Please help - Terrible row with husband

[Esme69]

I am SAHM of 5 young children. My husband works to provide a good living for us all, I have help with the kids and home 5 days a week which I am grateful for. This help means though that my husband has time to pursue his leisure pursuits, he plays golf once a week and is out most evenings at meetings to do with community stuff, chamber of commerce etc, so I do most of the bedtime stuff on my own.

He does very little around the house, but does cook from time to time, but becuase I do not work and have help, i assume responsibility for most of this stuff.

We have had problems in our marriage for some years now. He has abused alcohol in the past, and still from time to time overindulges but he has really tried to take himself in had and most of the time when he goes out doesnt get drunk.

But the real problem is that he is never really relaxed or happy. Never content. He says nasty things to me when he is annoyed, he also has said snide and belittling things to friends and family, and the general consensus on him is that he is basically a good person, but also very selfish and with a nasty tendency to stay stupid hurtful things, which, as a friend said to me recently, he has no idea the hurt and upset he leaves in his wake.

I do have an idea though becuase I live with him.In the llast 18months we have gone to marriage counselling, 2 sets of counselling sessions, around 9 months apart. I never really feel they worked becuase the counsellor was too nice and didnt really try to get to the root of our problems. It all stayed on the surface. I think my husband has deep seated issues, anger is always just below the surface, he seems resentful of me, or life or something, bitter, is always inclined to slag something off before praising it.

Last night we had a row. He told me he was sick of how I tried to control him, how it is always the same old shit with me, that I am uptight, (becuase I wanted to leave a pub at 1am after he had already had or 7 pints and the kids would be up at 6am) and he told me that I am a drama queen, and that seeing as we were going to stick together for the sake of the kids, I'd better get on some drugs or medication, some "happy pills" becuase he was sick of me the way I am.

I lost it at that point. Told him I hated him, that if he wasnt happy he should piss right off, and that many of our friends have been at the receiving end of him bile and think he can be a shit, and wonder how I put up with him (this is true, but I shouldnt have said it becuase now he want to know who said that and I cant tell, it wouldnt be fair on them.

I feel depair. I want to make this work for the kids. But whilst I do not hate him, I really do not like my husband as a person very much, and I am struggling to see how we can come out of this, make it work, somehow, or even live together amicably, I just dont know what to do or think...I guess I want someone to tell me if they think it is even possible to make this work in any way, as I want to avoid divorce, becuase my parents split up, I know how it felt and dont want to infilict this on the kids.

do you really think your children are better off living in a household with parents who hate each other?

I think staying together for the kids is at best misguided, at worst abusive.

Would you want your children (when adult) to live in a relationship like yours? becuase by staying you are teaching them that this is normal and acceptable

FFS bin this man. He is an abusive alcoholic who thinks you are his servant. And abusive alcoholics always start on the DC sooner or later - they'll get shouted at and told he never wanted them when he's in a drunken rage, they'll get a slap for waking him up when he's hungover, etc.
Trying to hold on to a marriage with an abuser is much worse for the DC than getting the abuser out of the house and making their home peaceful and safe for them.

What did your husband say when you told him how you felt? Was he still adamant that he was in the right, or did he listen to any of your comments?

Could you write down your feelings to him in an email? Or go to a different counsellor?

if you are moderating your behaviour on a daily basis to appease him, if you are watching what you say, how you say it, if you are treading on pins when he comes in, then - this is emotional abuse.

No one can tell you that it is possible to make this work in any way, because it isn't. IF your husband was self aware and IF he got the right kind of treatment for his alcoholism and his anger AND never tried to blame his problems on you, then you might have some hope. But he isn't self aware and you telling him that friends wonder why you put up with him isn't going to make him self aware.

If you kicked him out is might give him the message that he needs to sort himself out. But you can't do it for him and I wouldn't hold your breath.

Divorce is not nice for children to experience, but it is a lot better than living with an absuive alcoholic bully.

Thanks for the comments, all appreciated.

I'm not sure that he is an alcoholic. He never drinks at home. He goes out once a week with his friends and has 3 or 4 pints and comes home. He makes an effort not to overdo it. But, from time to time, every 2 or 3 months, he will go out, and not get back till 2 or 3, and he will be drunk. Or we will be out as a couple, (this is maybe 3 times a year) and I have to tell him that we are going home as it it late and he has had enough to drink.

Becuase he goes out at leat once a week, and drinks moderately, then I dont think that he is an alcoholic, cos he can be sensible about it when he wants to or has to.

What gets to me is that he makes out that living with me is such a trial, becuase he maintains that I dont trust him to go out for a pint and not come home drunk, despite the efforts he has made. I acknwledge his efforts and the undoubted improvement, but at the same time, things had to improve, as he was over doing it a lot, and he was making a disgrace of himself in the small town in which we live. So, I am to a certain extent keenly aware of how much he is drinking when we are out. I do not like being his gatekeeper, but that is just how it is.

He goes out once a week, and then again maybe as a couple we go out, if not every weekend then every second weekend. He plays golf every thursday,he goes away on a golfing holiday once a year, and usuually 2 boys weekend away a year on top pf that too, so I really do not see how he is as he claims, so "controlled" and hen pecked. I go away for a night twice a year with the girls, and that does me. But why does he feel so hemmed in? Most men I know thinks my husband has a great old time of it, so why is he so discontented.

I am so bloody fed up of him blaming me for his bad moods, the shitty things he says, all our problems. When I said last night that conselling had not worked for us he said "well that is becuase she didnt tell you what you wanted to hear, you just wanted the counsellor to tell you you were married to a shit and that it was all my fault" - this is his attitude. I maintain counselling didnt work cos we are back where we were last year, and I am hearing all the same old vitriol as I did before, so it clearly didnt work.

Could I write all this to him..possibly yes, but I do not think he will take it in, as someone said, he has no self awareness so not sure if any point. Yes I would go to a different counsellor if he agreed to that.

As far as abuse goes and the kids, he is a good dad to the kids and they adore him, so any abuse, if it is that, is directed soley at me, and never when they are around, we do not row in front of them.

I think you are flogging a dead horse here, sorry.

go to counselling on your own.

he can be a good dad to his kids on his own - you dont have to be there taking all this cr$p.

you sound utterly miserable - how is that good for the dcs?

besides - in what way is he "good" with dc? when does he actually see them? what does he do with them?

what leaps out at me is that he sounds VERY unhappy

rather than argue can you say to him "why are you so miserable". he has a wife, family, kids. so whats wrong? I think you need to get to the bottom of this.

does he want to be on his own? if yes, well you need to know
if no, well he needs to stop behaving like such a cxxt

I think you can gently push this towards some type of solution, if he wants "out" then better you know now than have years more of this

Porcamiseria - You are right. He is unhappy. But he says that I am the reason that he is so unhappy, that I give him "earache" all the time, moaning and ringing him when he is in the pub, and that I dont trust him to not get drunk, that I am no fun any more, that we have no spark etc

My best friend who is married to his cousin, and who knows my husband very well at this stage told me the other day that he is a discontented type of person, who would never be happy no matter who he is with, that he has upset and insulted them on many an occasion, and that even though they like him as he is basically a good person, they dont particularly enjoy his company any more, and that it is nothing to do with me, that he has issues that will always be there, and unless he becomes aware of them and makes a decision to try and change, our problems will remain.

She was not counselling me to leave him or stay with him, just to be aware of this in whatever decision I make.

He would never leave us becuase he couldnt bear the social scandal it would create in our town and community. Image is very important to him. He would take the "failure" of his marriage very badly. I honestly think he actually cares more about that than he does about me, unfortunately.

I would have to leave and take the kids with me, if that was what I decided to do.

Are you happy?

Can you see yourself being happy with him in the future?

Am I happy..right now, no.

In the future, if he could change and be more kind, considerate, less resentful, then yes I could be.

But they say people don't change, or that you shouldnt try to change them, so I dont know where that leaves us really.

I think you need to find different outlets for your own life. Does he feel hemmed in with the responsibility of providing financially for you all? if he doesn't enjoy his work he may feel b1tterthat he has to keep on going week in week out. Is there any way you could work together on this? If you want a future you both need to consider radical changes.Perhaps the traditional roles you have assigned yourselves simply don't work for you.

He could never stay at home with the kids. It would drive him mad. I am happy to be at home at the moment whilst they are so young, in the future I envisage returning to work.

I have asked him to scale down work, suggested a change of career, whatever to see if he would be happier. But he insists he thrives on work, and business, its what makes him tick.

Having asked the question, I now (uselessly) don't have any great answers. When things get tough at home I want to stay one for the kids and two because when the kids have gone I think we'll be happy again. That sounds terrible and we are happy'ish a lot of the time but it's just so stressful and I can't even begin to imagine what it's like with five.

I don't think that anyone should stay together for the children but I also believe that all marriages/relationships have major ups and downs. I think having children is stupidly hard.

FWIW I think that treading on eggshells is just that. It sucks, but I don't think it is necessarily abuse.

I wish I had more useful insights. We're here in cyberspace if that helps at all.

Esme,

Re your comment:-

"As far as abuse goes and the kids, he is a good dad to the kids and they adore him, so any abuse, if it is that, is directed solely at me, and never when they are around, we do not row in front of them".

They can hear it you know, they hear it all from their vantage points upstairs. Do not kid yourself that your situation is somehow different.

When is he ever around to be a "good dad" to these children?. I think that women in these types of abusive situations (and yes you are in an abuse situation here) write this type of thing about their man because they themselves have nothing positive to write about their H or partner.

BTW if you were to stay with this man as well and you do have a choice re him just bear in mind that your children have no say at all in that matter. If you stayed with him for the long haul you run the risk of you being alienated from your own children because they could easily turn around as adults and accuse you of putting him before them. If you were to say, "well I stayed because of you" their response could well be in reply, "silly cow for staying with him".
What are you actually inflicting on these children now by being in this dysfunctional and emotionally unhealthy marriage?. You'd be better off apart, at least then you would not have his malign prescence in your day to day lives and you'd all be a lot happier for it.

The ongoing problems in your marriage have not been solved and are nowhere near being solved. You cannot do this on your own and he is patently not interested in dealing with the issues. You are flogging a dead horse here, the foundations of your marriage are built on sand.

What are you getting out of this relationship now?. I would appreciate an asnwer to that question.

What are you both teaching your children about relationships here?. Two words suffice - damaging lessons. You sound completely ground down by him, not surprising really given his abusive treatment of you. You are showing these impressionable young children that their Dad's ill treatment of you at his hands is acceptable to you. Do not kid yourself that they don't see it because they know more than you think and probably blame themselves as well for Mum and Dad arguing. Staying together for the children is never a good idea because you are both teaching these children warped lessons re relationships. You pass the damage onto another generation.

What did you yourself learn about relationships when growing up?.

He will not change, only you can change how you react to him. I think you need to bear your best friend's words in mind very carefully here as per this comment,"My best friend who is married to his cousin, and who knows my husband very well at this stage told me the other day that he is a discontented type of person, who would never be happy no matter who he is with". I think this is very true, he would have been the same regardless of whom he married.

Do you know what this man's childhood was like, that will give you a lot of clues.
Your H is a deeply messed up unhappy workaholic and alcoholic. He cares more about his image portrayed to the outside world than he does to you and the children.
Abusers as well are often very plausible to those in the outside world.

What is your image of an alcoholic?. Alcoholics do not all sit on park benches drinking all day long and being unemployed, they don't even have to drink every day.

Bet you as well he will find a reason/s for you not being able or even "allowed" to go back to work.

Esme, at what point did someone convince you that you don't matter? That this man is a miserable shitbag who won't sort himself out is his problem, there is no reason for you to put up with his mistreatment of you (and your DC). At least look into what your position would be if you asked him to leave - remember, you are married, the family home is the children's home and if a man is abusive and an alcoholic it's not that difficult to get him out of the house as the children are the ones with the right to a safe home.

SGB I take your point, and believe you me, I am considering those options seriously for probably the first time in our marriage. I know my legal position is ok, I am trying to decide what is best for not just me, but me and my children. I know that right now I could quite happily walk. However, whilst I feel that my husband can be, and certainly at the moment and of late, is a total prick, that doesnt negate the fact that the kids love him, and even though he is not that hands on, they are happy children, very secure in themselves.

I need to be sure that if I do choose to leave, then that is the best solution ultimately for them as well as me.

I am otherwise happy in my life, I have health, wonderful children, great friends and good relationships with my family. My relationship with my husband is the only source of unhappiness in my life.

Attila - You phrase your advice in very strong terms. I appreciate your advice, and you have given me food for thought, i never thought of myself as being emotionally abused, I just thought that my husband was a dickhead some/a lot of the time, that he has a weakness towards alcohol, (which is not quite the same as a dependence) and that he is bloody hard to live with. I do know one thing though, and that is that my children are happy and secure, whatever you may say,and even if we didnt have these problems, there would still be the normal rows that adults have, and these are not necessarily damaging for children to see so long as the parents are seen by the children to resolve these differences and still love one another.

You are right though in that they will notice at some point, in the near future, as they get older that there is not a lot of love between their parents and I think that is where I would agree that it is better to separate, because that is where the damaging lessons are learnt.

My mother was afraid of my father. He was not a physical abusers, but certainly abused her mentally and emotionally. My husband is nowhere near as toxic as my father was but maybe I have still ended up in a similar situation to my mum.

esme...would you be happy for that cycle to continue along into the relationships that your children will build in the future, then ?

You sound like you are putting a huge amount of thought into your marriage and that must be stressful and exhausting. Would you consider getting counselling on your own to think through what you need from your marriage and whether the alternatives are worth considering? Relate provide counselling for individuals.

Breaking up a family is never something undertaken lightly but your H seems to be pushing you in this direction by his unwillingness to address your concerns. Does he know how serious this is? Does he know that you are considering a future without him?

Will you get to a point where you to attach "conditions" to staying together, i.e. If he has counselling to address why he is such a miserable sod?

I'm not sure that what you describe is emotional abuse, but it is incredibly selfish if you have pointed out how much his behaviour upsets/affects you and he does nothing. his approach that there is nothing wrong is so selfish.

Esme,

You yourself learnt a lot of damaging lessons re relationships when growing up and you are now actually in the same type of situation that your Mum is (did she leave your Dad?). I think you were also taught another damaging lesson by them - the fact that you do not think you matter.

Anyway I asked a question of you - what are you gettin gout of this relationship now. As there is not reply I can only assume that you are getting nothing out of it so what does that tell you. A house etc counts for absolutely nothing if your relationship with your H is non existant due to his ongoing ill treatment of you at his hands. You've described him as a prick.

"I do know one thing though, and that is that my children are happy and secure, whatever you may say,and even if we didnt have these problems, there would still be the normal rows that adults have, and these are not necessarily damaging for children to see so long as the parents are seen by the children to resolve these differences and still love one another"

You are not resolving any differences here are you even after two lots of counselling.
Also I feel the only person your H loves here is actually himself, the miserable discontented workaholic and alcoholic that he is. He is miserable as sin, a family relation has said he has always been like this and you are deeply unhappy by his ill treatment of you. He does not give a stuff about this marriage and likely never has. You were a prime target for someone like him, he too has low self worth and esteem. This is not and has never been acceptable. You were conditioned by your parents own marriage into thinking that this is somehow okay.

You cannot, simply cannot, let the next generation i.e your children be similarly affected by what they are learning from the two of you. They are learning an awful lot here, do not kid yourself that you can hide this from them because you cannot. Children love any parent when young even if in your case your man acts abusively towards you. They don;t know any different you see but what you yourself are teaching them is that this situation is acceptable to you and they learn from that.

Joint counselling was a complete non starter anyway; he probably only went along with it because you wanted to give it a shot but more importantly he does not want to address the issues because he feels he has done nothing wrong.

Counselling for your own self only would be a good idea if only to further clarify your own thoughts.

I hope you do make that complete break before he destroys you (and by turn the children) mentally. You do not want to spend the next 3-5 years living in such misery.

Womens Aid would also be helpful to you.

Esme- you said in an earlier post that you wondered if it would be possible for a person ever to change, or whether another person should ever seek to. Well, I think a person can change if they're prepared to put time and emotional energy into working out why they are like they are, and ways of breaking their own deeply ingrained behaviours. BUT they would have to accept there was something that needed to be chNged in the first place. They would need to be motivated.

Your H sounds as though he is blaming you entirely for his unhappiness. Therefore he is taking no responsibility and cannot change in that situation as he does not believe he is the one that has to change.

It sounds as though he was able to make some change s to his drinking pattern. So what was his motivation there? Did he recognise he was making an arse of himself in front of people he considers important to his business& social standing? Or did he start having health problems? There must have been something that clicked within him.

He would need the same realisation that HE has problems within himself, before he can change. It sounds as though right now he is assuming you will stay together no matter what. He said "as we are staying together for the sake of the children......." maybe you should shatter that safe comfortable assumption of his, that has him believing he can treat you however he likes and you will stay, by telling him otherwise.

Shock him into realising how unhappy you are with him.

Oh just another thing - why do you say that you would have to be the one to go? You said earlier that he would never leave, you would have to. I can see how with that belief you would feel stuck and trapped. The thought of uprooting 5 settled, happy children to take them to a strange new house must be awful.

Take some legal advice on that. I'm sure you aren't allowed to just kick him out but it is your family home, there is no reason why in the immediate term you and the kids would have to leave.

Getting legal advice means you'd be tackling this from a position of strength.

I am one of five children Esme. My parents had a similar relationship to your marriage only my mother was the belittling, shouting, criticising one. She was a SAHM and my father worked full-time but he also played cricket or football every weekend and did little around the house and my mother and he had a huge argument most weekends.

They argued behind closed doors. We five would sit on the stairs talking anxiously about what would we do if they split up - we were worried we would be separated and put into orphanages. My oldest sister promised she would refuse to be separated from us three girls but my 2 brothers would have to fend for themselves.

When I got old enough (at Univ) I came hopme one holiday and found my youngest sister (the youngest of us 5) lying in bed sobbing silently while parents had the usual horrid row downstairs. My sister was crying that is was her fault. I was SO angry, I went downstairs and told them to get divorced and what was the bloody point of their endlessly bitter shouty marriage. They both stopped mid-row, and laughed at me saying 'don't be ridiculous, we don't want to get divorced'

But I meant it.

Us five children have all turned out to have woeful 'issues' as a result of their bullying and apparently unhappy marriage. One brother is a functioning alcoholic, my youngest sister an itinerant who has never married and, at 43, with no home or family of her own, has just failed a PHd, my older sister seemed to survive it and get married and has 5 children of her own. My oldest brother had a LOT of counselling and for years has had has no contact - or very little and explosive every time - with my parents, and limited contact with three siblings.

And I, only four years ago, aged 43, finally saw the light about the damage done to me by their marriage - I had no self-esteem and got into abusive relationships myself.

I now have no contact with any of my family apart from my oldest brother, and we talk about 'them' and how dysfunctional it all was and still is, all the time.

Attila is right: your children will be done endless damage by the example you are both setting them. It takes years to realise it, see it, feel it and start changing one's own patterns.

If your children are young enough, please be strong enough to protect them by un-marrying your Husband and start some work on yourself to find out why you have settled for so little. x

Attila - At times we have been fairly happy, and at those times, not at the moment obviously, but at those times I would have said that I was getting something out of the relationship.

Now, though, I feel drained. I am going to take this one step at a time. I have put my name on the waiting list for Relate to get counselling, on my own, to work out what to do and how to do it.

I am not going to let this situation continue one way or another that is for sure.

Loves to Walk - I will take legal advice on that. I do not see, if he refuses to go, short of changing the locks, how I can get him to go.

I did tell him last night that a separation was on the cards if things did not change, that I could not go on living with him like this. He was shocked, and told me he could not believe I could contemplate jeopardising our childrens happiness just becuase I do not like the way he speaks to me.

You see, he just does not get it. He has no self awareness, no idea how hurtful he can be, and so I have little hope that he can change.

This morning he said sorry, and that he really wanted us to work things out, and that he would go to counselling again and do whatever he could do, but that I had to take some responsibility here too, that it couldnt all be just him. He always has to turn it back to me.

Unlikely Amazonian - your post scared the shit out of me, and in the light of what you have wrote I will remember that in the next couple of months as I figure this out. Thank you for telling me about your experience, it certainly has made me rethink a lot of the beliefs I held.

Thanks to all for the comments. Its great to be able to come on here for support and advice, bloody lifeline really.