hey, I'm not happy about what happened earlier. I don't think either one of us handled it very well. I can tell you're really stressed out about work and when you're ready, I'd like to talk about all of this more so that we can understand what we need to do differently. But I was really looking forward to tonight, and I'd still like to go if you're up for it. Maybe we could both use time to reconnect. But if you're not up for it, we can find another time." Don't get hung up on the fact that you have to make the first move. Someone has to do it and for all you know, he might be feeling so terrible, he doesn't even know how to approach you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op, the cursing at you would be something I’d bring up. If my husband ever curses at me, there would be a Come to Jesus talk. We don’t speak to each other that way, and never have.

This^. Anger is normal but expression should be in civilized manner, otherwise stay quite until you can be kind to the other spouse. Bad mouthing each other is unacceptable.

[Anonymous]

You posted at 230. The sitter was bringing the kids home at 5? I'm very confused.

[Anonymous]

"and then somehow things spiral"

You yada-yadaed a whole lot there, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You posted at 230. The sitter was bringing the kids home at 5? I'm very confused.

what's confusing?

[Anonymous]

You both behaved poorly. You need to calm down a bit before you can approach this. He 100% should not call you names. You also shouldn't provoke him when you know he's already on edge.