Decision time: balancing concern for the kids with managing an overly controlling and critical partner

[Anonymous]

Your son comes first, always! Don’t cancel appointment. You’ve been stealth at keeping your husband at bay. Keep doing that until son is diagnosed and receiving all therapies. Don’t know how you’re managing it all, I’m very sorry. You didn’t talk about your husband as a father. Need more details. You have a long way to go with young kids. Prioritize them, keep them safe, and as the acronyms go DTMF! He’s not contributing enough financially to have any control. Take control. You can’t live like this. Do you have family/friends that can take the kids once in a while? You’re a great micro manager already, time to start planning. Do you work?

[Anonymous]

Divorce, all that is insane.

[Anonymous]

You said " had a tendency to be relentlessly critical and fly into a rage"

Your husband is not a "nice guy"

He is a pos and you are failing your children by letting him treat them badly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As you know, it can take months to get appointments related to delays and neurodivergence. And it's much better to be diagnosed as early as possible.

You won't be blowing up your marriage over this appointment. YOUR MARRIAGE IS ALREADY BLOWN UP.

You MUST at least start with individual therapy ASAP. What you described is not a normal or acceptable way to interact within a marriage. I don't think you understand how abusive it is.

I came to say the same thing. The fact that you’re concerned about the effect going through with this appointment will have on your marriage shows how far gone you are. Please, please seek professional help. Your husband is abusive and it is definitely going to affect your kids even if he doesn’t say such things to them. You grew up in a house like this - how could you be willing to subject your children to the same thing?!?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So my husband is a nice guy in general, but has often - but especially since our children were born - had a tendency to be relentlessly critical and fly into a rage (not physical) if I happen to have a different opinion than he does, even if I immediately say I'm happy to go with his preference. He never apologizes. It's stressful, but I can handle it. I just have a special, related dilemma around one of my kids right now, and I'm not sure how to handle it, given these facts.

When I say critical and controlling, this is what I mean: Sometimes he criticizes me for doing things I actually haven't done, or for not doing things I very objectively have done. Sometimes he criticizes me for doing things which I haven't done, but he has. Sometimes he criticizes me for doing something one way, and the next day criticizes me for doing it the opposite way. Sometimes he criticizes me for doing something the way the rest of the world does it, which happens to be differently than he would. I'm responsible for all administrative tasks in our home - purchasing and monitoring literally every necessary item (food, clothing, furniture, books, diapers, toilet paper, saran wrap, dish soap, q tips, you name it) that enters the house, paying every bill from the mortgage to the internet, filing all taxes, arranging every appointment, filling out every form, coordinating all vacation logistics down to packing every item for the whole family. And if anything beyond my control goes wrong on any of these fronts, I get blamed, loudly. He also - despite being in a low-paying profession and completely broke, with no retirement savings - informed me shortly after our last child was born that within five years, he was going to leave me to open a surf resort in Southeast Asia, and I am an "awful person" for not being as excited about this idea as he is. He reminds me of this upcoming event whenever he gets particularly angry, which is at least once a week, for a different reason each time. And so on. He needs to feel in control and right all the time, and so there has to be a person who is wrong, and that person is me. He calls me "lazy" for thinking we should vacuum once a day rather than several times a day and "nuts" for following manufacturer instructions on car seat security, and said I "don't love (my) children" because I don't put glossy paper in the recycling bin, per building instructions (which he's never read.)

Having grown up in a household with a father who was like this - because: of course - I know there's no winning, and no fixing it. As long as he doesn't aim any of this at the kids, just me, I can handle it. My only real dilemma comes when his opinions could have a bad effect on the children - when they run counter to scientific consensus, medical advice, life-or-death product safety instructions, and so on. He has to be right about everything - including things which, objectively, other people know more about. I tend to humor it. But now I find myself with a dilemma on this front involving one of our children, and I'm not sure how far to push it...

I had a physical complication in the first trimester that has the potential to result in delayed development in a child (it usually doesn't - but it can.) In addition, my husband and I are both older, which is another potential factor in delayed development. When our youngest child passed 16 months of age, he still hadn't taken a step or said a word besides his sibling's name. Now, technically one or the other delay is within the bounds of normal, but both at the same time seemed like a possible red flag, especially since he didn't seem to react to questions or instructions or even his name. I reached out to his pediatrician, also listing all the good signs (he's very affectionate and makes regular eye contact! uses multiple gestures often to communicate! has great fine motor skills!), hoping she'd say everything was fine. She ran through the ASQ and said he was badly behind in every area, and said she was going to recommend him to Early Start to get assessed immediately. I'm not panicked about this - best-case scenario, he develops differently than other kids but winds up in the same place soon. Next best scenario, he needs a bit of special help to get started, but catches up. Worst-case scenario, he needs special help indefinitely, or can't progress. No matter what, my priority is figuring out what he needs and getting it to him. We were told the appointment could take months to arrange, but one popped up much, much sooner than expected, so I grabbed it. In the meantime, my son is still not speaking - with heavy repetition, there are occasionally a range of 2 or 3 words we can pull out of him - though he says nothing independently, it's not clear he knows what any of the 2 or 3 words he very occasionally repeats mean, and most days he doesn't use any words at all. Thankfully, he has started taking a few steps here and there, though his legs tend to collapse under him after a step or two and he still crawls 99% of the time.

I recognize that this whole conversation is anxiety-causing for my husband. But he's gone next-level on this, even for him. He's threatened me with divorce several times over the idea of having an assessment, called me a "liar" (because he's convinced himself I'd said we'd wait until our son was 18 months to seek this sort of guidance - which was a vague idea I'd mentioned before the doctor said very emphatically that we should not wait) who "refuses to be a partner" (because I haven't immediately done what he ordered me to do, which was to "cancel this appointment right now, or else there will be consequences.") He's also called me a "stupid, stupid, stupid moron. There's no other word for it, that's what you are" for agreeing to the assessment and said that if I don't cancel, he "won't allow those people in my house."

Honest question: in this situation, would you go through with the appointment (maybe at daycare instead of home) or not? If you did go through with it, would you tell your partner it had happened or not? Is this worth blowing up my marriage over, or am I overreacting?

You are the person that posted elsewhere about a doctor asking only to deal with you, right? https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1202315.page It's obvious why the doctor feels this way.

Anyway, everyone deals with challenges in marriage, but charitably/at best, your husband is mentally ill. You still don't have to live with this abuse. GET OUT.

[Anonymous]

My husband was a rager and abusive and it’s so hard to explain to people how much you can convince yourself that your marriage is pretty normal when things are NOT normal and you that you are somehow in charge of your spouse’s feelings and inappropriate behavior.

That is where OP is right now.

[Anonymous]

Your husband is 100% abusive and he will abuse your kids too. Divorce him now!!! I can't imagine living like you are living. He is not a nice guy and your children will absolutely suffer. They are already suffering if he is insisting you cancel an evaluation that could help your child get proper interventions.

[Anonymous]

OP, have you posted other threads?

Was that you in the ped firing spouse thread?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm so sorry you're in this situation. He is trying to scare and control you with the threat of divorce and not letting the assessors in house. My DH makes similar threats and I've learned to threaten to expose his behavior to people on the outside. This is the only thing that makes him back off because he wants to come off as such a wonderful dad.
Calmly tell him the pediatrician is concerned and it is now documented in records. If DH would like the appt canceled, he can call and explain this to the Early Start people. If your child ends up needing help later, he is the responsible party for delaying it. If he doesn't cancel the appt, then he can be present on day of appt and he himself can ask them to leave. If he's like my DH, he talks a big game but is charming and on his best behavior around others.
Seriously thought, just stop debating it with him. He's just looking for reasons to be mad at you.

You told her to explain it to him and then to stop debating it with him…

OP do NOT let him cancel the appointment. He doesn’t have to go if he won’t do that. Screw him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you posted before? Everyone told you last time that your husband is an abusive a-hole, are you going to listen this time or continue to excuse it with his cultural background and “neurodivergent” personality?

I sincerely hope that this OP has never posted before.

[Anonymous]

Do you have a job or income or are you entirely financially dependent on your abuser?
Are there assets such as bank accounts, retirement accounts? Do you have access to them?
Keep the appointment.
Make an appointment to find out how to protect yourself financially.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You said " had a tendency to be relentlessly critical and fly into a rage"

Your husband is not a "nice guy"

He is a pos and you are failing your children by letting him treat them badly.

1000%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband was a rager and abusive and it’s so hard to explain to people how much you can convince yourself that your marriage is pretty normal when things are NOT normal and you that you are somehow in charge of your spouse’s feelings and inappropriate behavior.

That is where OP is right now.

So how did you break out? Since OP needs the same advice.

[Anonymous]

Make no mistake that you are complicit if you stay with him and allow your children to grow up in this environment. You aren't protecting them. You are normalizing it.

Just look in the mirror and see what it did to you. You said that your father did the same.

[Anonymous]

Give that a-hole your blessing for him to go off and live out his dimwitted plan of running a surf resort.

And as the designated adult, get your child the care he needs.