Hello all. I really need some outside perspective and can't talk to friends or family about this. Thanks in advance for your time.
Husband and I have a 2 1/2 year old girl. We both adore her, but like any toddler, she can be challenging. And she doesn't sleep through the night in her own bed (we didn't do hardcore sleep training early on) which is tiring. We are all under a certain amount of stress as we recently moved cities for my husband to take a new job, so we are trying to settle into a new town, I'm out of work and haven't had any luck from interviews yet (was working full-time all my life til now), we don't have any friends or family here, and of course it's a huge transition for poor DD who is missing her old nursery and so on.
What I need perspective on is anger. I know my stress often manifests itself as anger and I too often am shouty and snappy with DD when I should be patient and want to smack her. I know nobody's a perfect parent, but I also know I'm going too far sometimes and need to do better. I'm looking into anger management techniques and will try the various helplines for advice on it and on dealing patiently with toddlers. And when I do shout at her I apologize and acknowledge what I'm doing wrong, so hopefully I'm not incorrigible.
I'm more concerned about my husband. He is not physically abusive and he adores her and me. But he is frequently in a bad temper (it's possibly because of stress/depression but he doesn't want to seek any help for that and denies he might be depressed), often swearing at inanimate objects (I know everyone does that sometimes, but I mean he sounds REALLY angry when he does, or if he spills a drop of food on himself or something) and he is very touchy about this and I don't feel we can discuss it. Last night when he was giving DD her bath and had to scrub her hands (they had gotten muddy and she had a cut on one) and she was resisting, as a toddler might do, but I could hear him from downstairs shouting "you'll do as you're told" at her over her crying. I came upstairs (I was furious) and said something to him, I can't even remember what, I find my memory is really fuzzy perhaps from lost sleep, but I do remember him following me into the next room scolding me angrily for "undermining him" while he's doing some necessary parenting thing and me arguing that it wasn't about me not wanting him to wash her hands, just his approach. But he is always very defensive and insists he is in the right.
It's such a small incident but there are so many, and I know I'm not perfect either (walking her up the road to her nursery session this morning I kept grumping at her for poking along so slowly) but ... I don't know what I'm asking for, I know what he does is wrong but it's "not bad enough" to confront him about (see:defensiveness and increased anger whenever he feels threatened, but also the fact that he does, truly, love us both) or to leave (I have no job prospects so far and my family lives overseas, I am afraid he wouldn't agree for me to move back overseas with DD if we separated :-(). But then I keep thinking I'm just blowing the whole thing out of proportion and everyone gets short-tempered with a toddler from time to time and is this all completely normal?
Sorry this is so long.