How to help angry/stressed husband

[Katnissx]

Hi,

I'm suffering from PND & on Sertraline 200mg. I'm worried about my husband's behaviour, he won't accept help & I don't know what to do..

He is stressed a lot of the time, and puts it down to work but it's happening just as much when he's not working, he is quick to anger & raise his voice and can be too rough with our toddler (like grabbing him by the arm hard to stop him doing something or throwing him down too forcefully onto the sofa where his calm down area is). He often goes around in a clearly bad mood which in turn brings my mood down & means he has no patience with our son (2.5yo).
He has been like this for a while, probably since around the time we had our son in 2018, but now my son is a toddler and very challenging my husbands anger & bad moods are becoming more obvious and I don't like the way he treats our son. It's also a trigger for me and every time I hear him shouting or getting angry it makes my tummy drop & flip & I often end up in tears myself.
We've talked about it several times & I've asked him to reach out to his GP or self refer himself for talking therapies but he refuses. He thinks he can handle it himself, do meditations, exercises and gratitude lists etc but then makes excuses that there's never the time to do them etc. We made a plan of how we are going to react to challenging behaviours from our son using the gentle parenting method & I stuck it up on the wall but he just doesn't follow it. We have been trying to both talk about our mental health each day and how our days are going etc but it's not been making any difference to his behaviour. I'm really fed up of it and having to tell him to be more gentle/careful/calm etc with our son, and we have a 5 month little girl and I just look at her thinking is he going to shout like this and be angry with her too when she gets older and it just breaks my heart. He's not like this all the time, some of the time he can be lighthearted & fun (which is what he was mostly like before we had children), but it's the minority of the time unfortunately.
I'm sorry for the super long post! Just really struggling with my own mental health at the moment and I don't know how I can help him- any advice would be amazing 🙏

Leave. Just leave.

If he works on it, you can go back, but for now, leave before your children get hurt.

I don't think it's your job to help him - you've tried, and he's not receptive to it.
It is not healthy for you or your children to be around someone who is explosive.
I really think it's time for you (or him) to leave, at least until he gets some help.
Your children deserve to have at least one parent who is relaxed and calm. I'm not blaming you for one second, so please don't misunderstand my intention. From what you've said, you yourself are on eggshells all of the time.
It's time take time out of the relationship, even if it's only temporarily.

I understand trying to support your partner OP, but you have things going on too with your PND and you need supporting too! Why should it be on you to help both yourself and him alone. Does he sit of an evening and wonder how he can support you? Or does he stamp around in anger and make you feel worse.

You need to tell him how you feel, and he needs to get help to address his behaviour. I have a friend like this and she is so unwell due to having a husband that she has to help, and not addressing her own PND needs and health needs. Plus battling a child and toddler who are picking up on dads behaviour all the time (elder child displays a lot of aggression) and the whole house being on eggshells.

I understand why you think I should leave, and I have thought about it, but the thought makes me feel so sad. He's my husband, my best friend, I love him. I desperately don't want to tear our little family apart (which is why I'm posting on here). He does support me with my mental health (sometimes he does need prompting), but he does try to help & he helps as much as he can to support me when I'm struggling with our little ones while he's working from home (like slinging our daughter when she's asleep). He works so hard for our benefit, he wanted me to be able to stay off work while our children are young so they would get the best of me and so I could enjoy them and I so appreciate him for that. I know it doesn't sound like it from this post, but he is a good man.
We are also fairly isolated as we moved away from our close friends and family a few years ago (moving back that way soon though) and I just feel like i would be so lonely without him, I think it would make my mental health worse than it is now as then I wouldn't feel like I would have anyone to talk to or enjoy being around (because I do enjoy being around him despite his bad moods). I would also probably have to move back into my mums which would also negatively impact my mental health as I have a difficult relationship with my mum. But the tipping point for me is his behaviour towards our children, I can't let it continue. So yes I would consider leaving, hopefully temporarily, if things don't improve. But I really don't want that to happen 😣

If you leave and ask him to get help with you out of the house then you probably won’t have to deal with social services. If he isn’t engaging with help and is getting angrier with your babies (and 2 is definitely still a baby) then if you stay you will be failing to safeguard.

Better for your dc to be in safe childcare while you work, than at home with you all the time and being roughly treated some of the rind.

• some of the time

Op He is not a good man if he is rough with a tiny child, however challenging your toddlers behaviour there is no excuse for a grown man being rough.I am sorry but you need to remove them or him from this situation, until he gets help and proves he is able to parent calmly and consistantly.
Please step up and protect your children, his anger and bad moods is not healthy for you or them

I am so sorry to hear he is like this. He clearly doesn't want to change either. I honestly think you should start planning to leave - otherwise you risk him inflicting long-term emotional damage on your kids. Is there someone in real life you can confide in? A friend or health visitor? Counselling could also really help you work this through.
Honestly your life will be so much easier when you're not having to monitor his behaviour all the time.
to you OP.

Maybe you could tell him that you take his behaviour towards your son so seriously that you are considering leaving, it might prompt him to act?
It reminds me in some ways of my husband and how he was with out toddler son after our second was born and he hit the difficult toddler years.
He just seemed to have no patience with him and even spanked him which I hate but I also felt overwhelmed with his behaviour and the new baby. Things have settled down now but I do still worry about the impact of his loss of temper re our eldest. I had to call him out on it and be really cross at the time of the behaviour to let him know it was not ok to behave like that.
I'm so sorry you're struggling OP

I also found when we could spend time together and recharge and when he had some down time he was much better and less stressed but it sounds like that's not possible for you at the moment? Obviously you need some of that too!
You need to really drill into him that if he can't control his emotions around your child when your child is playing up then he needs to remove himself from the room/situation

Thank you for the replies. I'm going to talk to a close friend this afternoon. I'm doing CBT talking therapies, I have looked into couple counselling but not entirely sure that's what we need, I feel like he needs to have counselling/CBT separately. @giantwaterbottle thank you, that's really helpful. I think I will say that to him (although I have said to him in the past that it's making me dislike him when he acts like that and that seemed to really open his eyes at the time, but then nothing really did change...). I've also mentioned it to a peer support for PND I have and she is going to get in touch tomorrow & says she has some contacts he could get in touch with. So I'm thinking maybe an ultimatum, he gets help or we go to my mums for a bit 😔 yeah, that does sound like similar behaviours, was there anything else you found helped? Unfortunately we don't have anyone who would be able to watch our little ones for us to have time to ourselves 😕 and yes I do call him out on it too xx