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.

@FridaMo

I've seen a lot of queries on here get an overwhelming 'leave him' response but in reality how someone handles their negative emotions within a relationship is something to work on surely. Blowing up a happy healthy relationship for human flaw and frailty cannot be the first option. These aren't daily or weekly rows im talking about. Im talking about much more seldom. But it is a real issue i agree. Which is why im here looking for thoughts

It isn’t a happy healthy relationship though is it? And you know that. I think you want someone to tell you something you can do to make him stop doing this. But there isn’t.

@saraclara, that was my childhood too. It's utter shit, isn't it? Memories of being aged around 9, sitting upstairs with my younger brother and sister and begging them to be quiet so I could hear whether the yelling had stopped. No wonder I went on and married an abuser, having been so conditioned to never rock the boat.

This reminds me of my ex. It is definitely a form of control. Damn hard work to live with, and it’ll get worse. Good luck if you want a future of living on eggshells.

The only way I could deal with it was to ignore and be happy, go out to avoid him. Then I found I never did anything fun with him because he was a grumpy old Git.

@FridaMo

This is an excerpt from a thread about a posters struggles to break free from her marriage to an abusive H, whose punishment 'choice' was 'sulking', firstly for hours, then for days and ultimately for weeks and months at a time................

''Again, now I think you are probably right and I wish I had seen this 10 years ago, or to be honest, even during the first 10 years when things were mostly great but dealing with conflict was always problematic.''

She openly said that she was 'optimistic' in the early years (mostly pre-kids), and by the time she realized that she was living every single day with chronic anxiety and fear that she would do 'something' to 'set him off', she was too 'invested' because of the children etc.

She states very honestly, that she 'wasted' year after year, being miserable, constantly having to 'overcompensate' to her kids/ friends/ family to try to 'make up for' or 'explain' or 'excuse' his sulking.

She also said she was shocked that when she finally left him, she encountered nothing but support from friends and family, just exclamations like ''about time !'' or ''I don't know how you stood it for so long !'', because all the time she thought she was 'covering up' his 'sulks', everyone could see her 'tying herself in knots' trying to be 'overly cheerful' and doing everything she could think of to try to 'appease' her H.

So make no mistake, all your friends and relations know what's happening, and what it's doing to you..............they're just waiting for you to decide that you've had enough ! (Because they don't want your 'D'P to have any excuse to cut them from your lives ! They need to be close to you, to be able to help you when that time comes !)

Please don't waste your life on someone like this.

He is not a nice man.

I wouldn't put up with it, but I'm single and 53.

“Any advice.“

My advice is that you should not get married.
It sounds as though you have tried talking calmly and sensibly about this but he has not got any better.

Has he ever discussed getting help? He may have had an overtly aggressive parent and the only way he could react was this way. It is too difficult to live with though.

What if you had children?

It is passive-aggressive and he is probably showing this in other ways too.

You've been with him for 7 years - he really wont stop the sulking you know.

You're mad if you want to get married to that sort of personality. Please, please give this serious consideration.

Doesn't sound very happy OP.

He's unlikely to change. My parents have been married almost 45 years and my Dad has been a chronic sulker all the way through. It's sucks joy from the whole family when there's a misery guts wondering around.

I'd leave before you marry him.

Can’t help wondering if OP is now sulking due to the multitude of LTB’s

Seriously though OP - how often is this happening? Are you taking any of the advice on board?

The OP probably doesn’t want to leave him and give up her dreams for her wedding and marriage. The responses probably seem unreasonable to her as she may see DP as wonderful,( but just a bit sensitive and moody.

She may regret having posted.

@ScrollingLeaves

The OP probably doesn’t want to leave him and give up her dreams for her wedding and marriage. The responses probably seem unreasonable to her as she may see DP as wonderful,( but just a bit sensitive and moody.

She may regret having posted.

It often takes several threads under different names before people have processed the reality and are ready to leave. It’s hard.

My ex was a "sulker" although really, it's not sulking it is, it's emotional punishment. If I did something he didn't like he would just pretty much ignore me, for days sometimes. I would grovel, say sorry, even go to where he was working and take him a chocolate bar or something like that, just to get him to talk to me again. Every time i did this, I hated myself for it that little bit more. saying sorry when you know you've done nothing wrong, looking back now it's crazy. I was with him for almost 25 years but one day I'd just had enough and left. I will never ever ever be in that situation again and I will never date a sulker, it's on my (very long) list of no no's.

And just to add........in all likelihood, he won't change, it will get worse and worse. i have a lot of baggage now from living with a sulker. I constantly worry I've upset someone, I bend over backwards to create a nice atmosphere so there can't be sulking, and I still put others before myself just to keep things "nice". I am slowly getting harder but it's taken a long long time. If I were you I would get out now OP. Stop making excuses for him saying stuff like maybe you're dismissing his feelings by wanting to make up quickly. he knows exactly what he's doing, it's punishment and it's abusive and the more you pander to that the worse it will get.

Perhaps the OP is one of those women who doubts herself and will havevto learn the hard way.

But she will learn, and it will be the hard way.

She will remember her doubts before she married him, and she will regret not feeling strong enough.

She may even have children.

But there will undoubtedly come a point where enough will be enough and she will get that it is abusive.

Hopefully she will never give up her job, because she is going to need it, like a lifeboat.

As the child of a sulker, the OP would be incredibly selfish to saddle a child with this man as a parent. It was awful and so upsetting (and not just the sulking, the constant eggshells not knowing if it was going to happen).

I asked my parent why they did it once - the answer " because it works".

@HelenHywater that was the main reason I left. Not so much for me but for my son. His life is so much better now both of us don't walk on eggshells.

I am feeling a bit hopeless and upset. Any advice?

Yes. Any woman who has experienced this with a husband or partner will tell you the same thing - leave now, while you can.

The Good News is that you can see this is wrong, It is altering your behaviour, you are starting to mirror his silences, tip toe around his moods to avoid his punishment (AKA sulking) it is making you unhappy & you are asking how to fix it.
I would tell him the marriage is OFF, that his sulking is not a trait you are prepared to live with anymore, he needs therapy to learn to deal with conflict & disappointment & on the contrary, rather than sulking it needs communication & compromise to live with another person who is not going to always agree with him.
I see that you have not responded for a while, hopefully you are taking on board the dozens of women, many of whom you will see post on threads re. Emotional abuse, because they/I have lived with Abuse & please believe us when we say, this is just the beginning.

You've put up with him sulking (which is a form of emotional punishment) for seven years, what makes you think he will change? Getting married, he will likely get worse. Good luck you will need it.

OK OP, I am the daughter of a sulker, I remember keenly a childhood of walking on eggshells when my father sulked and took to his bed. the hissed conversations when my poor mother tried to keep the peace. When we came a long as children he became jealous, it was fine as long as he could control us but when we started to think on our own he could not cope.

Before she got married, my mother had second thoughts and asked her mother if she should call it off, my granny told her she probably should marry him as she was getting on... she was 23 and deserved so much better. My granny apologised to my mum much later when she saw what he was really like but, much too late for my Catholic mother by then.

So I would tell you not to put up with this, do not let it derail your plans, if he is not there, tough! It would be his loss not yours. Make a life outside of your relationship because if you stay you will need it.

I rarely say LTB, but in this case you will not win, it will get worse as you get older, he will not change... I know I tried it with my father, but you have a life ahead of you and you deserve a better life than this.

My exh was a sulker.

I walked on eggshells all the time.

He would come out of his sulks in front of other people and just pretend everything was happy families - then as soon as we were alone the switch came back on.

We had counselling but he just used that as another stick to hit me with.

I consider sulking as abusive now I've been through it and out the other side. I also emotional and physically withdrew from him (naturally) so each sulk from him was another bail in the coffin of our relationship.

Needless to say he sulked during our divorce and our legal fees were enormous because he refused to communicate with me other than through the Solicitors/courts/barristers (we aren't rich nor had large assets).

I actually think you are a fool if you marry him, especially as you obviously recognise this is horrible behaviour from him.

Being married isn't a goal, being married to a great person who treats you well is.

If you do marry him, please don't have children with him for their sakes.

@everythingbackbutyou, yep that was my childhood too and it was bloody miserable. Huge rows often violent, my dad would storm out for hours, then when he returned the house would have a huge cloud hanging over it with us kids walking on eggshells for days until they made up. Until the next time. Cycle after cycle, year after year. I married a stonewaller. I wonder why?

I think @VettiyaIruken is absolutely spot on with her advice, @FridaMo. You need to tell your dp that unless he gets therapy and stops sulking (which is, as many posters have said, emotionally manipulative and abusive behaviour), then the wedding is off. Tell him this is his last chance - no more sulking or you are off, for good.

If he has the therapy and changes his behaviour - all well and good. If he goes off into another sulk at your ultimatum - leave him.