Dh to me “I hate your voice”

[fortifiedwithtea]

My response , well if you don’t like my voice you shouldn’t have married then , should you?

Tbf I have a terrible voice, I am very self conscious of it. Strong East London accent, its high pitched and wobbly. Worse when I am stressed so 90% of the time and has got worse with age, mid fifties.

Still a nasty thing to say though even if it is true. Think I would be more upset if it was a one off but its not.

Wow! What a spectacularly nasty thing to say.
I take it that he’s perfect in every way??

Once this kind of contempt has set in, I would say that it's over. There's very little you can do about your voice however I would say this is the equivalent of those who can't stand the way their partner breathes. Voices tend to become background however unusual I think therefore yours starting to grate on him is symptomatic of something else. Don't go Eliza Doolittle for him. I am sorry.

My ex said he hated my face. It’s the face I share with his son as me and him are the spitting image of each other. It was the beginning of the end and sometimes it still makes me angry two years later.

Sounds like a rightprivck. Do you really want to spend the rest if your life with him?

For reasons too many and too long to explain. We are stuck together. I haven’t had the best of health. Not been able to work and our youngest has learning disability and bi polar.

That's awful 😥 I've a thick irish accent with a high pitched voice and I'd be crushed if my oh said he hated my voice or my accent. If he was serious and wasnt joking then it would be the last he would ever hear my voice.

No, he wasn’t joking. He had a proper oh shit I crossed a line look on his face.

To be honest Op i think he was just expressing his frustration. When i met my now ex DH i used to love his northern accent ( i am a Londoner and sound like you) . By the end of our marriage i couldn't stand it! He used to call an alleyway a ginnel and a sandwich a cob amongst other things and that used to drive me mad in the end and pee me off. I had initially found it sexy when we were younger. Basically everything he said healed my fanjo over more , each time. He was also unambitious and lazy so all combined, i was done. We are now divorced.

You are not " stuck" together. I think you both need to sit down and work together and work out how to separate. When either party starts hating the sound of the others voice things are not recoverable. Your accent is fine, my ex's accent was fine but when there is no attraction and you are done , voices grate. I just wanted out and me and ex hated the sound of each other at the end.

You both need to find a way now to separate and that will involve sacrifices on all sides . Living with someone when you get to the stage of "hating" their voice is damaging and toxic and destructive to all involved.

How rude! Mind you I used to tell my husband I didn't like voice, especially didn't like hearing him talk to people on the 'phone when he tended to be loud, false-hearty and speak too quickly. Now of course I wish I hadn't said that but it did grate. I even used to tell him that if he was going to talk on the 'phone he should take it in another room.

Having said all that I feel like a right bitch.

When we live with someone we are bound to get on each other's nerves sometimes.

There's nothing wrong with having an accent but it helps to speak slowly or slower, not to be high pitched or burst into laughter at nothing.

Oh dear

"@fortifiedwithtea For reasons too many and too long to explain. We are stuck together. I haven’t had the best of health. Not been able to work and our youngest has learning disability and bi polar".

The voice thing is a red herring really. It is a final act , of a desperate plea, of someone who ultimately wants to leave a relationship. You and DH really need to work together to free both yourselves from this relationship and put in place appropriate housing and shared care for your children, across 2 new separate homes. You deserve better OP as does your DH. Relationships break down for many reasons. Neither party should ever feel stuck. That is soul destroying and ambition crumbling.

We all deserve the opportunity to move on and should never be trapped. Neither of you should be in a marriage that is not working. This is not about the sound of a persona voice, this is about feeling trapped, unhappy and restricted by what that voice represents to you .

@KatherineofOregon I think you've been watching one too many cheesy romance made rot TV movies

*made for TV movies

So now is the time to go your own ways, even if it means living together. This is going to get a lot worse. He has no respect for you, he is showing his contempt and worse still, he has written you off. This cannot be fixed.

There's very little you can do about your voice

That's not true. If you want to change your voice, you can. Look at Margaret Thatcher, or the Queen, as just two well known examples of people who changed their voices.
It will take effort, and you might need coaching, but if you don't like your voice, you can change it. And your accent.
I wouldn't change it just based in what your DH said though - only if you want to.

It was a horrible thing to say especially as you know what you're voice sounds like.
I sound like Peggy Mitchell in her ranting mode "get out of my pub" voice so I try to speak nicely and end sounding like the Queen mum, I can't win 😉

@MrsFin I think I have very weak vocal cords. My voice randomly goes up very high, voice break and generally sounds older than I really am. Automated voice recognition on phones is a nightmare. Bloody machines never understand me. I don’t want to change my accent.I remember Mrs Thatcher’s voice training , it sounded what it was false.

@Unreasonabubble Really we are 2 people that share a house. There is no relationship. We go from tolerating each other to massive resentment.

The responses to this thread have shown me something significant. People seem to be of the opinion that his comment was a red flag that he is equally sick of me. What a wasted life. No surprise that my eldest daughter never wants to get married.

@fortifiedwithtea. Please do not be too sad. It is not a "wasted" life, I am sure there were good years somewhere.

I can say that, as a woman who was with someone for nearly 30 years and then I ended it as I could just see the contempt he had for me and I, in return, learnt to have contempt for him. There is nothing worse or more hurtful than being rejected by someone we have spent years with.

@Unreasonabubble you hit the nail on the head

Do you still.love him? If you don't and he doesn't you but you have to live together for practical reasons, maybe splitting up but living together as friends and parents is the answer?

I agree with the others it's the beginning of the end really. My now ex used to say "don't raise your voice" every time I said something he didn't want to hear. What he was really saying was "shut the fuck up"

Today was a new level of hell. We have been travel training DD2 to go to school independently. School is another mile walk after she has got off the bus. She phoned to say She was at the bus station and feeling too sick to walk any further. Due to epilepsy I can not drive. I asked DH to go and get her and he kicked up a fuss. Let’s just say it was an ugly scene. He said what would I do if he wasn’t working from home? I should have pointed out that HIS daughter needed help so why wouldn’t he want to help her? But its easy to think of the smart answer afterwards. He ranted on blaming me for a few other things before collecting dd2

Later I found an excuse to leave the house, sit in a field and rang Samaritan . Told the call handler I wasn’t going to do anything stupid, just needed to talk to someone and have a cry . That done I went home and carried on.

Additional needs daughter vomited and wiped vomit on a clean towel I’d just put out. That was the point I realised how much I need some restbite

Rang my mum and asked could I stay with her this weekend. DM said I was abandoning Dd2. I told her if I don’t get a break I won’t be able to carry on. Took the mobile down the garden and explained what is going on with DH.

Told Dh I my plans. He said I looked broken. He can see I have a lot to deal with at the moment but don’t think he can see he is a big part of the problem. Oh and the dog is ill, got a thread about that too .

Now I am feeling sick too. If I have a stomach bug I won’t be able to escape this weekend. Buggar

@fortifiedwithtea if I was you I would go to my mums, I would book a hotel room, check out a travel lodge some are like £29 for the night.

You need some alone time. No judging words, no ones additional opinions on the situation.

Bring a laptop, or tablet to watch some films, get some snacks and just chill. It will probably be harder than you think.

I've done this a few times. My aunt used to do this too, the absolute separation from anything familiar will help.
It's not a luxury, it's a necessity.

I hope you really do find time to help yourself, you are a mother but you are also a person who deserve calm & happiness x

@fortifiedwithtea - How are you doing?

My abusive ex husband hated that I was too tall. I'm 5ft9, he was 5ft10. We were together 10 years and I was always like ok but I can't change it and you knew this when you met me!? My therapist said it sounded like he was projecting his own insecurities onto me. Could it be that?