This is unreasonable, right?

[justoverit]

I have posted on here before about my relationship but have namechanged. I just flipped last night, and I am going to start a diary of the way that my h behaves to try and get a handle on it. I want to try to resolve our issues somehow for the sake of the children (yes, I know, but that's how I feel) and because I do actually love him but I don't think we can carry on without some serious talk, maybe Relate, maybe separate counselling?

Last night's example. He comes home from work, one dc is asleep, one is still on the rampage as he napped too long in the day and doesn't want to go to sleep. I am ill, and exhausted, and have kind of collapsed on the sofa. H is also not feeling too great. I get up to make some dinner, h makes toddler some formula milk though he's just had a bottle but sometimes needs another one at night to knock him out. He then just gives it to the baby to hold while sitting on a chair. I say i'll give it to him as totally fed up with h's hands off parenting style, sit down with baby and bottle, attempt to feed him and he pushes it away, I feel the bottle and it's too hot, get up to run it under the tap. H now holding son shouting "Give it back its fine", me saying no it's too hot, please don't shout while you're holding him (how counterproductive?!) him saying its fine, it's just because you shoved it in his gob he pushed it away! I explain that the cooled water we use to make it up had not been in the fridge so it wasn't cold enough to cool down the boiling water. He keeps shouting until i have cooled it down and given it back, telling me to fuck off when i explain again and ask him to stop shouting. I take my dinner to the bedroom, as i can't be around him and feel childishly inclined to leave h to get toddler to sleep as he's being so pig headed about the whole thing. He appears in the bedroom and throws the container with tiny bit of cooled water in it at me and shouts see, it's cold you stupid cow..

This resulted in me telling him that I am going to leave him this coming year because I don't want to live like this, he thinks it is both of us being unreasonable. We have a long conversation about the state of our relationship. The above is just an example of how we can't seem to do the simplest thing without him flying off the handle, and this sort of thing happens all the time. There is a lot of resentment on both sides and neither of us is happy, although we adore the dc and have on the face of things a good life. On top of this he has a long history of depression, anxiety and alcoholism and I think maybe I am getting depressed too as lately I've been struggling to keep up with the dc, house, just stuff.

But looking at the above, this is not good is it?

No. He should have checked the water. How did he not feel it was too hot through the bottle? He has no right to speak to you like that. Both of you need to decide if you want to save your marriage and if you are willing to put the work in.

its also very worrying to speak to you like that in front of the kids. Not healthy.

He definitely shouldn't speak to you like that whether in front of kids or not. However there seems to be more going on here. You both sound worn out and stuck in a rut of bickering and resentment. Also if your toddler is old enough to be up rampaging about surely he is old enough to hold his own bottle? Why you you both pay a visit to the GP in the new year to have a check up for depression etc. Relate sounds like a good idea also.

He threw it at you and called you stupid cow?

Oh you so have to tell him to pack his bags. This is no way to live.

Your low mood is to do with him treating you like this. I've been depressed, seriously, and I didn't go around hurling things and abuse at the OH.

The whole bottle thing is irrelevant. It takes far more than just "I love him" to make a decent relationship. Keep a diary, try to resolve it yourself but it wont make a difference. You're kidding yourself. The only way to make a decent life for yourself and your kids is to leave.

I agree that the whole bottle thing is fairly irrelevant. It the child sipped and discarded it it must have been a case of the liquid being hotter than normal but not too hot or he would have cried when it burned him. You sound very critical of him and like your attitude towards him is very hostile and you expect him always to fail. There is no reason why a toddler needs a bottle of formula, nevermind to be held while he drinks it. There is nothing wrong with giving the toddler the milk to drink himself, he should really be having it in a cup which would be better for his teeth. I don't really see anything wrong with either of your approaches to parenting based on what you describe but it sounds like you are convinced you are right and he is wrong and you were dramatically making a point of cooling the bottle down. He is probably just as convinced he is right and you are wrong which is why he followed you around trying to make a point about the water.

The actual problem here is that you have different approaches and are not parenting together. He feels angry with you and you are hostile to him and critical of him. Based on this post you are both contributing to the breakdown of your relationship. You cannot change him, you can only compromise or Change yourself. You need to either find a way to relate to each other and parent together or break up. The way you are both behaving seems childish and like you are using the children to score points about whose way of parenting is better.

I think you should try couples counselling but be prepared to work on yourself as much as the relationship.

Sorry, that sounded harsh!!! He needs to be prepared to work on himself too. If he goes into it thinking you are the problem and being bullish it doesn't matter how much counselling you go to, it will never work.

Thank you all - msboogie the only reason i wanted to feed ds was to try and calm him to sleep as it was getting so late - and don't think sitting on a hard chair and feeding himself is very sleep inducing. I think you are right about the rut, and i know a lot of couples have these issues with young dc but ours do seem quite extreme. I think we have just lost respect and courtesy for each other and are taking everything too personally but i do think he has anger issues. He is already waiting for a referral for being depressed, i will go in the new year if i don't feel better, and i think we must do relate or similar.

I'm another one wondering why on earth the toddler needed a) formula b) to be held c) the milk to be cooled down so pointedly

What on earth would be so wrong about giving him a cup or a bottle of cow's milk and sitting him down to enjoy it on his own?

Your Dh's behaviour does sound a bit OTT but tbh you come off as badly if not worse and that's your side of the story, i'd be facinated to hear his!

If that's the way you always behave towards him then i can't really blame him for being frustrated and pissed off. He's a grown man with two children.... why do you assume he's not capable of caring for them? You might choose to be a helicopter parent but that doesn't mean that he's in the wrong when he chooses not to parent in the same way.

Oh i have just seen all the other messages, I walked away mid post as the phone rang.

The bottle thing was just an example of how the silliest things seem to escalate, but if it was too hot it was too hot, and me cooling it down was not proving a point, it was just cooling it down, surely? I would admit if if it was. His parenting style is - don't worry if they are up late, they'll run themselves out, or just stick them in front of the telly and "they will get bored and go to sleep" Mine is pretty relaxed but i do want to get them into bed at a certain time so that my day ends and i can eat/do things for myself - not much to ask really. But yes i am angry with h a lot of the time. I don't want to just leave, it's not that simple. I married him for love, and it's still there but seems to be buried at the moment under a pile of mutual resentment and depression.

He still has growing up formula at night as he hasn't been eating well - i know, i know, but he has cows milk the rest of the time. It was 8.45 pm at this point and i was getting pretty desperate to get him to sleep so that i could eat my dinner, and just as that is too late for him to be up. Feeding him was an attempt to calm him which usually works ( and did eventually when i got him into bed, fed and stroked him to sleep.)

Anyone who knows me btw would be in hysterics about the idea of me being a helicopter parent, I am pretty hands off but i do think there has to be a cut off point at bedtime.

Dh side of the story is that I started screaming at him , snatched the milk from his hand, that the bottle was not too hot. I just don't see how he can justify shouting at me while holding ds and telling me to fuck off because i am trying to cool a bottle of too hot milk. I do realise at the same time that our whole way of dealing with eachother is OTT and unhealthy, as i was trying to demonstrate with this story, and becuase sometimes his behaviour and subsequent justification makes me wonder if I am going mad, or if this is normal.

Justoverit - yes, that is what I meant - mutual resentment. You seem to have lost your common ground. I just meant that you seem to be falling out because each of you has a different attitude towards parenting and each of you thinks the other is wrong. Since I can't see anything terribly wrong with either way or anything terribly brilliant about either way, trying to argue about who's way is better with the end goal being proving which way is better will just cause constant fighting with no solution. Neither way is right, neither way is wrong as far as I can see. Providing he doesn't go into counselling totally unprepared to compromise there is no reason why counselling shouldn't work well. The biggest problem I can see is how you relate to each other and how you parent together not who is more unreasonable.

Oh and I would say it all sounds normal tbh. Not healthy or desirable but all pretty normal. You are right to try to tackle it now to try and save the relationship before it gets worse.

This type of behaviour strikes me as you both being stuck in a rut. I am sure you did the right thing by cooling the bottle and he resents it because he probably thought he was doing the right thing and that you are picking holes (which you aren't but may come across like that to him).

You need to talk to him - tell him you don't like having this feeling between you and can you work on spending some quality time together? This will help you to see if you can atleast be friends again.

Cook him a meal, ask him to sort out a film (comedy perhaps) and just chill with each other. Cinema once a month maybe? A walk together on a weekend, a takeaway every now and then? You need to make friends again if you can and try to remember what it is that you fell in love with. Then if it is not working....try counselling. Sometimes it is all to easy to grow apart x

Curious - thank you thank you for saying it all sounds normal it makes me feel a lot better, i always think we are the only ones who are this ridiculous. And thanks carrotcake i think i bit of that would help.

I'm off out now with dc for a bit but will be back later.

Have fun with dc.