To be annoyed or need to calm down

“The provoking you until you snap fixes something inside his brain.”

It produces a dopamine fix as he’s getting the required result with very very minimal effort, lots of people with adhd and/or personality disorders do this without realising. Then they do raise and they start consciously deep trawling for conflict to get their hit. That’s what he’s doing now.

Not enjoying people in his space in close quarters like the kitchen, I’m like that. I can’t stand people up close unless I specifically choose it. Mine comes from childhood trauma. I can also resort to trying to cause an argument when I’m desperate and struggling to figure out my feelings or if I’m feeling overwhelmed and about to snap. I too can get very snappy about the simplest of questions at the end of a long day. My DH just makes me the cup of tea and doesn’t ask me any more as we had 4 kids and I was in charge of everything while he worked and the mental exhaustion was real. I didn’t want to donate the last of my brain energy to deciding if I wanted to a cup of bloody tea at 7pm as I’d been hen pecked with the “I want I want will you give me have you got” squad all day. I dread to think how many brews I’ve poured away stone cold but I love him for making them regardless.

what does your dps childhood look like? His parents relationship? How did he do in education? How far did he go? Employment history?

The more you post the more I think you need to leave. He will get worse as he gets older. He won’t want kids 50%. Your kids will get over a divorce. Leave.

If he masks these traits at work then he knows they are unacceptable. He is choosing not to mask them at home.

I can see autistic traits and abusive behaviour. He is belittling you and using your reaction against you. Your language around how you react, 'kicking off' 'going nuclear' etc, are these things HE has said to you? Has he managed to convince you, that you are the problem with anger issues? His behaviours are subtle but yours are not and therefore anyone around will see that you are 'behaving unreasonably'.
I suggest seeking support for yourself, to manage how you respond to him and to be calm, so your child see you as the calm, sensible one and they may start to see that daddy is a fuckwit. (although 4 years is too young yet).
Be the calm one, don't engage with his behaviour. If he expects you to put the drink in his hand, smile and put it back on the table where it was in the first place and distract you and your child with something else, e.g. in the 'party' situation, turn up the music and start dancing with child.
Find ways to make sure you can distract yourself from the situation.
As for the kitchen situation, if he's in there and you need to get in to make child breakfast, ask him to make the breakfast.
If you are out walking and he feels uncomfortable, I would make some amendments, but it has to be a compromise. If he refused to walk with me, I would be off on my own.
But in general, all these things should be discussed but if he won't discuss it without passing the blame to you, I'm not sure what you can do.
Suggest counselling, that will tell you how much he values the relationship.
If he refuses, maybe that's because he feels he will be targeted and blamed. He can try counselling on his own.
Anyway, good luck.

Please don’t LTB, some other poor woman might finish up with him.
It would be unfair to anyone to inflict him on them.

He is debasing you and destabilising your child. You can’t continue like this.

Agree with @74Violette . Get out as fast asvyou can. He won’t change.

I understand this must be very hard and upsetting to live with, but he clearly isn’t just ‘being a dick’! Your accounts make it pretty clear that he is well on the spectrum. Shouting at him, will only raise stress levels and make his weird behaviours worse. It will also upset your child. Even if he accepted he is neuro divergent, he would (if he is lucky) only be able to get counselling to help him accept it and manage behaviours a little. If this is too much for you, you need to end the relationship. You shouting won’t change him.

He's absolutely a malignant narcissist. He practices reactive abuse, pushing you with his toxic behaviour until you complain and then he has an excuse to get angry/walk out. It's text book.

Autism can be comorbid with Cluster B disorders like NPD and I think it's this that's at play here not the autism.

I wouldn't even bother with counselling, he's shown you who he is. You and your DC could have a much more peaceful life without him, I'd make stops towards that.

He sounds like a sociopathic narcissist to me. Get your ducks in a tight row and get out. Wouldn't worry to much about him getting 50/50 with your child tbh as these sort generally can't be bothered with looking after a child. Just don't show your hand too much there and you should be good.

@Redlorryyellowcar This has been on-going and you're still trying to appease him, adjust your own behaviour and figure him out. He gaslights you. He manipulates your dc's emotions and perceptions in front of you. Your dc is mirroring him now.
At what point will you say enough? He's rude to/in front of his family. Your family obv think he's a dick.
Yet you still wanna know if your own feelings are ott.
Sounds like he is grinding you down and you don't even trust your own eye and ears. Why on earth would you stay with him? So your dc can learn even more from him and have even less respect for you?
What about you and your child????

You’ve said pretty much everything I was going to say myself (about myself). Now our boy is older I’m coping a lot better, I’m not as burnt out as he doesn’t need me quite so much. I’m also kinda PDA, I really really struggle with requests/questions & can be confrontational without meaning too, it just ALWAYS feels like a personal attack even when I KNOW it isn’t. It took a hell of a lot work from my side on this but I was only able to recognise that once I found out my other son is autistic & did a hell of a lot of learning & realising that I’m also autistic. It was like such a light bulb moment. I still struggle now but I manage my own behaviours as much as I can but my husband also now knows my ‘triggers’ I guess you could call it & as he’s learnt so much about autism too it’s almost second nature to us both now.

The main thing is though that you (OP) can’t sort this all out yourself, it needs to be your husband that acknowledges his issues/triggers etc etc & does something about it, and you both working through it too. You can’t do it without him doing the work & you shouldn’t have to do all the accommodating if he is autistic. I hope things improve

What a piece of shit. This made me shiver reading this. I know you don’t want people saying LTB but honestly sometimes there is just no other sensible answer. This is more than neurodiversity. Sure, that might be going on, but this pure nasty behaviour is more than that, it’s abusive.

Your child is already being caught up in this and blaming you for upsetting dad. It’s a survival mechanism. It feels safer for him to align himself with dad but it’s incredibly harmful for his emotional development and future attitude to abuse and to women. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh but it’s true.
You feel like keeping a log of all this will just be dismissed, but it won’t. People on here are seeing his behaviour for what it is and so will agencies like Women’s Aid. In fact if you showed your list to a worker there, they’d call it what it is too and you’d hopefully feel validated. Emotional abuse is harder to get a criminal conviction for, that’s true, but if you make his behaviour known to as many people as possible especially professionals they WILL help you and they will be on your side. That might help with the worry you have about 50/50 if you leave. They might be able to help you make the case for a lower level of access or no access.
Start making your plans now, please.

my ex was emotionally abusive, coercive control etc.
This was one of his tactics for trying to make me the bad guy.
Does he have form for doing other things to get a reaction? Don’t you find you have fallings out just before meeting company? Or does he refuse to listen to your concerns about his behaviours unless you can give him exact specifics (like date & time etc)?

it might just be that he’s an immature petty arse hole but it could be and indicator of more to consider x

• having just read your other responses he is 100% just emotionally abusive. Please don’t stay with a man like that, he will wear you down until you feel worthless and it’ll teach your child the same x

🙏💐

Yes this was s a good guess. Its awful to deal with.

Obssessive Compulsive Personality Disorder? (Different from OCD)

If he happens to be autistic then I don't believe this is the cause of his actions towards you, he's being purposely nasty and then criticising you for daring to react to his ridiculous actions.

Ask yourself

1. was he always like this
2. is he like this with everyone or just you
3. is he like this in public towards you in view of others?

I agree the sandwich on floor functioned to humiliate you and is nothing to with ND of any kind

You could even argue that your reactions are normal given the provocation- but stepping back from and the patterns that have been pointed out to you

I dare say you are no where near the awful guilty person you think you are at times.

This plays out in front of your kids….

I think you’re taking far too much responsibility and shame for blowing up, instead of being able to have a conversation where he actually takes some responsibility for how he is acting.
Everyone gets tired.
He should be using his words then
Didnt want to take a drink from you -
“thanks dear, if you just sit it at the side I will get it in a bit”

He is really needing to take some action on how he deals with his overwhelm. That can’t be to the detriment of family life, such as meals gets made. There’s more than him in the family. And your little one isn’t responsible for making sure his parents get along, so id be nipping that one in the bud

I agree with this. This is blaming you for your reaction, instead of taking some accountability for his own behaviour

Agree with this. It’s nasty behaviour, not autism. He may be a narcissist or whatever but essentially he enjoys being rude and horrible to you and your poor DC is not only witnessing this, but feeling like he has to step in and referee you two. At four years old. Actually making me a bit teary to think about that.

Please show your darling boy that this isn’t ok behaviour and that he can enjoy dance parties and being lovely to his mum without his shitty dad ruining it.

he was just tired and didn’t have the energy to lift his arm.

This is all pathetic on his part. Why be with someone who spends so much time upsetting you on purpose.

I’m horrified at the sandwich on the floor in public thing. That’s deliberate and vindictive and nasty. He can argue that he couldn’t lift a finger out of ‘tiredness’ (though that’s bullshit), but the sandwich thing was premeditatedly unkind. He’s deliberately being nasty.

I think it would be very much worth you reading Lundy Bancroft "Why does he do that?". It goes into whether abuse is "caused" by mental health, ND etc and says while it often coexists, it is not the cause (this is what he has found from speaking to many abusive men). My takeaway from it was very much that they DO know what they're doing, it's not accidental. I think it's a book everyone should read. The confusion you're feeling and desperation to fix it with counselling or uncover the reason - MH issues etc are also things that Bancroft mentions as really common among abused women.

It does seem like he's latched onto this "pass it to my hand" with a variety of excuses such as being too tired (too tired to hold a drink?? FFS!) as a way to exert power over you and wind you up. I would actually be very interested to see what would happen if you started grey rocking that one by avoiding situations where you pass him something so for example with the drink, put it down on the table and say "there's your cocktail! DC made it specially" or with the car keys "oh, it's fine I'll drive". I wonder if he'll find something else to use.