Sigh, I don't know what to do about DH's meanness

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Male here.
You say “you said some pretty nasty things to me and have an on again/zoff again nasty streak. I don’t believe anyone especially me as your spouse deserves to be spoken to this way. You can not and I willl not let you speak to me or treat me like that. With that being said is this something you are will to stop and address?”
Let him respond. If he starts going of on a tangent or making excuses. Say “i have expressed my feelings and my question is, is this something you are will to address?”

If he says any form of no, you have your answer.

If he says yes, ask him how he plans to address it. If he says he doesn’t know. Say “why don’t you let me know by Thursday (2-3 day later ) what your plan is. If you need help coming up with a plan why don’t we set aside some time tomorrow night to work on a plan. But this discussion will only be about making a plan not about what happened or anything else”.

If

DP and this is a great script.

[Anonymous]

we need some context, when you say mean what exactly did he say? Can you provide an example?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is my dh. He has adhd and takes every piece of advice or question as a personal attack. He lashed out and unloads, realizes he is wrong, but then never apologizes and just acts like everything is okay the next morning. I have learned to stop engaging him when he gets like that. If I don't engage with him, it doesn't escalate.

Thank you. I think it may be something like this. I need to learn to just steel myself and ignore. Rather than feel such devastation when it unleashes.

To be clear, you don't need to do this. It's not normal to be treated like that, and it's not necessary to become ok with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is my dh. He has adhd and takes every piece of advice or question as a personal attack. He lashed out and unloads, realizes he is wrong, but then never apologizes and just acts like everything is okay the next morning. I have learned to stop engaging him when he gets like that. If I don't engage with him, it doesn't escalate.

Yep +1

Sounds like my DH. Don’t engage.

+1

The kids and I stopped engage with moody adhd/asd spouse. They were a work addict too and added more travel to their schedule, which they could not handle. This morphed into a midlife crisis where they blamed us for everything and for ignoring them, and now they threaten divorce every weekend.

Zero ability to self reflect.

So I wouldn't say your method worked, correct? I mean, unless this was the result you were going for. Just saying, ignoring it doesn't seem to have fixed the problem at all, so it seems odd that you'd be offering that advice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I beg to differ - you don’t have to go on the next day as “normal.” There’s not one thing normal about his behavior, and your kids don’t need that stuff normalized. Don’t martyr yourself - he hurt you deeply and you don’t have to pretend he didn’t. I would grey rock him, even on vacation - pull way back and focus all your energy on your kids.

+1,000