The background: DH likes to look after stray cats. We've had arguments in the past about it. He likes to give them the run of our house, including the kids' bedrooms; I see this as a potential health hazard. He spends more money than we can afford on them - in the last two months, between vets' fees, donations to an animal rescue that took some kittens, and catfood, he's spent about ?400. We're on a pretty tight budget and can't afford that. Plus our own cats are very stressed out by it all, territorial animals that they are, and are vomiting a lot (which they tend to do when they're stressed). Aside from all that, it's become a far bigger issue than just cats at this stage because he has promised so many times to stop, and he goes back on his word every time. So it's not really about the cats, it's about his behaviour.
A couple of weeks ago we discussed the situation again and I suggested that we give an affordable, budgeted-for donation to the local animal rescue every year instead of him turning our house into one. He thought that was a good idea and agreed to stop feeding them (it's the height of summer, they're all healthy adults so they should be able to look after themselves, and they've all been neutered so at least there won't be any more kittens; I know it probably sounds cruel but I'm just not willing to have the house overrun with them any more).
I found him feeding them again yesterday. He said 'but I felt sorry for them!' We had a blazing row about it - or rather, I did; he didn't really say anything. What he did do was go out and open the back door (which I had closed), letting the cats back into the house, saying 'but they would have come in the window anyway!'. I gave up and went to bed. This morning I asked if he was going to talk to me before we got to work and he said no, that he was disengaging, that I was being 'borderline irrational'. I blew up at him. There was more arguing. I accused him of being a bully. He went quiet for a minute, then said 'Sorry about that. You don't deserve it. Kudos to you for standing up to it'.
I'm so confused. He didn't seem upset at all to be admitting to bullying, he was totally matter-of-fact about it, and half an hour before that he'd been calling me borderline irrational. I can't understand the sudden turnaround. He never admits he's in the wrong, how could he do it so easily about something so big? Every time we argue it's the same - he refuses to discuss it that day, by the time we're going to work the next day he's worked out that it's actually me who's in the wrong, not him, and he acts all wounded till I give up on whatever point I was trying to make. He's all about making everything my fault so he doesn't have to accept that he's wrong. I don't know how to react to this sudden apology - I don't even know if I can believe it, to be honest.