Bear with me…
My Husband swears a lot, we have an ongoing debate about it because it makes me so unhappy he constantly does this in front of the kids. We have a 6 month old baby and a 2 year old. The 2 year old is like a parrot, her language is amazing and she repeats everything back. Husband swears constantly in front of her. He is very uptight and reacts to everything, eg, a spec of ketchup on his top, a drop of a water on the floor, stubbing his toe, dropping something etc gets a “FK SAKE! SHT… Blcks” etc. Which is all the time. Often multiple times in a few minutes. he scraped his ankle last week and shouted “Fck a Cnt”. When I remind him please don’t swear in front of the kids he snaps and aggressively says things like “well I just cracked the fucking vase in the dishwasher etc” and explains why he swore. (Obviously there is always a reason and I’m not saying he is just shouting for no reason).
For context, we’ve had marriage problems lately and are in counselling and I have only just come home with the kids after staying at my parents house for 2 months because of the behaviour in front of the kids, arguing, and stress, mostly due to a work issue he has had which takes over every part of his life and no space for anything else (he’s been pushed out of his job and not been at work despite being paid still - no immediate financial worries). He made an effort for a few days but it seems to have gone straight back to how it was before.
Anyway, yesterday we had friends over they were late leaving and we were late putting the kids to bed. The bath was stressful as he kept walking to have a go at me for putting the blackout blind back up in the toddler room and that I would further damage the roller blind etc leaving the baby and Toddler in the bath (could still see them but not in grabbing distance). I said not to leave the kids to drown and he did go back but continued to shout at me through the bathroom door.
Bath ended and we did nappies and Pjamas etc and I left him to give toddler her milk and went up to the loft room to feed baby. A few minutes later he was screaming my name and swearing from the floor below “she’s being f*king sick! Projectile fking vomming! Get here now now! Where the fck are you”. I immediately unlatched baby and came downstairs with him, he’s just started crawling and can’t be left alone. Toddler sat in bed covered in sick and all over carpet. He continues “I needed you to get here fucking quicker” (it must have taken less than 25 seconds from shouting to me being stood there). My daughter starts crying. It makes me SO sad. All she needed was a cuddle, take her clothes off and put her back in the bath and kindness. Him shouting at me made her think she had done something wrong and caused a problem and she was crying at that, not because she had been sick. He started madly getting carpet cleaner and stuff and I said we needed to put the kids to bed first.
He says “I have always sworn, and you knew who I was before you married me. Swearing is an auto response and I can’t help it”. I say, he did lots of things before we were married, I wouldn’t expect him to do these things in front of our young children. He is very snobby (private school etc, often looks down on people and calls people “pikeys”). But surely swearing in front of your kids is rough and why doesn’t he care our daughter will pick this up and swear at nursery etc.
I guess my question is:
YANBU: This is unacceptable, he needs to stop swearing and reacting in front of the kids and if he doesn’t this will cause lasting damage and make daughter really insecure.
YABU: Everyone swears, it’s no big deal. He can’t help himself in stressful situations and give him a break.