Wife yelling at me regularly

[LayOfTheLand]

I am really bothered by this problem I am having with my wife. Recently, I have noticed that she yells at me a lot. It's generally around household management. I work from home, and therefore I do most of the housework. I don't think I'm perfect, but I also don't think that yelling is the solution. If I try to explain why shouting isn't good, she will resort to why what I did was so bad. It ranges from leaving a mess to buying the wrong ingredients at the supermarket.

I don't like shouting matches (I grew up in a shouty house), and it upsets for quite a while. I don't mind improving the way I do things around the house, but the regularity of it to the level of threat (divorce is threatened, off the cuff, a lot). Last night, I was writing a work email a bit later than I expected, and she screamed "if you don't come to bed now, I'll divorce you".

Does anyone have any advice? I'm considering suggesting couple counselling.

Thanks. All this is hard to hear. She is clever, funny, she can be very sweet. She works too long hours (her boss tells her to work less), so I have sympathy for why she is stressed. (She probably is out of the house 12 hours a day on average, and when she comes home, she wants everything to be perfect). I work at home, however, with a full time job and international travel so things can be quite hectic. I have colleagues in the US, so can have late work meetings.

you just have to tell her that shouting isn't acceptable, it's a form of verbal abuse

and if she answers back stuff like 'that's just the way I am' 'I'm just trying to get my point across because these things are important to me' (and I'd have money on these answers) then you know she won't change.

As shouting is so unacceptable to you (quite rightly), then I'm afraid you know what your next move should be. I'm sorry it sounds so blunt but it really does not sound like she wants to change or even sees anything wrong with her behaviour.

BUT you have to tell her how much it affects you because she may not realise if you aren't being forthright with her

There is always a reason to them. But that doesn't make it okay. What she is doing is telling you how it makes her feel, but not listening to how it makes you feel, because she doesn't care. She is selfish. Selfish people don't see others. Only themselves.

Infact she isn't telling you. She is screaming at you to back you into a corner and shut you and your feelings up.

"I need to find a way to get through to her. It feels as if when I speak with her, there is always a justification for why she needed to shout"

You will NEVER get through to her; this pattern of behaviour is ingrained within her psyche and started in her own childhood home. She actually feels entitled to act like this and she thinks she is doing nothing wrong here with regards to you. She basically wants to drag you down into her pit with her and to date she is succeeding in doing that with you. She will make you a shadow of yourself and walking on eggshells is to my mind code for writing living in fear.

I would think it a given that she saw parental violence within the home just as you yourself saw a shouty household.

My wife is just very particular about the house being in a certain way, and food is very important. She she can argue about the coffee machine to the laundry, the bathroom, the books by the bedside table, the recycling that needs to be taken down to the recycling centre, etc.

In her household, her father who is a lovely man was a full time lawyer, and her mum was a full time housewife. I think she expects to come home to a spotless perfect house, even though I work full time.

If I'm a few minutes late, I'm shouted at
Please understand - THIS WOMAN IS CONTROLLING AND ABUSIVE.
No matter what you do or how well you do it, it will NEVER be good enough.
The goal-posts will change. They will move. Nothing you ever do will be done to her standards. Even if they are done to her standards.
The only acceptable amount of abuse in ANY relationship is NONE!
NONE

You have to get away from her.
She will erode and your knock your self-confidence down so far that it will take a long time to rebuild it!
Don't let anyone do that to you!
You sound quite weak and this woman is probably the reason why.

You will NOT get through to her. She's an abuser. She is always going to be right.

And as for her 'are important to me' crappy statements, you tell her that a respectful relationship without shouting is important to YOU!

You really do need to grow a spine and deal with this or this will be your life for decades to come.
And then throw some poor kids into the mix as well.... Do NOT do this!

LayOfTheLand

Hearing that a spouse is abusive is hard for that person to hear but you really do need to believe and internalise that message properly and save your own self here from being further belittled and abused at her hands.

The only acceptable level of abuse in a relationship is NONE. She has crossed that line.

There is also NO justification for her abuses of you. Many people (including my DH who also works long hours and goes on business trips) have never shouted or otherwise belittled the person who they are supposed to love in the ways you have been.

I work 12 hours a day. Shift work on a very busy maternity unit. No breaks and barely any food.
I don't need perfect when I'm home! Just comfort and chocolate. Maybe wine lol. I need hugs and family and shitty t.v.

Stop listening to her stress excuses.

The other day I was looking after 3 patients on the sepsis chart, in and out of theatre. Breakfast bars with the occasional drinks. I didn't even have a loo break untill 7pm from 8am in the morning.
I never once shouted because I came home and there was washing up and washing still to be done. Stress doesn't make you abusive. You have already carry those traits.

"In her household, her father who is a lovely man was a full time lawyer, and her mum was a full time housewife".

You do not know however what goes on behind closed doors, who knows what happened in that house when your wife was a child?.

Look beyond who worked where in that household and find out exactly how her dad treated her mother. She learnt about relationships first and foremost from these people and her dad has already made comments that make you think you would do things differently.

“(and if I could improve the things I do around the house)”

Even if you could, it won’t matter in the long run because you still won’t get her approval. It’s her way of controlling you.

While you put up with this behaviour, you’re teaching her how to treat you. You’re giving off the vibes you don’t care about yourself and therefore you are willing to be treated like crap. This is not only very sad but it’s not very attractive in a man and it’s why she is not bothered treating you with respect. Of course she treats other people better than she does you. She knows she couldn’t get away with it from other people.

You need to organise somewhere to stay ie family or friends, pack some bags, tell her you love her but can’t go on being treated like this and walk out.

Refuse to come back to her until she has been to couples counselling.
You also need to see your worth as a person. Seriously, if you don’t make a change now, this is your life on 20 years time. Do you really want to be fighting, be yelled at, verbally abused every day of your life?

Next time she threatens you with divorce, take her up on her offer.

You remind me of my husband, who is awesome, and if you are like him then you definitely don't deserve to be treated this way. It's great to see that you really want to work at this. I would pick a time when she's least stressed and least likely to start shouting at you to bring up the subject. You need to explain to her exactly how she's making you feel. If she cares about you and your relationship then she will listen and take your concerns seriously. She is stressed out and obviously sees a nice, docile punching bag so to speak. You should also start to stand up for yourself, all of what you've said is about HER needs, maybe it's time to start thinking about yourself too.

No no and no again re couples counselling.

Such counselling is NEVER recommended where there is abuse of any type within the relationship and besides which no decent counsellor would ever want to see the two of you in a room together.

LayOfTheLand - you are not safe to embark on any joint counselling with your wife because you are being abused by her and repeatedly.

Counselling for your own self is advisable from the likes of Menkind who are there to help male victims of domestic abuse. Please talk to such a group and seek legal advice for your own self re divorcing her.

Thanks for all the advice. There's a lot to take in

I agree with a “no” on couples counseling.
Yes to individual counseling for yourself. You might have some childhood things to unpick from growing up in a shouty environment. And now, presented with the same dynamic, you may be relying on childhood coping strategies that simply won’t serve you as an adult.

Please understand that this has absolutely nothing to with the housework.

Imho, this is all about power.

She is using your niceness against you.

You can not change her. You can change the way you interact with her. Put up some boundaries. Tell her you are not engaging with the shouting anymore. Say it once. Do not continue any conversation when she starts shouting, leave the room if you need to. Some might call this stonewalling; but you are using it as a tool of (emotional) self defense: perfectly fine imho.

And why do you think all the house work is down to you just because you work from home? This needs to change too. She lives there-therefore she contributes to chores too. If the housework you do isn’t good enough for her, then she can jump right in and do it herself. Or hire a cleaner if it is really that important to her. And this is without kids...

So don’t have kids with her; do not leave contraception up to her.

Sorry to say, I think you are on a siding to nothing with her. Give a time limit for some boundaries to work...3 months? But after that, you really do need to put divorce on the table. It is cruel and emotionally abusive for her to throw it in your face even once. Over and over again is intolerable.

You sound like a really nice guy. Good luck

It is a lot to take in I grant you but if you were female I would have replied exactly the same.

You cannot help your wife and that is hard to accept but you can and should help your own self.

Hi O/P,
I feel that I was in a similar situation to yours, in that I was married to a house proud perfectionist who was often verbally abusive. I would also often be threatened with divorce - 'Well if that's what you think then we should split up'. In retrospect I realise that this was a tactic to ensure that she got her own way in any situation.
As things escalated she took to sending me abusive emails (and text messages) the most memorable of which was entitled 'You cunthead' and appeared in the corner of my screen as I was demonstrating something to my boss at work. It makes me laugh now to think about it but at the time each angry message had a damaging impact on my mental health. I now realise that it is a form of control - although I was physically away from her she could still hurt me.
As time went on I just became more and more numb and depressed at the situation until one day I eventually snapped. She once again threatened me with divorce but this time I just said ' that's a really good idea' and went through it step by step with her about how we could separate without damaging our children too much.
She was completely bewildered and didn't really know what to do. It was a major turning point - I called her bluff instead of just sucking it up and she was completely confused. By that stage I didn't love her anymore and was already out of the relationship in my head.
After a lot more anger and a few years kicking the can down the road we did separate - I am far happier and actually closer to my kids now than I ever was with her.
Anyway I could go on and on about this - feel free to PM me if you want.
In short, the need to control others is often driven by feelings of insecurity, something that I never realised whilst I was in the situation.

Thanks ElBurro and everyone else. I really need to have a good talk with my wife about this.

I wanted to talk about an incident we had a few weeks ago.

We were driving somewhere and my wife was driving and I was in the passenger seat. We left the car park in a place that we'd stopped off for coffee. We left the car park, and we could see the sign post saying left for the town (Cheltenham). As we are leaving the car park she asks if I can put the address in the sat nav. I say we can do it as we're on the way, we can see the direction. Instead, having pulled out onto a mini roundabout and stops. She says she's not going anywhere until the sat nav is programmed. A car comes along and beeps at her. She goes and decides to drive around and around the mini roundabout, and after 4 or 5 turns I'm getting quite agitated.

Anyway, she drives on and we get to the next junction, at which point she stops again, and there is a sign (Cheltenham, left). Again, she stops dead on the road. I car behind her beeps and I go to touch the steering wheel, at which point, she starts hitting me as hard as she can four times, knocking my glasses off my face.

In her eyes, she justified it as I should never touch the wheel. In my mind, had she had just driven off calmly, and not stopped in dangerous places, I wouldn't have gotten agitated until the state where I wanted to touch the wheel. This argument escalated out of something silly.

She is not for talking nor is she willing to hear your views. This is all on her. What this is about is wanting power and control, she wants absolute here.

I would also never get into a car with her again. She would have been arrested if she had done what she did to you to someone in the street.

Do you not think you deserve better?. Well you should and infact do. This is not a loving relationship, no sir it is not. Love is an action as well as a verb and neither her actions or words are loving ones.

You can only help your own self ultimately and that is by leaving her. Show her that there are indeed consequences for her violent behaviour towards you.

Read this too on the Loser:-

counsellingresource.com/therapy/self-help/loser/

Your wife is indeed in those above words and you otherwise ignore or minimise this at your own emotional peril.

She sounds horrible and I would want to move as far from her as I could.

Don't be a martyr. You have one life. Don't let her ruin it.

She hit you?

You must leave. You are being abused. Imagine here that the genders were reversed. What would everyone advise a woman to do in this situation?

I know how this all sounds if the genders were reversed. It sounds terrible, I know.

Physical abuse too.
This gets worse OP.
And SHE will get worse.
Get in touch with MANKIND
They may be able to help you to see this for what it is.
It's a lot to take in.
Give it a bit of time to sink in.
Then get family and friends on board and get the hell out of there.
Live a happy peaceful life with someone who does not disrespect you so much. A life without abuse.
I wonder what your childhood was like?

Wake up.