Our youngest DD aged 3 woke us crying at 5am this morning. DH woke first as he often does due to being a light sleeper and went to her. He picked her up and brought her in our room. She was clearly having a nightmare as she was still crying and squirming/kicking to get away from him.
He shouted "I don't fucking think so, you're not running away from me at this time of the night" aggressively in her face. I kept saying "please give her to me she's still dreaming" but he continued trying to hold her whilst shouting at her as if she was being naughty and then threw her on the bed swearing when she didn't immediately calm down for him. He shouted and swore at me and her some more and called her a psycho. He only left because I said her pull up was leaking and begged him to get a new one. It hadn't - I lied to get him away from us and diffuse the situation. DD wasn't hurt and only properly woke up when I started cuddling her. She told me a dinosaur was trying to eat her.
When he came back up I gave him his pillow and told him to sleep in the spare room as he was being aggressive and I needed to comfort DD. He continued to shout at me even from the spare room saying things like "this isn't over I'm going to be having words with you tomorrow about this". I ended up going to him and calmly saying "Yes we will speak about this tomorrow, I don't understand how your reaction to our DDs nightmare is anger and aggression. You have no empathy." He claimed that he had plenty until she started kicking him and trying to get away and that she was going to wake our eldest DD. He swore at me again because I didn't get up first (heavy sleeper) and said he was sick of always "getting into trouble, why is he the bad one?- it's always us 3 against him." By us 3 he means DD aged 3, DD aged 4 and me.
The above comment refers to the fact that I do step in if I feel he is being unnecessarily aggressive in dealing with bad behaviour and he regularly accuses me of undermining him.
I told him that I hoped he was ashamed of his behaviour in the morning. He continued arguing with me so I just said I was going to go and cuddle DD and left. At no point did I shout or swear.
I've been awake since 5am feeling so angry and upset. DD is happily snoring next to me and won't remember but that's not the point. This isn't the first time he has become aggressive during the night due to being woken up. Yes it's annoying to get woken up but it's parenting. If I could make myself a lighter sleeper and wake first every time to avoid this ever happening I would.
To avoid drip feeding - He has depression and has had counselling, anger management twice and has been taking antidepressants. He weaned himself off his meds with doctor supervision 2 weeks ago and has had a very short fuse since then. I appreciate things are difficult and unsettled for him at the moment but what he did this morning is not ok. It's also not the first time. If he is woken during the night he will often react badly.
I'm not really sure what I want from this post other than to not feel so alone with all of this. I feel like the burden of keeping everything together falls on my shoulders and it's exhausting
Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody
Relationships
So much aggression :-(
Nightisdarkandfullofterrors · 08/11/2017 06:55
Don’t want to miss threads like this?
Weekly
Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!
Log in to update your newsletter preferences.
You've subscribed!
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.