Was I wrong to storm off from angry DH?

[Onsera3]

Set out on Sun am family outing. Chatting with DS 2yo in back of car. DH says how he will miss taking DS to see MIL throughout week/weekend if we emigrate to my home country- as we have been making plans to do. Starts asking me for solutions to raft of problems that might arise in 10 yrs if we do. I try to suggest things but he points out more problems and I say can't and don't want to waste energy trying to solve problems that may never arise, esp at that very moment. (I have morning sickness and been to hosp 3 times this week with bleeding). DS has dozed off now from no interaction during drive and I wake him and ask DH again to drop it. Keeps going, I try vainly to offer solutions he points out more probs I say don't want to discuss now he gets annoyed and shouts 'It's my f-ing life I should be able to discuss it!'

I hold finger up to his lips in 'shhh' gesture and say firmly 'stop' but he gets more agitated. So I say I'm taking DS and making way home. He tries to stop me and says DS is upset but I say I won't be sworn and shouted out in front of DS and walk off.

He catches up to us as we make way to train and says stop you can't manage trying to takes bags off me. But is still grumpy and annoyed and saying I'm upsetting DS rather than apologising. I say leave us you are making fuss and security is everywhere here and you will get removed. He walks off.

I text him and said I won't be spoken to like that in front of DS and he picked an inappropriate time to force that conversation. Said didn't want to see him for rest off the day.

He is usually model DH- helps a lot around house though he works and I am SAHM, very hands on dad, usually quite selfless.

But he is terrible in arguments. He becomes very irrational. He said his parents never argued and he never argued with sibling. His mum corroborates this. I also suspect he may have Aspergers - his father definitely appears to.

I worry I may have overreacted? My father was hands on dad but had drinking problem so could sometimes be abusive. My last live-in boyfriend was abusive. So I am very sensitive and have zero tolerance to being shouted at aggressively. I believe you can have healthy arguments without either.

Was I being unreasonable?

tbh, if you'd have held your finger to my lips and said shhh, I'd have bitten the fucking thing.

I don't condone him swearing or shouting, that's not on and shouting and insulting someone is a real barrier to effective communication plus I think he chose a bloody awful time to want to talk but it sounds like what he is trying to tell you is he is worried about this move and perhaps even that he really doesn't want to go.

You need to talk about the move. And listen. But he needs to know that he cannot communicate by yelling and being verbally abusive because that is never acceptable. He needs to learn how to debate, how to put his view across without getting ranty. He needs to learn to take emotion out of something and stick to it as an issue. (can be done - I've done it)

but ffs don't hold your finger to the lips of an adult, say shhhhh and expect that to go well.

stop not shhhh, shhhh gesture. same thing.

I think you were a bit mean to cut your husband off in this way. Is your husband moving to a country that is only familiar to him through his relationship with you? He must have loads of thoughts going around his head and needed to talk them through with you. Hypothetical "what ifs" are part of this. We quite frequently talk about stuff on car journeys because it is time away from household chores and life in general.
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Putting your finger to his lips was patronising and infantilising. I would be furious if anyone did that to me.

It is his life too, so I agree with him, he SHOULD be able to discuss it without you 'shhhing' him. Why did you wake up your DS. That sort of sounds like you were using him as an excuse not to have a conversation. Couldn't you have let him doze to give you time to speak to your partner about the concerns he has?

So you basically want to move back to your home country & leave his family behind & you can't be arsed to have a discussion with him about whatever concerns he may have? You sound quite self centred tbh & the finger on lip shush thing would've pissed me off too, he's an adult so treat him as one.

Also don't understand why you woke DS, seems like a convenient diversion to avoid the conversation you couldn't be bothered with.

I just panicked - I want him to stop shouting right away and I don't know how.

I agree we should discuss it but car journeys isn't great time for us because DS falls asleep in car eventually without interaction regardless of what time it is. Then we are stuffed with trying to get him to bed at a reasonable time.

He has been really on board with moving to my country. He has no family there. He has his parents here but everyone else- brother and best friends have moved abroad. He is not great at making friends. He has done all the paperwork to move - visa, registration with professional body etc of his own accord. But he expresses hesitation that moving will mean staying in his profession which he is tiring of where as if he stays here he might be able to work with his dad. His Dad expressed interest in this but always delays, delays when this might be.

If we stay here we will need to move to a bigger place with our expanding family and we won't be able to afford anything bigger anywhere near his parents. This is another reason to move.

I was also trying to avoid discussing things that I didn't see a point getting worried about as they may never happen- eg what if we have a third child he was saying. I have infertility issues so this may never happen. We have learnt we just have to see and I am worrying right now with all the bleeding this second pregnancy might not even work out.

He is usually a great DH but in arguing he is so terrible. He ends up shouting or crying. I don't know how he can learn to do it more calmly I haven't been able to show him. In fact he gets worked up by how calm I can stay in an argument.

We woke DS because we had come out on outing to eat and were in parking building so one or other of us would have had to just sit in car. DS had no nappy on (wears one for sleep) and could have ended up with wet car seat.

You don't have to see a point in being worried about them.

You only have to see that he is worried about them.

And that it is most likely a symptom of his general feelings of anxiety about the move.

If he isn't able to discuss things calmly, then offer him the option of writing down his concerns.

Perhaps also he, like you, is anxious about your current pregnancy. I am very sorry that you are having bleeding and I really wish the very best for you.

It seems like you both have your own challenges - he is over emotional and perhaps sees criticism and rejection of him as a person in rejection of his argument, you are a product of your experiences also and are so calm and controlled but unwilling to witness emotion in others because you feel threatened by it.

I think that perhaps a third party might be able to help you both to communicate and create an environment where you both feel safe to do so.

If you had put your finger on my lips I'd have smacked it away ferociously with a loud "fuck off", kids or not. That's an extremely aggravating thing to do to another adult.

Sounds like you want the move but he doesn't.

The way you have written your posts suggests that he only got annoyed after you tried to shut him up. I think lots of people would get agitated about that.

I think you were in the wrong too. Your DS was asleep, you woke him up, seemingly to stop the discussion which doesn't seem like it was at an inappropriate time. I have no understanding at all as to why even if you wanted to get the train home, your DS had to come with you, especially as he must have been sleepy and disoriented. And then to top it off you basically threatened him with security when he tried to help you with your bags!

It seems like he interprets your calmness in arguments as stonewalling. You see it as a positive to not get angry or upset but from his point of view I guess you seem unengaged or unbothered.

I am worried that I might accept behaviour that is not ok and abusive and then it will get worse- which is what I have done in the past with boyfriend and my father. I want what is best for DS and at the time I didn't know if staying in DH's company when he was angry was the right thing to do. From your comments I'm thinking I have done the wrong thing.

So did he get angry before or after you decided that you didn't want to discuss it?

It could have been handled better and you had two options that could have stopped the row before it happpened.

1. Let him talk about what is worrying him at the time, no matter how ridiculous you might think it is.

2. Say that now is not the right time, but give him a time when you will talk about it with him.

What I am getting from this thread is that you want to go back to your own country, your husband has agreed, but has reservations and that you are too scared to acknowledge these concerns in case he says he doesn't want to go after all.

Which is understandable given the things you've gone through.

But it's not ok to put your finger on someone's lips to shut them up. It's also not on to take your small child out of the car and get a train with them because you want to avoid an argument and you've decided you're not going to talk. Unless you feel he was at risk from his father, you could have removed yourself, you didn't need to grab your child, grab luggage and haul it all around - you say yourself you are concerned about this pregnancy. Is it strange that perhaps he is too and yet when he tried to help you with bags - you refuse to let him because it's more important that he goes away. That wasn't sensible.

Your husband was bang out of order for yelling and swearing, that's always wrong, but he isn't a monster in this situation you are telling us about. He handled things badly and so did you.
What you both need to do is to talk it over. Neither of you sound like dreadful people, just people who really need to be able to share how they're feeling and have the other listen.
I don't want to go down the 'he's the man therefore everything is automatically his fault' pile of crap, but I have to say that a big problem here is getting angry and shouting and / or crying instead of being able to communicate. It creates so many problems and he really needs to work on that.

I'm realising I have acted irrationally.

He knows I am not 100% sold myself on the move home based on others' recent experiences moving and my last trip home. But we both agree we will struggle to fit in this house and neither of us want to move somewhere cheaper in the UK where neither of us have family. I guess he feels trapped.

I have suggested counselling because I know we need help discussing things but he says I can go without him.

I do appreciate hearing your objective views and advice.

Don't go too far and start thinking that he has no fault here. He has a responsibility to communicate effectively as well.

He says you can go to counselling without him? So he thinks it's normal to yell and cry during disagreements and that that's the way adults communicate?

'It's my f-ing life I should be able to discuss it!'

Quite right too.

Your sevens rio sounds like it's all about you. The move back to your country, the dismissal of his worries and insecurities because you don't have them, the refusal to discuss them followed by what could be interpreted as putting him off, then you taking his child away from him and a visit to your child's grandparents and threatening him with security because you want to take your child.

Personally I think you've behaved appallingly and have a lot of apologising to do

*severns Rio? = opening post!

I agree with everyone else I'm afraid. If I was talking to DH about my worries - even if they were irrational worries, and he did a patronising 'shhh' on me, in a confined space, I think I would lose my shit.

And if I then, knowing that he had been unwell, tried to help him carry something while HE was having a massive strop, and he threatened to call security on me and have me removed....

I don't know. Could just be one of those rare arguments you both look back on and go 'that was not our finest moment' but it sounds like both of you are struggling to express your emotions respectfully and maybe counselling, for BOTH, would be helpful. But I'm not seeing him as abusive or at fault here.

You have zero tolerance to being shouted and sworn at in front of your child - absolutely correct. You show that zero tolerance by asking him to stop, when he continues to swear you walk away even if it means having to get home by public transport. Perfect in my opinion. There is no other way to ensure that he understands that you mean what you say. I wish I had known this many years ago.

The only thing you might have done differently is offer to sit down together in the evening/another time/over dinner and discuss his worries. But that's a separate thing - you still have the right to ask him to stop shouting and swearing at you, and to react like you did when he refuses.

xxx

Oh just to be clear - I'm not seeing you as abusive or at fault either. Just I think maybe you're seeing yourself as the wronged party, whereas I think it's more that neither of you behaved terribly well.

He has no personal experience of arguing with some one who loves him. His parents didn't have disagreements in front of him. He never argued or fought with his brother as MIL confirms. I believe, before he met me, he twice had fallings out with friends and he cut them both out of his life permanently. His brother finds their Dad's strange behaviour exasperating at times and when he expresses his disapproval they all get upset about it.

DH has basically said he doesn't believe you argue with people you love.

I am very close to my siblings and so we have disagreements all the time but always calmly talk them out (once we passed adolescence!) so this is what I am used to.

He hates it and says it is like arguing with a lawyer.

I know men are different but I find it hard to work out what is normal acceptable male behaviour as I don't have a lot to measure it against.

We don't argue often but when we do it is so exasperating. He becomes really irrational and uses gross exaggeration and says everything is so terrible but can't give any examples of anything particular I did. He just throws around words like 'always' 'never' 'everytime' (days later when he is calm I ask him if he was exaggerating or if I really do those things all the time and he admits he was exaggerating). He also
says 'I can't handle this constant arguing why did you marry me if I am such a horrible person. Leave me, you can have everything' and cries. He might say this if it has been literally months since we argued.

I don't know what we can do to have rational disagreements. But I feel it's esp impt if our son is there.

He really needs some help to stop doing that. It's ridiculous behaviour.

You are allowed to have different opinions on things and to express them. That isn't an attack on him and everything he stands for!

He would really benefit from some counselling. Why is he so against it? Is he afraid of any hint of criticism or suggestion he is not right in all things?

He sounds very dramatic and emotional.

Can you talk calmly with him at any point or does he start to weep if you try to say that things need to be different?

It's ok to express different views on things.

Have you tried asking him what his solution is? How would it have gone if when he started asking about these problems, you had flipped it back to him and said ok, you're worried about X, what do you think would be the best thing to do about that?

The visit to grandparents had been yesterday. Today was mall cafe outing. But he would like it to go Sunday mornings to MILd as well. So when I say lets go for a coffee and park/mall he sometimes suggests why don't I stay home for alone time because he wants to take DS to see MIL EVERYDAY. It's one of the reasons he feels hesitant to move away. He's always lived by MIL and goes there often to eat etc