is it normal for me to feel like Dp hates it when i speak ...

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Dp and I have been together 6 years we have 2 beautiful children , we have always had to work Extremely hard at our relationship ( harder than others I feel ) and we are probably at a point where we are too comfortable we both have quite bad tempers and sharp tongues we bicker quite a lot but I think that's just who we are ...
Being in a relationship defiantly doesn't come naturally to either of us (mayb we are products of our upbringings -both from broken homes and dysfunctional families and are very concious and under of giving our children what we never had ...... maybe its just who we are i'm not sure )
but the thing i struggle with the most is that whenever i speak about anything either serious or just chit chat he seems to be in physical pain.
I have spoken to him many times about this and been on many occasions quite upset about it he genuinely seems to understand , sympathise and want to do better but then then the next thing i say he just Glazes over as usual ..
I see him having conversations with other people and he can converse with the best of them but with me he had no response , constantly misses the point and either has a response that makes no sense completely irrelevant or doesn't bother to respond at all ... he also is very good at saying exactly what i want to hear but with no actual reason or meaning and i never know if its honest or just rubbish i struggle to take anything he says seriously as i feel he just says things for the sake of it or just says what he thinks i want to hear .... its as if he has know opinions or actual thoughts of his own .. he will just repeat back to me whatever i have said
He does the same when we are arguing and will say abck to me what i have said to him as if i haven't said it which then gets us no where . like he is a robot programmed to say certain things .

Is this normal typical man behaviour - a concept i find difficult to accept to begin with . or are we doomed .

I worries me to think i am going to spend the rest of my life having no-one to talk to the one person who i should be able to talk to about anytihng

I think that AF and others who post on this board are angry because they have good relationships themselves and are frustrated that so many women seem to put up with crap in the name of romantic love. Sorry to speak about you in the third person, AF, but I think I have seen you saying something along these lines before.

Why do so many women try so hard to mould themselves to suit arseholes?

In this case, I am not sure if the OPs DH is a twat or an arsehole or whatever. Perhaps he learned this way of not communicating as a child and finds it hard to break out. But, however he developed this, it does not mean to say that the OP should put up with it. She cannot change him, but she could maybe learn ways of reacting to him and if these do not help, then she could decide that enough is enough.

It really is that simple, Gurl.

I'm talking for her here, and she can correct me if I'm wrong - but living with men's 'attitudes' is soul destroying in the extreme - we aren't educated as junior or young senior girls to recognise this behaviour, and sooo many other women you know will just dismiss your complaints about your mans behaviour as just that ' oh all men are like this' - a lot if men are like this and some of it is down to plain bad luck because these behaviours towards women cross all social and economic boundaries.
No woman if 'very wrong' to put up with it, as 'it' completely destroys lour confidence not to mention makes you terribly terribly sad.
I think the OP needs help and support to accept that her husband is not 'ill' 'been brought up wrong' ' has a personality disorder' or any other of the stupid pointless reasons ppl give for excusing this male behaviour - it is an attitude that is passed from man to man! It isn't futile because you can find ways of dealing with these men, mainly by not EVER getting drawn into their bullshit - but the fairy tale ending goes out the window there - you aren't really enjoying your life along side these men, you are investing slot of time and energy staying on hop of their antics as so easily we are drawn in time and again by their charm

Isn't it ignorant to carry on not trying to find out what causes the behaviour?

Isn't it OK for people on MN to discuss possible causes? Really?

Identifying a cause is not justification in any way. But it can help in terms of the dc, since they share their df's genes.

No it isn't THAT simple and I would find it hard to accept advice of women who were clever, lucky and together enough to not fall for these men - also a lot of women fall for it simply because they DONT have any experience of it - they don't send ghetto signals before they've fallen hook line and sinker and invested years of their lives and had families with these men - quite the opposite, it is the challenge of a life time to decide to go and to cut loose, especially if you believe you may never get a second chance at love - these men will have had feelings for the women and probably still do, but the more you 'allow' the behaviour because you don't recognise it, the more they do it!

what if the cause of the behaviour is simply that he behaves that way because he wants to? And because he can? And because he knows he can get away with it, and often people will just say 'oh, men are just like that, aren't they?'

Sorry for awful typos

Yep! All girls in senior school should be given the Lundy Bancroft book 'Why does he do that'? (Say that or whatever it's called) - and I saw something on the Wright Stuff this morning about the government are going to start lessons in schools about 'abuse'

from your post it sounds as though your husband doesn't like you OP. can you pinpoint when it started? oh and imho gender isn't an issue when someone's being a shit, so I think the man stuff is unhelpful when trying to unpick a persons behaviour

No it isn't unhelpful - 'abuse' is a male thing - a minuscule amount of men are abused by their female partners and even men who may be messed around by their badly behaved women, they won't ever ever feel real fear in the presence of that woman - how many men die each week at the hands of a woman ???? How many women are killed each week by their men or ex men 3!!! - simple statistics really

"Isn't it ignorant to carry on not trying to find out what causes the behaviour?"

Arguably, it would be ignorance (or arrogance or foolishness) on the part of the person with the bad behaviour to not want to get to the bottom of it. For those around him, suffering like the OP, there is no obligation to keep digging for more 'SN' and 'MH' explanations. It is perfectly OK to say enough's enough.

People end up in bad relationships all the time. There can be a lot of pressure to 'stick with it' through the 'rough and the smooth'. If both people - as in this case - have grown up in dysfunctional families and have a lot of intervention from social workers, are sent on parenting courses and so forth, there is possibly more pressure to 'make a go of it' (there's another cliché) because they've become something of a project.

IMO Six years of bad tempers and arguments culminating in contorted faces and blanking antics is a hell of a long time to be unhappy. The OP asked 'is it normal' and the answer is 'no it isn't'.

I disagree entirely that it is a minuscule number...men who are abused by women...it isn't helpful to say things like that

Abuse is far from a male only domain.

The abuse men face from women may not be as extreme in terms of physical violence but it is substantial and sustained in many cases
TBH the physical violence can also be really very shocking

This shouldn't be an us against them thing. Domestic abuse/violence happens to both sexes and is devastating to all concerned especially the children attached to the family

I don't think anyone on this thread is saying the OP has to put up with it. But she would benefit from knowing the cause of his behaviour, if only so that she no longer feels it's in any way her fault.

If her dc continue to see dh once they have split, what should she tell them? If he's a psychopath, presumably she would not want him to have much, if any, unsupervised contact with the dc. If there is some other reason for his behaviour, then frequent contact with the dc might be OK. To use my earlier analogy, if he has hearing loss, that's not a reason to keep his contact with his dc restricted.

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he wasn't like this previously
when did his behaviour change? try to remember when you first noticed the change
was anything else different?

Let's not derail this thread with a circular argument about "men get abused too"

AF
t'was in response to MrsMindful

Someone who is so enmeshed and conditioned to accept a particularly low standard of behaviour will think it's their fault, even if the other party is diagnosed with something horrendous. There is already close SS involvement in the family by the sound of things so that will be a big factor in the amount of contact any DCs have with both parents.

It may not be something horrendous. Are you really saying the OP is unlikely to be able to change and feel better about herself?

How exactly is the OP likely to be able to change someone else's behaviour? He blanks her, parrots her and contorts his face etc. She's asked him to stop. He carries on. .... That's about as far as the OP can take it.

No, no, change herself. So if she is helped to believe that her marital problems are not her fault, then she can completely change her view of herself. Her self-esteem. Her understanding of her ability to form relationships with other adults.

I think the best way someone successfully does that is to reject the behaviour that is causing the problems. By giving someone permission to reject poor treatment the question of fault and motivation becomes superfluous. Once away from the poor treatment they are better placed to look back, reflect, gather strength, learn lessons etc.

Here here Cogito - in my experience the only way to desk with this is to treat him like a child - we don't tend to get ourselves drawn into arguments and discussions with our children when they are behaving badly, we mainly draw the line of what we will and won't tolerate - well actually lots of parents aren't that great at this unfortunately and it's the same with these boy/ men - you just have to shut them down, walk away and be so mindful of what they are up to so you don't get drawn into all of these pointless arguments and all of the questioning of them and yourself - resolve to do your own thing and him do his - not really a happy way to live and pretty much the same as what we hear about our mothers and grandmothers living with - acceptable now to walk away but still utterly heartbreaking and logistically a nightmare when there is property, money and children involved especially if you have little or no support

if he can chat and have nice conversations with other people, then it sounds like you two just dont 'click'. Your relationship is hard work for this reason. I can relate. It will never get any easier, and I think being with someone you consider your best friend is so important for this reason

Did his attitude change when you had children? If so could it be that he now places you as a mother, and this is how he communicates with his own mother? I think it sounds like there is something triggering this from him and if you can find out what it is together you can maybe start to deal with it.

Abuse is definitely not a male-only domain! Never mind men being abused by their female partners (definitely a minority in partner abuse) - what about all the MNers (and of course other people) who had abusive mothers? Plenty of them out there.