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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The resentment that builds up when the adult that is supposed to be your partner in all the work of life instead bumbles around like they're somehow incapable or not responsible for anything forcing you to take the leadership role in EVERY. SINGLE. THING. and manage them through it is real.  And results in things like regularly snapping at someone to do something because for the love of god you don't understand why they're not already doing something to help take care of everything / everyone

Obviously it's an unhealthy dynamic and I have no idea if your parent situation is this - but its a two person dynamic, not one person having a "personality disorder"

As an example my husband may join our 3 very young kids and me at the grocery store.  He wonders off without a care in the world while I'm managing the kids and shopping for everything we need for the week.  He may wonder back over with the ingredients for a meal he decided to cook for himself that afternoon that no one else likes and will take hours and leave the kitchen a mess.  So yes what someone else may see is me  snapping "can you just get the f'ing carrots and milk at least?!"

Again obviously not a health dynamic for anyone involved but also not just a me problem[/quote]

My mom is also awful to my father - and has been for 53 years! She would say the same thing as you that she “deserves” to yell and belittle him because he has been doing the same dumb stuff for decades and she can’t take it. 
Except there are two sides to everything and I can 100% vouch that she often yells and calls him dumb or an idiot for things that are her fault or are not actually wrong. She just immediately assumes that he messed up or she forgets that just because she thought it, doesn’t mean she said it out loud and we can’t read her mind. I have never once heard her acknowledge or apologize if she is wrong - or express appreciation or gratitude when someone manages to do something to her expectations.

My husband is not perfect - none of us are - but if I spoke to him the way my mom speaks to my dad he would stop listening to ever trying to do anything helpful. Why even try if you will get yelled anyway?

I feel sorry for your husband and if I was at the grocery store with you I would probably wander off to get away from you too. [/quote]

What the PP is saying -- and with which I agree -- is that your mom is wrong but also it's extremely unlikely that she independently decided to become a haranguing yelly wife despite having a totally reasonable partner.

It's a crap dynamic for which both of your parents are absolutely responsible but you only see your mom as "the bad guy" because her bad behavior is loud and highly visible while your dad's is silent and often invisible. You think you can assess who is right and wrong but you're biased by your own relationship with your parents. In marriages like this where the man is passive and non-participatory, most of the parenting then falls on the mother who is already struggling due to the unhealthy dynamic with her spouse. So I'm guessing you feel defensive of your dad in part because you identify with him, having no doubt been on the receiving end of your mom's anger and shouting more than once.

But if you take yourself outside that dynamic and think about it, consider: you are viewing your father not as an adult in a marriage but more like a sibling to you who you need to protect and defend. The fact that you see your dad that way is screwed up -- it should be the other way around -- and reflects what is likely to have been neglectful and passive parenting by him.

The whole situation sucks but the mom yelling is just a piece of it. Yes your mom should find better ways to communicate, no question. But I would also love to talk to her and find out what other ways she's tried communicating with your dad and how that went. I'd also be curious to know what her parents were like when she was growing up, what kind of agency she had in deciding when and how to marry and have kids, what kind of support she got from family or community, etc. Not because I want to excuse her behavior. But because in my experience when you see a family with a dynamic you describe, it's often the tip of a much larger and very dysfunctional iceberg. Your mom is not solely responsible for it and also she could stop yelling at your dad tomorrow and I bet there would still be a ton of issues.[/quote]

Every family with an abusive parent / spouse has a complicated dynamic. Sure you can say the man or woman deserves the abuse because they contributed to the dynamic that led to the abuser lashing out but that is really just a cop out. Almost every single abuser will say that they just lashed out because the other person did or didn’t do something that frustrated or angered them. In almost every case that will be part of the complicated dynamic. But if you say well you contributed to the dynamic so you deserved to the name called yelled at or hit because you frustrated or upset him or her to the point that they lashed out…then almost no one is an abuser. They are all just frustrated people caught in a complicated dynamic. [/quote]

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