Moody and negative husband

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing is that whatever you want to call it, and as much as everyone seems to be attempting to be supportive of the guy in question, this IS abuse. It's psychological abuse!

The question to ask yourself (and your DH) is: Are you able to control this behavior in other settings? Are you able to rein it in and not scream at your boss? At your mother? Then if you CHOOSE to not rein it in and scream at your wife, then you are choosing to abuse another human being.

I am just so sick of this shit, this 'oh the poor men, they work so hard, it's so unfair that they have to be parents too'. Why exactly is it unfair? Many of us women also work fulltime and have children and we generally don't choose to be narcissistic raging assholes who take it out on others.

That said, I have the same child husband who tantrums and demands and rages. My children know when to stay out of his way. We leave the house a lot together. THis morning they were woken up by yet another one of his rages. We have tried medications like Zoloft, classes, therapy. At this point, I usually vacation without him, taking just the children somewhere. We have a very full life which usually doesn't include him because he can't seem to get it together and act normal. But that's his choice, not my burden.

I'm a PP and this is what kills me. To the rest of the world, he's a fantastic guy. People are always commenting how nice he is. Nobody believes that he's a raging a-hole at home and they blame me for our problems, which just gives DH more fuel. "See, everyone agrees YOU'RE the problem!"

OMG yes.... Everyone tells me how much they all love DH and how lucky I am and how lucky our girls are to have him as a father. I just smile and nod and change the subject.

[Anonymous]

I guess I shouldn't be, but the answers so far really surprise me.

DH's husband doesn't have emotional coping skills and possibly mental illness. Job stress and other things of course exacerbate this, but they don't cause it. So adding chillax time or sex could be at best bandages, but they're not really helping him grow up to be an adult emotionally.

He doesn't know how to respond to stress in a healthy way, including the daily stress of parenting. Rather than everyone else bend his way to support his dysfunction and be on eggshells, he needs to raise his skill level, and treat any mental illness. Either of those starts with individual therapy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a tough position to be in. As you said, we can love a person and yet be so disappointed by their flaws. Do you think he is aware of the negative impact that his actions/reactions will have over time? If you ask him what kind of a dad he wants to be, would he be completely unaware that he is missing the mark or would he recognize and admit that he is not the dad he hoped to be?

This is OP. When I have discussed it with him he turns it into a shame/pity spiral. “Maybe I’m just not cut out for parenting” etc. He would rather feel bad for himself that he’s “doing a bad job” than think critically about how to fix it. He will also blame it on our son. “I just wish he weren’t so difficult.” There was a particularly bad time last year when my son tried to make up with him and he was still red hot mad and my son came down and sadly said “forget it. Everything I do dad is mad at me.” He was 4 I told my husband about that and it straightened him out a bit, but he seems to always revert to his baseline of loose cannon.

Do you think family counseling would be an option? Since hubby doesn't seem to have the initiative to make this situation better on his own, maybe approaching it from the perspective of trying to improve your whole family might work. And a counselor could give your son some coping strategies as well. Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

OP, my husband was exactly like this. Very moody, overreactive at 'typical' kid behavior, unable to control his emotions, blamed our kid being 'difficult' compared to others' kids, etc.

I tried a lot of different approaches to intercede, and nothing worked. Eventually, two things really helped. One, I sent him to several weeks-long parenting classes. I put my foot down and demanded it. It helped give perspective. Second, DH determined the source of his unhappiness (and it wasn't the kids). Once he really got to the root of his problem, it became less about the kids and more about fixing what was wrong with himself.

It was and is a really really hard thing to go through.