Husband blames for stuff that is really just random life stuff.

[eatmytwirl]

My husband was in the office today (I work for myself so always from home, while he has to go in a few times a month). I got up early along with him, made him some breakfast while he was getting showered and ready. When he came down he started complaining that he hadn't slept well, I remarked that I hadn't either, I was too hot and creeped out from a horror film we'd watched. He then said "It's eating too late at night, we had dinner too late then we ate chocolate and crisps too late" Essentially he is blaming me for making dinner too late but we ate at 7pm after he had suddenly wanted lunch at 4pm, which I made for him. I then had a cup of tea after dinner and a couple of chocolates as did he. He then also had a can of cola and polished off half a tub of pringles!

If anything has been keeping him up at night it was probably the cola and pringles!

The issue is that the minor argument that ensued has put me off kilter all day, I just feel upset about it. I feel like in moments like that when he is tired or things haven't gone to plan he needs to blame someone else and as I'm the only one here its me who gets the blame. Everybody has bad nights or feels tired at times, the bedroom was a bit hot or you had too much caffeine, shit happens!

He's always been like this, grumpily lashing out with blame, his whole family are like this and he is miles better than he used to be but when he is tired and grumpy he still does it. It just gets me down because their is no need for it. For my part, I probably get too upset about it when it should be water off a ducks back by now.

I just wish he's stop blaming me for things when it is just life, he's even blamed me for things that I wasn't even there to do or not do! I also wish it didn't throw me off kilter like this when he is like this.

He's obviously learned this from his mother, who sounds completely bonkers.

I think you need to call him out on it every time. "No dh, this is on you and your decisions. You're an adult."

in our case he really is blaming me, I will often ask him "are you blaming me?" and he will reply "well who else's fault could it be?" If I say well it could be your fault or just nobody's fault he reiterates why its my fault even if his logic is bizarre, sometimes he even knows how ridiculous he is being and laughs at himself doing it. I think it makes him feel better to attribute the blame to an outside source rather than think oh I messed up there, like its a coping mechanism he has but be making me a patsy for his negative emotions or some kind of garbage can for them its kind of abusive and not very considerate of me.

I think you need to have a serious conversation about how this is making you start to resent him and then decide what you wish to do based on his response.

”I’ll let you take over the meal planning, food shopping and cooking then if it’s not to your standards” and then stick to it. He’ll soon discover a new found ability to not attribute blame

I do try to call him out on it and sometimes he will laugh because he knows he's being ridiculous but other times he gets angry and it isn't worth it.

He doesn’t sound pleasant to live with. What does he bring to the party?

I’ve got fault-detective parents. If something falls out of a cupboard, somebody’s getting shouted at, even if they’ve got bugger all to do with it. It must have been put away wrongly or somebody’s lazy or whatever, always the post-mortem.

It’s a learned behaviour - ‘whose fault is it? It must be someone’s fault’ says it all. Don’t really have any advice as such, but I do recognise it. Be good if he could too.

He comes across as childish in his thinking/reasoning. It's great if there are cool drinks in the fridge if someone wants them and snacks in the house, but it's up to each person to decide when it's a good idea to have something and when it's not. And from your follow-up - not meaning to nitpick, but why does it take two people to get him ready to catch his train??

It's probably hard to break lifelong juvenile thinking patterns at this stage, especially if he has no incentive to change. But he DOESN'T have to keep voicing every illogical and potentially hurtful thought he has, either. And he can learn to speak up proactively or as soon as he notices a potential problem - "it's too hot in the bedroom", "I need to eat dinner at six on work nights" - rather than waiting until it's too late to fix. If he's expecting YOU to know that he's too hot or he can't sleep when he eats at 11 PM and regulate for him - well, he's not a child and you're not his mum.. You can care for him and be thoughtful and considerate (as he should do for you too), but ultimately it's his job to be in decent shape to get to work in the morning.

Do you tell him that his accusations really bother you? Perhaps the point at which he realizes he's ridiculous and laughs could be a starting point for a general discussion? It seems your choices are (1) to convince him to at least recognise the negative pattern and bite his tongue instead of voicing the misattributed blame or (2) to "train" yourself to just depersonalize and ignore it like you would if a random small child did it. The latter, he should realise, also means you may not take his real concerns as seriously, "boy who cried wolf" style.

I thought he'd have it while watching the football earlier. He was sulking by then and said we had to hurry up and get him ready to leave or he'd miss the train.

I'm not understanding the bit about
getting him ready to leave - are you his mother or his wife?

My lovely DP used to get very much like this. One day, fairly early in our relationship he tried the blame a broken wash machine on me (that he broke). I have never ever washed a single thing since. Not once. We share every chore and the mental load equally (except this one issue) and it serves as a very inconvenient reminder to him that you blame me and its not my fault you better be damn ready to take on that task.

Now you could say by keeping it up (several years later) is a bit petty and i would agree with you but it makes for a great object lesson. Should Mr Candidate say 'what did you do to the dishwasher to make it like that' I will say 'Why, has it gone the way of the washing machine?' and suddenly he is reminded that its not wise to think that way and a adjustment to how things are considered is made, swiftly.

I should mention, this pattern of behaviour ONLY happens when DP slips in the the 'blame game' mindset and normally we are pretty much on the same page. It tends only to appear after he has been visiting family or he is busy/preoccupied and slips into old behaviour patterns.

Why couldn’t he have made his own lunch yesterday and his breakfast this morning ?

I think we all do this, internally, in the immediate aftermath of an incident, but after the age of about 15, most of us realise it is a ridiculous trait and suppress

It’s abit of a red flag that he gets angry with you and then you don’t think it s worth talking to him about it. Does he do the same to his mother or sister?
Does he ever make his own breakfast or heck, does he make anything for you? Do you generally feel respected in the relationship? What if you got angry at him, how would he react? Could just be nothing and just his personality or he could be entitled and potentially emotionally abusive. I couldn’t just brush that off.

I think we all do this, internally, in the immediate aftermath of an incident, but after the age of about 15, most of us realise it is a ridiculous trait and suppress

Maybe. I can remember when my DD was young being surprised when some parents would say stuff like 'naughty door' when their child walked into it. I thought blimey you really think it's a good idea for kids to grow up thinking that stuff is never their fault? Maybe the OP's DP grew up with parents like that? Some people just can never accept blame and it's really annoying.

My exH never took responsibility for anything. He was perfection personified.🙄 It's a very narcissistic trait and deeply unattractive.

Mine does this, has done for the 32 years we have been together. I really didn’t notice it for the first 16 years and then, due to one thing or another, started noticing more and more. If something happens, it’s always someone's fault (but not him or his mum), lots of passive aggressive gaslighting really. Now, I call him out on it immediately, and he shuts up, because he’s not been used to me saying anything negative about him. I never would have done, I thought I was the luckiest girl alive when I met him, especially once we had kids, but the shine started wearing off for me after several actions of his which can’t be come back from. At this moment in time, my MIL is living with us as well, as she is 83 and on her own abroad, so she came to live with us, despite the fact that until the last few years, she made my life hell. Now the tables have turned, my DP and MIL are in a precarious position in their eyes because they only have each other left and me and the kids, now they both have to try and be agreeable if we are all to live here without killing each other!

sorry for the rant, what you said triggered me, because this is how my relationship was for years, very passive aggressive against me, and I didn’t see it for what it was nor do anything about it until recently. Just be aware that it could be more than him just being a bit grumpy, particularly if others in his family are similar….. ❤️

Is he actually blaming you or venting? It reminds me of the post about a week ago when the woman was complaining she can’t rant about Sky being shit without her DH getting offended.

General consensus was - even if it’s not directed AT you, you still feel the affects of it and it’s not particularly fair to do.

You have my sympathy OP. DH and adult DS both do this kind of thing. Anything they can't find elicits the question "where have you put my .....?.". They just don't seem to be able to accept that whatever it is they are looking for is probably wherever they left it! But why can't they just ask "Have you seen my ......"? I'm afraid they get short shrift from me now for anything that sounds like an accusation.

Is it not possible he just sounded grumpy because he had just woke up from a bad sleep, and was commenting on why he thought he’d struggled to sleep, not blaming you? As DH and I often have the same little chat if we have slept badly “it will be because we had the windows open/had the fan on all night/ate too late” etc, there’s no blame it’s just commenting on what we think caused it?

This is classic behaviour of not wanting to take responsibility. I have had similar (although much less unpleasant) where DH will be worried that the reason he's' gained a few pounds is because I cook with too much fat, or our food is too rich...

.... I used to get really defensive about it but now I just say, "you don't think it's the giant bowl of cereal and yoghurt you had at 11pm or the fact that you finished off all the leftovers before you went to bed? How much bread did you eat yesterday?"

I also frequently remind him that the food we eat is actually quite healthy, very nutritious etc (which it is - it's NOT low calorie, that is true. But it's also not particularly high calorie either - I'm the only one with a weight problem in this house and my focus is on varied, nutritious, healthy food, particularly as both dh and ds are very very active and burn a LOT of calories with hours and hours of exercise every week)

He's much better about it now.

But then, my DH is not a wanker and is very good at looking at himself and his own behaviours or reactions and realising if they are inappropriate/unfair or not ,and adjusting if necessary.

Exactly this! Unfortunately my DP and MIL never sit back and reflect on what they have said or done, never! It’s like they do not care enough to have the ability to see that what they say and / or has very real consequences on others.

What do YOU want to do about this?

If he's laughing at his own logic then he could be playing a rather spiteful game with you. You can insist/ demand/ beg/ plead for him to stop but you cannot make him stop.

How much longer are you going to tolerate this behaviour, because until he has some real reason, such as losing you, to make him stop this is simply going to continue?

If you find the situation intolerable then don't tolerate it.

@NotLactoseFree Yeah my DH does this also, I have a sweet tooth and usually have a biscuit or bit of chocolate with my evening cuppa. DH has the chocolate also but he prefers crisps and nuts so also will snack on that after while I just have the chocolate and tea. He complains I am over feeding him even though I point out he is welcome to not eat biscuits or chocolate and just have a savoury snack if he prefers it instead of always having both.

My mother is/was like that my whole life growing up, and it affected how I speak, but I learnt over time from my DH's positive example.

Actually we also have a bit of a codeword for it that developed organically. He says something like "don't be an Eeyore" (not the real codeword) or "OK, Eeyore" and that would either make me laugh (genuinely - think the PP imagining some kind of psycho Joker laughter spiteful game is bonkers/pretty spiteful themselves!) or be grumpy, but either way over time that has cut down my unnecessary blame/passive aggressiveness a lot.

@Zakana this is common in my community, it’s a patriarchy thing where I am rather than accidental which is why I have no time for it. It would never happen where a daughter in law is throwing a strop even if she has every bloody reason to. Whilst my husband is decent (although I often wonder would he behave himself if he married someone more ‘tolerant’ seeing as he had that dynamic modelled by his parents) his family would prefer it if I was a doormat. Much of it is a power thing, they rely on a woman’s fear of divorce etc but once they realise a woman is playing by those rules, they really panic.

Just get him to cook dinner earlier.