I am bullying my partner

[loopdesoup]

Help.
I'm not expecting kindness here, but advice would be good.
Partner and I have been together for a number of years, we have 2 DCs together. Yesterday I asked DP why he seemed reluctant to marry, it has always been what we have both wanted and yet, it still hasn't happened. I am ready to marry. DP tells me he's still not ready to marry me yet, but wants to. We dis cussed the reasons why.
He feels bullied by me. I agree that I can be quite venomous with my words and am in therapy for depression (have been for 3 years.) Talked about this before with my counsellor who seems to believe it's a side effect of DPs neglect for my thoughts and feelings. He can be very cold, lazy and slobbish at times, making v little effort around the house or with himself. I'm not sure this is really an adequate excuse for the way I'm making him feel though.
I asked DP to do what makes him happy and to look after his self-esteem and to leave me. I love him and he deserves better than to be worn down by my often nasty outbursts.
He says he loves me and doesn't want to leave.
I've no idea what else I can do? I'm in counselling, I have rages sometimes that make me feel so angry towards him; he can be so ignorant of my needs and our family's needs that I then become nasty with him. He says I speak to.him like dirt..
I know it's not excuse.
I don't want to be a bully.
I don't want my children witnessing me being a bully towards their father.
I don't want DP to have to be with me like this.
I want to get married
I want us to be healthy and happy
He doesn't want to separate. I'm trying to break these behaviours in sessions with my counsellor, but often it boils down to my frustration with DP. What can I do now?

I don't think a relationship problem is ever one partner. After all he met and had kids with the OP and it sounds as though her depression/ aggression is a fairly long standing problem. How he responds to her affects how she behaves.
If he really cared about her he'd want to go too to make things work.
I don't think marriage should be the goal here but a relationship where they treat each other with mutual respect and want to enhance each others lives not make each other more miserable.

OP,

Would you want your child to marry a person like you?

You want to get married, but who in their right mind would get married, when they get shouted at on a weekly or fortnightly basis? You don't seem to think that's a problem. He may be sensibly thinking, can't deal with this for life and if it gets intolerable, then I can end it without a divorce.

As an onlooker, would you truly tell a friend in your position to get married?

And my personal view. ..is if you want marriage. .don't have kids first. He's got you and the kids now and your abuse is every reason not to get married.

Are you able to categorise what sort of homework he is willing to do with you and what sort he isn't? Or is there no pattern or just depend on when you want to do it not suiting him? If he does the homework that us about how awful you are but not any that asks him to look at his behaviour then maybe the issue is not so one sided. Not that this excuses your behaviour.

Maybe you can persuade him to attend counselling with and/or without you to help him set boundaries stick up for himself etc

I'm normally very bullish about acknowledging that men can also be the victims of female abuse but from the little info we have from you I'm not so sure it's clear cut. Maybe his behaviour is a way of coping with yours but maybe it's a toxic dynamic you've both created.

Why on earth to you want to get married? You seem to make each other miserable! I've been married for twenty years and think I've shouted at my husband twice. I certainly wouldn't marry someone who thought it was ok to shout at me on a regular basis. And I wouldn't want to marry someone I thought was lazy or slobbish either.

Because we have our positives too! We get on very well much of the time and no relationship is perfect? You may not shout at your husband, but I'm sure there are other negatives within your relationship that you've had to work at!

OP it is true that no one is perfect but shouting is never ever going to be good, is it?
I have been shouted at (mum) and if I am really loosing it I have done it too. I stopped years ago, it has to stop. I have flash back memories I am ashamed of, they leave scars that will not heal.
You must do whatever it takes to change this trait. No matter how lovely you are, that alone is unbearable and quite honestly, unforgivable

Part of marriage is accepting someone for who they are. If you can't accept him as he is, stop trying to change him.

None of us are perfect, but you need to embrace the imperfections and move to a place of the positives outweighing the negatives.

He is who he is and you're also who you are. Laziness doesn't require therapy, but your anger does and each of those factors are reasons not to marry someone.

I'm sorry but you just don't seem to have awareness of how damaging and hurtful your raging outbursts are. To say that you regularly (and I am shocked you say 1-2 weekly) shout at him and yet say it's because he is lazy and slobbish and cold. Dear god if someone screamed at me on a weekly basis I'd be cold.

My ex husband would go into huge rages every 4 months or so and it destroyed the marriage, and yet you can do this weekly and not see how damaging this is. I'm not amazed he won't marry you but I am that he's still there.

When you wake up and say this is ALL down to me and my behaviour is when you will make progress. You have normalised abnormal behaviour and allowed yourself these rages. My exH did the same and eventually didn't even feel regret his actions or feel he was in the wrong. You haven't reached that point yet, but blaming the victim of your bullying is heading that way.

You need to stop blaming your DP. He actually sounds depressed to me, and why wouldn't he be? I would worry less about counselling and do some straightforward anger management. Management being the operative word where you learn practical ways to stop the behaviours.

When you have done this you can concentrate why you feel such anger with counselling.

OP, I was thinking about you earlier. As an aside to the other advice you have been given - Have the rages always been around for you, or at least part of your personality, or not? Have they got worse at particular times of your life? (Puberty, hormonal contraception). Have you had or could you have hormone levels checked to exclude a physical health issue contributing?

I used to get quite angry at my ex. Eventually he had an affair and we split. With hindsight we simply weren't quite right for each other. With my husband we are more equal and suited and I don't get the frustration that I did with my ex. I thought I loved my ex and we were about to get married, I would have stayed with him, but neither of us would have been as happy as we are with different people..

I agree that some people can bring out the worst in you. I hate nagging and rarely nag but at one point had a particularly passive boyfriend who brought out the nag in me because he never did stuff he'd say he was and was nice but wet. I can be opinionated although I am quiet and introverted and probably need someone who can hold their own. I never shouted but did nag more than I have in any other relationship.
I ended it and in retrospect we just weren't suited to each other and should have stayed friends. You have to get the power balance right in relationships.

Loopdesoup, no, my relationship isn't perfect, whose is? But we don't really argue, we don't have to work at it, and we make each other laugh every day. I certainly wouldn't have stuck around for twenty five years with someone I thought was lazy and slobbish, and I certainly wouldn't stick around with someone who thought it was ok to shout at me on a regular basis! It seems to me your relationship bar is set pretty low, or you are maybe just not right for each other. Either way it sounds like a pretty miserable existence, are you sure this is how you want to live the rest of your life?

Op - do you think that you'd be like this with any bloke, or that your aggression is genuinely the product of this particular dynamic? What's your past experience? I loathe shouting and to be honest, if my partner shouted at me in that way once, it would be the last time - and he'd similar.

But to be fair I have been in relationships where I've felt I had to be a nag (not shouting but continual requests) just for my partner to do 10% of the housework, say.

In short, to me it's unacceptable to be aggressive like you are and I don't believe you'll be in a happy relationship till you stop it - the sort of shouting you describe should only be for the moment you find out your partner has been having an affair for 10 years! However, sadly it may be that your dp is not a man who you can shift this dynamic with - marriage isn't your biggest concern right now.

a relationship should be hard work

Why on earth would you want to marry someone who obviously isn't making you happy? You're in therapy to work on your relationship and you want to marry?? I find this so ludicrous.

What is making you angry- what is triggering your outbursts. Something about what he does, triggers something very deep in you. I'm glad you have a therapist because I can't firgure it out but it does sound familiar. There's a part of you which is hugely angry at something and he's bringing it out. Many men are slobs. That ain't it.

Shouting is rare. Outbursts don't necessarily mean shouting as assumed by most on this thread. My outbursts are once every 1-2 weeks. I guess you have your own perceptions of what an outburst may look like. At no point has anyone asked what happens during an outburst, what I say or do, what DP does. For all anyone knows on here, I could have been manipulated and controlled into thinking I'm a bully or aggressive when Im not. So many quick to judge without knowing the ins and outs on MN. So many quick to throw out punches and put-downs without really knowing what's going on. Thanks to the poster who read between the lines and contacted me privately.

I agree lollypop. There is something making me hugely angry, I'm not sure what that something is.

What are your outbursts like, OP?

We can only go on what you tell us OP. You state in your title that you are bullying your partner, and I like most people have taken that at face value. You also said you find him lazy and slobbish. I take it from that that you shouldn't marry as you are making each other unhappy. That's not throwing punches, its just my opinion. For what its worth I don't think you should be thinking about marrying anyone while you have such unresolved anger issues. Do you think your partner is manipulating you to feel this way, or have you always felt like this?

I concur with my earlier post that many things scream incompatible to me - and I have loved someone before who drove me absolutely bonkers, to the point of outbursts and I did think that it was ok because I had love.
But time has taught me that isn't a good kind of love, because someone who compliments my personality does get on my wick from time to time but does not press all these buttons and elicit such a strong response from me. It's not maybe a case of either of you doing one thing but both of you together bringing out the worst

Could it be his reluctance to marry feels Ike a rejection to you - creating a vicious cycle. Why is it important to marry, is it to fulfill a need to be married/chosen/fit societal norm? Try thinking about why you want to marry. I say this as someone who has never been married but been with DP for many years and have D.C. together. Sometimes I feel resentful at him for not being on bended knee making me feel wanted. For not pursuing me on his white steed and vowing to dedicate himself to me like other men do at weddings. Then I kick myself up the arse and realize being married is actually not important to me. If I really wanted it, it would have happened by now, but I've never really wanted a wedding. I can think of nothing more hideous than being the focus of everyone's attention. What I want is to be wanted and chosen, which I am. But sometimes I resent that he's not pushed me to marry, and not vowed it, if you see what I mean. Sorry to make this about me but wonder if there are parallels? Maybe that's a chain of thought you could explore with therapist if you think it applies to you, too.

I've been married a long time and am now in a situation where most of the time, I feel the relationship works well. However, I too have recently had counselling for some OCD thoughts and it has been recommended that my husband and I might benefit from relationship counselling.

I asked him, and he agreed (after I had explained about the fact that some of his actions, even though they occur now quite infrequently, were triggering my OCD).

It crossed my mind, at the time of asking, what I would do if he refused. I'm not sure of the answer, but I think, given I have identified that the dynamic of our relationship is affecting my mental health, that I might have had to consider leaving the relationship if he didn't agree. I didn't spell that out to him, but it was in my head and it gave me the strength to tell him just how important it was to me that he was willing to engage with the process.

It strikes me that perhaps you need to consider leaving if he is unwilling to engage in the process of trying to mend your relationship, which is clearly dysfunctional. It's impossible to guage, from what you have said, whether more fault lies with one or other of you. And to an extent, it probably doesn't matter.

He says he doesn't want to leave. But if he wants the relationship to work, I think he needs to engage in whatever activity is required to make that happen.

I find it very frustrating when people admit there is something wrong, but refuse to put any work into changing it.

I think it's to do with many things lolly: similarly to you- him wanting me, choosing me. I've never felt he's actually chosen me, but more just gone along with things... I'm massively questioning this right now. Having the same surname as my children, having a wedding day is quite important to me also, feeling as though we're all part of a unit, fitting in with social norms too, for legal and financial reasons also.