Anonymous wrote:We had a two year old and a baby who was three or four months old. We were both working but I was doing so the overnights because the baby was nursing. I would go to bed early but the wakeups were increasingly negatively affecting me, particularly my mood. My husband would stay up later, sometimes working but frequently playing video games.
I asked him to give the baby a bottle of formula for the first feeding since he was up anyway, explaining that I thought the sleep deprivation was making me depressed. He told me yes, and then we had three nights of him not doing it and then telling me in the morning that he hadn't understood what I was asking him to do but promising he would do better that night. The last time I was practically crying as I told him that it was making me crazy that he kept saying he would help me and then making it out like I hadn't explained what I needed, and that it seemed like he wasn't willing to help me. He smirked at me and said something like "I guess so, what are you going to do about it?" I swallowed hard, thought about how limited the emotional resources I had for dealing with anything at the time were, and decided to let it go.
In retrospect, I should have started making a plan for either improving things or getting out, because it was two years after that of resentful, checked out parenting. Having to nag him to get out of bed in the morning. Anger at me for not getting him the groceries he wanted, and anger at me for asking what he wanted when I went grocery shopping. Weird suspicions about the paternity of a child who was plainly his.
A couple of months ago he yelled at me that he pretends to have to work late to avoid spending time with me and we finally had some discussions we should have had a long time ago. He understands that he seriously messed up. He's been more engaged and nicer to me. He apologized a lot. Sometimes I think it's enough and sometimes I don't.
What you described is most definitely emotional abuse, esp. the "I guess so, what are you going to do about it?" scenario. I'm glad things seem to have improved for the time being, but please know this: you never deserved to be treated this way in the first place. Not then, not now, not ever. I'm concerned about your characterization about him being "nicer," because his starting point was being emotionally abusive in the first place. I hope "nicer" isn't simply the absence of abuse.Please don't get caught in cycles of "abuse, minor improvement, more abuse, minor improvement" etc. You deserve better than that.