Big argument with DH has gone out of control. In need of your gentle advice.

[Springtimesadness]

Evening all .

Frequent poster on here but name changing for this one. DH and I been together for 10 years and have got 2 beautiful daughters together both very young. We never had support from neither grandparents, moved around a lot , never had much but always found a way to make it work and count our blessings and work hard and always stick together and support each other. Not sure if its relevant but I feel trapped.

When all is good and as he puts it 'i have got things in the house under control' we are good. However, if anything happens at all to me, for example I get sick , or break my foot or feel overwheed or have received upseting news about my family (they are in Ukraine ) and ask him to 'take over a bit ' the whole house spiralls out of control very vere quickly. He hasnt got much patience and then often starts losing it at the girls for misbehaving and on and on it goes until I step in and he then blames all of that on me 'falling apart' . It always feels like I shouldnt have said anything because his 'take over" was a much worser thing then me pushing through.

After yet another incident , I am in tears right now. He spent the whole day working on a presentation so we didnt see much of him. Our youngest was playful refusing to go to bed and so I asked him if he would mind taking over and settling her since he barely seen her whole day. After 4 mins I heard him telling her to stop being 'so stupid and go to bed'. I immediately returned to the room to tell him that she is not stupid and is just overtired. He then proceded to blame my 'shit parenting" for that and for whatever think they watched on an Ipad for 45 mins (he wasnt helping whole day and I needed to cook a family meal somehow). It then escallated to him calling me 'a fucking piece of shit who ruined the whole day ' in front my youngest daughter. I didnt say a word but he kept on repeating that to my face at least 4 times until I pushed him out of the room.

I am all in shock. He now came saying that he would be a bigger person and apologise if I apologise for 'physically attacking him when I pushed him out of the bedroom. I refused for the first time ever. Refused to be gaslighted into believing I dont anything wrong. This exchange has made me sick to my stomach. He had got a very challenging time at work but i can find no excuse to that. I feel like my heart broke today. I believed we had a pretty decent family and even planned to go on holiday next week. Now it feels like I am all alone and the person I loved is not the same person I just had this argument with.

AIBU to think you cant move on from that? If anyone did move on what did it take ?

You need to calm down, ignore his goading and keep repeating "I did not "push" you, I had to remove you from the room as you were being verbally aggressive and DD was terrified". Do not use word "push" again.

This. Men like your husband know exactly what to say to have you tying yourself in knots. Don't. I guarantee you are smarter than him, he thinks he's smarter because you have settled into pandering to him for an easy life.
By the way, my OH is a very involved dad, he did school drop offs and pick ups, rearranging his work diary to do so. He shops, cooks and cleans. He is a fantastic example for our children. We also argue. The kids see us hash things out. This is important. You want your children to know that sometimes, you have to stand up for yourself to get your needs met. I am not just a mother. My needs and wants are as important as everyone else's.
You passively taking everything on to keep him happy is not a healthy example. Your husband can't spent a few minutes with his little girl without calling her stupid and screaming in your face. I don't know how you can look at him nevermind respect him.

I think that is a valid way for you to feel and is definitely something in your relationship you need to talk about and try and resolve and change. If he isn't willing to change it then maybe it's time to consider whether your better seperate.

Where does the OP say he was "screaming"? She says he repeated what he'd said 4 times. There's a difference.

Hmmmm, does no one here say to their kids stop being so stupid?.

👆 This, OP.

I was going to comment that you NEED support. You need someone you can talk to to help you reality check situations. Women's Aid will be that support.

Second, you did NOTHING wrong. In fact I respect you.

I can imagine if you are aware of your husbands track record, you'd have been listening very closely to how he dealt with your DD anticipating things might derail.

You stepped in quickly to prevent his predicted behaviour escalating with your daughter, and he turned on you instead.

You did the right thing removing him from the room where his behaviour was terrifying a child.

It's worrying that he might start doing to her what he's been doing to you for a long time: blaming her, manipulating her, into thinking there's something wrong / bad about her because she isn't conforming to the idea he has in his head of how a good child behaves at bed time. And I think you instinctively know this and jumped in to stop it happening.

Your child will possibly have it in her head now that her refusal to go to bed (a nightly drawn out occurrence in my house) was the cause of everything she saw. That's a massive scary weight of guilt for a small child. So please explicitly reassure her and tell her what happened was wrong and not her fault.

Last thing, a male family member once commented to me 'what use is a man at all if he can't look after, love and care for his family?'. It's always stuck with me. So ... your DH probably thinks by working he's doing his bit. But he's not supporting you with love. He's not caring for how life is for you. And what happens if you - god forbid - got cancer? Are you sure this man can care for you and your children when he is really tested. I know 100% my DH would care for me and our DC in that situation.

Don't let him gaslight you. You did nothing wrong at all. Nothing. You stepped in and turned his well known capacity for demeaning and belittling people away from your child and absorbed it yourself.

But please get support from women's aid. Please. You need it.

op l agree with others he does not respect you as a person or equal but as l can see you don't want to blow up your marriage immediately, please start sorting your situation, get legal status if you possible can.
Work out whether he can take the children to another country if you divorce at some point and plan accordingly..I am not sure of your circumstances but you get the drift.
Find ways to make you own money look at online remote businessess you can do in your own time and prioritise finding something that works for you around your children. REALLY focus on this.
You can open an account for this money to go into seperately.
Don't waste your energy on emotions relating to him or trying to fix him, it is a waste, just focus any energy on putting yourself in a strong position to leave if need be.

BTW you did nothing wrong pushing him out of the room, a terrified child should not witness that. DO NOT let him guilt trip you.

I don’t, I grew up with my parents saying it to me and I don’t want to make my children feel the way it made me feel.

You've got every right to be upset OP. You said that you always stick together and support each other but it doesn't seem like he does unless everything is going perfectly and all at your expense. Has he verbally abused you before? I'd be very fearful of something similar or even worse happening again. For the sake of your girls, consider counseling to find a way forward with or without him.

You are unhappily married OP, and are able to paper over the cracks for the most part by throwing yourself into your family, keeping yourself busy with what your husband has decreed your responsibility, and having the occasional nice thing to look forward to as a family. Your husband sounds unpleasant, critical and belittling, but because there are periods of time when he doesn't show this side, because things are OK in his world, its easy and more convenient to focus on the smooth patches than reflect on the implications of the bad ones.
You have one life OP. Do you want to live and die with this man beside you? Or do you want to leave while you're young enough to start over? Or accept the situation for now with a plan to leave when your children are older? These are your choices.

OP my EXH was like this, and it increased in frequency and intensity. I intervened and protected my children at every turn and eventually got him out. Lots of people in my life would ask if I’d tried this or that, insinuated that I was emasculating him (cheers, mum!) or the old classic ‘but he’s a good dad, he takes them to school sometimes’. And yet. All proper services - police, the local children’s safeguarding team, women’s aid, agreed it was abuse. He left before the police arrived, they were on the way to remove him.

For people saying it’s just an argument or that OP “undermined” her husband. FFS, really? If you’d let a man loom over you tiny girl telling them they’re stupid, then be repeatedly told you’re a piece of shit in front of that terrified girl… well that’s a shame. This isn’t ok and shouldn’t be normal. Never ever have I intimidated my children, and I’m now a completely lone parent and have been for years. Funny how I can control myself to not be spiteful and frightening to my kids, but OP’s husband gets a free pass? This place is fucking nuts at times.

And no in response to pp, I never call my kids stupid.

Be careful @Springtimesadness I swear there’s an asshole husband playbook out there and one of them is to accuse the wife of ‘assault’ and to report them to the police. He’s looking to absolve himself by blaming you. Don’t apologise to him. Simply restate calmly that his behaviour was scaring your DD. That you did not physically assault him. And then quickly move on to another conversation.

Another page of the playbook is to hide assets so watch out for that. Possibly he might be getting ready to leave you and is starting a self justifying narrative. If so, start documenting his vile behaviour especially towards your girls. I don’t mean to alarm you but I think you need to be more cautious. It’s hard but try not to be emotional. He can use your heartbreak against you. While you’re feeling sad, he’s moving assets. Can you start a separate bank account and begin squirrelling a bit of money away.

Bring under pressure at work is not an excuse for taking it out on his family. Your poor dad has seen her Dad insult her mum repeatedly and been called stupid herself. Neither of you deserve this. I don't think there is a way back if he doesn't accept he was wrong. You shouldn't push him but obviously wanted him to stop in front of DD.

Your husband's behaviour is really horrible, OP.

It sounds like he's checked out of family life.

My husband has a very short fuse and sometimes he takes over on kid duty and after a few minutes I hear him yelling because one of them is misbehaving. I totally get your frustration when you've been looking after them for hours, or all day, and then after a few minutes you hear him losing it because he's already reached the end of his tether.

But you do have to look at the overall picture. And in our family, the overall picture is that my husband is very hands on with the children, doing most of the nursery drop offs and pick ups, fully involved with dinner and bath and bed, taking them out at weekends, and is currently dealing with most of our DD's night wakes because she's only recently night weaned and if I go to her in the middle of the night she still wants boobs and I don't have the willpower to resist. So if he's tired and stressed and shouts occasionally, I have to cut him some slack in the context of everything he is doing for our family.

That's not the case with your husband. He's basically leaving you to do everything and then blaming you when it all goes wrong. That's not OK. And why the hell is he spending all day preparing a work presentation at the weekend? Either his workload is too large to fit into the working week, in which case that's a problem he needs to address with his manager, or he's slacking off during the day at work and then having to catch up at weekends, at the expense of your family time. Either way, it's not OK, and neither is the way he speaks to you.

Do you have indefinite leave to remain in the UK? I think I would look into what your immigration situation will be if you and your husband separate, as a matter of priority. Then, once you're clear about that, you tell him very firmly that the situation needs to change because you are not willing to put up with this kind of treatment from him in the long term, or model this kind of relationship to your children.

Sadly, this is true, OP: some people come to AIBU to be malicious, so ignore the unhelpful replies.

Your husband had no right to swear at you and terrify his little daughter. No reasonable person would blame you for pushing him away. It sounds as if he is the main cause of your problems, and you and DC need some time (at least) away from him.

Best of luck in looking after your DC and yourself.

This

Did you get the bit where he was calling the child " stupid..." ? And still don't think she should have intervened? Because she says he can get verbally abusive quickly with them all. So don't be condoning that.

Others disagree

And what would you have done, again?

God, some of the replies on this thread. Depressing. Can only assume people are here to troll because it's AIBU.

OP - your husband does sound abusive. Agree with those saying you need to consider the possibility that this relationship is ending and be prepared. Is he from Ukraine as well?

OP it doesn't say if the kids are pre school age but start to build your life little by little independently of your dh. That is if your not thinking of leaving already.

If the girls are in school, start looking for courses to do that will help you get a part time job. Or volunteer to start getting experience under your belt for job hunting when girls start school. Think long term here. You know he is a shit so you need to future proof yourself. Start putting some money away weekly in a different account he doesn't know about, in your name not kids as he can access it otherwise too.

In the meantime if you want to make it work- you both need to sit down and chat and try some marriage counselling first. He may need seperate counselling for his anger but mc first is a good start. Don't let him fob you off about not needing it.

Him shouting like that means next time he'll get bolder and more vicious so be prepared. Do counselling. Same time start considering other options if it doesn't work out and preparing for those options

If my H repeatedly called me a POS I think a push would be pretty much getting away with it- I don't like people getting physical either but I think she's got the patience of a saint personally putting up with a bloke behaving like this after offering sod all help most of the time- won't enable her to work, won't do drop offs or pick ups - put yourself in a position OP where you have some control, even if it means putting up with him for a while to sort your immigration status, save some money etc

Exactly..But remember this is Mumsnet, where misbehaving children are never told off, they are ''Spirited'' and ''lively'' .

When children arrive is a prime time for relationships to founder, especially more than one child...even when parents have been married for years before children come along.

Even if my dh was a good, involved father (which yours isn’t) and one day flipped out calling my small child stupid and then repeatedly shouted that I’m a piece of shit into my face - he’d be out the door.

Id never be able to respect him again after that and it would alter my view of him forever.

You’re not in the wrong op - you’re at the end of your tether being married to a useless, abusive arsehole.

Unfortunately you are a married single parent. He is married to his work and you and dc are the convenient backdrop to make himself look normal… Until he has to step up and do anything.

Complete guess but is there usually work stresses/drama on his end.

Wouldn’t rely on him sticking to the agreement of saying he won’t say anything if you split up.