How to handle a chronic sulker?

[FridaMo]

I've been with my OH for 7 years now and we are getting married next year. We are generally peaceful and happy but he has a very bad flaw of sulking when he's annoyed. Sometimes it's justified annoyance at me, sometimes less so. He's definitely quick to grumpiness.

My natural urge is to make peace. I want upsets dealt with quickly, including my own, but after so many occasions where my attempt to mend fences was rejected ive become humiliation-averse and i really get annoyed at the sulking now so sometimes i join him and we end up in a deathly silence for days on end. Til he's finally ready to move on. It makes me desperately unhappy. My tolerance for grumpiness and sullenness is very low, i find the protracted punishment painful and unnecessary, and i feel so dispensable. But despite several long, calm conversations about how we handle conflict/how i feel about sulking, and even after regretting missing out on fun plans because he's keeping us in Coventry.. He still defaults to this horrible mode.

I am feeling a bit hopeless and upset.

Any advice.

I married a sulker.. Taking my vows I was thinking oh well we can always get divorced..
And we did.

Don't do it op.
Just don't.

Tell him clearly the wedding is off unless his sulking improves and he does therapy for it.
It will get worse once you're married

OP your words :

Part of your relationship is painful. You feel so dispensable, hopeless and sad.

This is not a "happy, healthy relationship."

Please don't dismiss ALL the PPs advice. Maybe we are all keyboard warriors who want to lob random LTBs into your relationship. Or maybe, just maybe, we are here for you, to answer your call for advice, with the benefit of our own experience of emotional abuse.

It is emotional abuse.

YOU cannot fix it.

You can only change how you choose to respond to it.

Ultimately he has never learnt to handle conflict. This he must do if the relationship has ANY chance of success.

PLEASE PLEASE read the other threads about sulking husbands. You might say we don't understand but you surely cannot dismiss the experiences of women in the same situation?

I'm sorry you are in this situation 💐

@category12

Yes, but he's not here looking for thoughts, is he?

Only he can work on this - and does he have any interest or motivation in doing so? If not, you're SOL.

It's a strategy that works for him - he throws a strop and you rush around try to smooth things over and are desperate to sort things out. He, on the other hand, is perfectly content to freeze you out and hurt you.

This. It's been going on for seven years! He won't change. And imagine how awful the silent treatment would be after you have kids. I'd leave him.

It is very sad that you think this is fixable. It is not.

Sulking is a choice. It may be a learned behaviour from childhood, but it is a choice. I used to be a sulker but then I grew up and decided to get my shit together and not make the rest of the people in my life miserable by sulking when I didn’t like what happened. Which is what it is - people sulking because they don’t get their own way, and because often it gets them their own way because people bend to their will.

Occasionally I still revert to type and sulk for about 10 minutes (when I am really annoyed - and sometimes when I have a genuine right to be annoyed). And then I realise I’m being a twat, I apologise for the sulking, we deal we with actual issue, and we move on.

He is making a choice everything he sulks. And then he makes a choice each time he continues to sulk. And each morning he wakes up and continues, he makes another choice. And he is making that choice over and over and over again in the knowledge it makes you miserable.

Do not bring children into this environment. I know kids raised in families with a sulker and they are emotional messes.

If I were you I would give him an ultimatum and I would mean it. He works on it and it improves - or you leave.

Some people are quick to resolve disputes and move on whereas others take a long time to get their mind back in the right headspace...he is obviously one of the latter types. Perhaps when things are back to normal again you can discuss, again, how his actions make you feel. Sadly, he is probably unable or unwilling to change and as his actions make you so unhappy perhaps you need to think very hard about the long term future of this relationship. If he can't change then how are you going to cope with these times of grumpiness? You could have a lifetime of these silent periods to endure.Are you sure that is what you want for your life?

Hi OP

I've not been with a sulker but I've seen enough threads on here to know that it gets worse over time (as the pressures of life eg higher up jobs, elderly parents, children etc) all increase, and that it kills the love eventually. The stage where you're planning your wedding is meant to be the stage where it's all perfect. If there are some aspects that are bad that you're posting on a forum about how to manage it, I'm really sorry but its going to go downhill from here. The typical scenario is it happens more and more often over smaller and less significant things until you are keeping yourself and your kids away from him, all tiptoeing around him afraid of upsetting him for fear of the sulk. And often they take it out on the kids as well - completely disengaging from family life for the duration of the sulk, letting kids down completely, because someone left a light on or something.

There is no way to handle it. Its something that upsets you as it would upset most people, and yet it sounds like he pays lip service to it but hasnt actually done anything to change. And even if he wanted to change, my bet is it's such an engrained personality trait due to the way he was brought up that it will be very difficult to do so and require loads of commitment, work and therapy on his part to be able to break the pattern. But why would he? He us shot with the way things are

@VettiyaIruken

Well, your choices are, off the top of my head,

leave him

make marriage conditional on him first accessing some sort of therapy to teach him how to not sulk like a kid (talking of kids, if you have any/intend to have any, start them in therapy early so sulky daddy doesn't fuck them up when he turns his pouting on them when they aren't being appropriately submissive)

Refuse to sulk with him and just get on with things without him until he's finished being childish.

Tell him to grow the fuck up

Take the piss

Buy him a dummy

Start using a star chart

Change yourself so that you never argue with him at all. Embrace your inner stepford wife.

I made the mistake of Changing Myself so I never argued as strategy 1; refusing to sulk with him as strategy 2. They were both absolutely the wrong choices.

Have you called him out on his sulking? Actually challenged him along the lines of "you are sulking. Do you realise how unattractive and childish that makes you?". If not then you need to. If you can't then you need to seriously question whether this is the right relationship for you.

I divorced the sulker after 18 unhappy years - what a waste of my prime.

You are setting yourself up for a lifetime of misery and walking on eggshells. Cancel the wedding. He will get worse and worse as the years go by. That type always do.

It's a soul destroying passive aggressive trait. I had many, many years of it from my ex.
The only good advice I ever came across in trawls
about this behaviour was from a psychologist who said you
have to firmly and with conviction tell your partner that if they ever give you the silent treatment again you will leave.

And stick to it because he hasn't come across anything else that works.
If you decide put up with it it will impact your mental health.

There's a long-running series of threads from the marvellous op here about a sulking husband. Worth reading the op's posts and journey to see if you recognise anything

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/3448545-Confronting-DH-about-his-sulking

Oh this is such as easy one!

You leave. You definitely don't marry him.

Find a grown up.

You do not think he is intentionally controlling; I would beg to differ. You are in his web.

^^ this classic narcissistic behaviour. You'll be blaming yourself for his behaviour

As a child brought up with a lot of this it was agony. Often used to dread going home from school as a teenager.Then snap back to normal , as if nothing had happened, until the next time. Average 4 times a year. Got longer with time. We kids were made miserable in the middle of it. Carried on through a very, long marriage after we all left home. Only ended with death.
Do you really want this for you and any future family? At least give ultimatum, if he won’t address it wedding is off

Have a conversation with him and explain how you feel. If he doesn't change then dump him. Do not marry him if he carries on like this. It is not worth it.

Ime he won't grow up just be getting married.

You will always feel like the only adult in your relationship.

Resentment will set in pretty quickly.. Quicker if you have dc..
If you have 2 dc you will really be parenting 3...
And you will become miserable...

It's a sign of serious emotional immaturity. He can't handle not getting his own way over something, so he defaults to a mode that he knows annoys and upsets you.

Only you can decide if this flaw is something you can live with for the rest of your life. But if you're changing YOUR behaviour to pacify him/avoid a sulk then you need to seriously consider if getting married is in your best interests

The sulker is just seeking attention so don't give him any. No meals preparation, washing done etc. unless he snaps out of it. Act like he isn't even in the house. Better still, don't live with him. It will get worse as he ages or there are children to annoy him.

His sulking is a way of controlling. Its already making you react by trying to cheer him out of it, then giving up and sulking yourself ore retaliating. This is not a recipe for happiness and its got you walking on eggshells, making sure you don't do things that will set him off.

He gets a lot of satisfaction from your reaction to his sulks, but he will want a better reaction as time goes on, so the sulking/punishment will get worse.
You need to have an equal say in all your life decisions together if you marry - but how can you if you know you will be "punished" for it?
As others have said he needs therapy before marriage.

How to handle it? You don't, you leave and you have a happier, quieter life without him.

Happy, healthy relationship? You are dreaming!

One of my best friend’s dad was (is) like this. His record was 3 months of totally ignoring her mum and sulking. My friend and 3 out of 4 of her siblings have serious mental health issues. She’s on pills, her sister’s on pills (so many she apparently ‘rattles’, according to my friend), her brother can barely look at anyone, has never had a successful relationship. She blames her father, so do I, I think he’s a horrible person. Sadly, he lives on the same street as my mum so tricky to avoid.

Nothing as sexy as a man who sulks!!

Even as a child I hated other children who sulked!
How are you still with this man? He sounds awful. Sulking isn't acceptable! It really isn't.
Run!

An example of my exh man- child sulking :
When I turned 40 we decided to have a small garden party type afternoon.. I had 2 friends there and my dm and our dc.. He had wanted a new xbox game as apparently I was selfish to want the day to be just about me. At 6pm he started complaining people were still there and they needed to leave as he hadn't even played his new game yet.
His sulk was obvious and they left. I went to bed in tears at 9pm while he gamed.
I had divorced him before I was 41....

Don't marry him. I grew up with a sulking dad; horrific, toxic environment.