So DH and I have wasted yet another weekend arguing over the way he speaks to me when he gets stressed. Things can be 100% brilliant for us, getting on well, sex life good, work going well and everything peachy but then he'll (for instance) be running a bit late for something or have lots of things to get done in a short time so feel a bit pressured and it's like he switches on me. He'll snap at me, speak to me in a really derisory way, tut and roll his eyes when I'm speaking and generally display in his body language, tone and way of speaking and facial expressions that he's pissed off, with me being the apparent cause/target.
It makes me livid and hurt in equal measure and I don't hold back in telling him how it makes me feel, hence the wasted weekend, but he can't seem to accept that being stressed is no reason to be horrible to me. He will eventually concede that he needs to handle stress differently/better and I will get a halfhearted apology (which always has a 'but' at the end so isn't really/doesn't feel like an apology) but there's never any genuine remorse or sense of him wanting to 'make it up' to (or even with) me, he doesn't appear to care that he's upset me and will let days go by with me barely speaking to him (because I've withdrawn to protect myself from being blindsided again by him snapping at me when I thought everything was good) rather than make any effort to put things right between us.
He isn't the best communicator and I do sometimes get the feeling he wants to approach me to try to smooth things over but doesn't know how or is afraid I'll knock him back but tbh im losing patience with that as an excuse. The worst of it is I could forgive the odd snappy comment under pressure if he would just stop switching into Mr-Hyde-mode and looking at, speaking to and treating me like I'm his worst enemy and the source of all his problems and show a bit of remorse for the occasions when he does snap, I don't expect him to be perfect.
I have warned him that it's chipping away at my love for him, that eventually he will kill our marriage altogether but he just looks confused and says nothing in response. I can see it makes him miserable when we argue so it makes even less sense that he wouldn't a) try to stop the behaviour that starts the whole thing, and b) apologise properly and show some concern and remorse when it does happen. So is it that he won't, or that he genuinely can't/doesn't know how? It makes no sense to me that he would potentially let our marriage go down the pan rather than apologise so that leaves me thinking it must be can't but I couldn't spell out any more clearly what I need from him so I don't understand why he can't?