Hate the way my husband speaks to me

[Becka09009]

I’ve been married for 5 years ...my husband has always been a lot more curt / blunt than me. I hate confrontation, I’m very sensitive and empathetic..probably overly sensitive sometimes and that’s where we clash. However despite me being quite sensitive I do think my husband sometimes crossed a line by anyone’s standards in the way he speaks to me.

He doesn’t do it all the time...and is generally quite considerate and nice the rest of the time. He does his fair share of cleaning and parenting our daughter..probably not 50/50 but more than a lot of my friends partners do. He’s hands on compared to the average guy I think.

He has this habit though of getting annoyed very easily and being overly aggressive and rude which usually seems to be a disproportionate reaction to the situation. He then speaks to me really aggressively...and yeah we all snap a little bit but he won’t back down or apologise or does one of those ‘I’m sorry but I swore at you because you did xyz’ as if it’s justified.

So tonight for example..he’s having some friends round to play this role play board game they play. He was setting things up in the kitchen and put this mat down on the kitchen island..I went to get my daughter some juice out the fridge so rested her sippy cup on the mat as it totally covered the island. He screamed at me ‘get that fucking cup off my mat it’s really expensive’ I said don’t speak to me like that he said what is he supposed to do when I disrespect his things and do stupid things. I asked for an apology, he said ‘where’s my apology’ for putting the cup down. Earlier today he shouted at me repeatedly for using the wrong door in front of the Tesco delivery man (I went to the door the man was at!) ...I’m 8 months pregnant and still had to ask him to come help me lift the crates rather than shouting at me from the living room. It was so embarrassing I made a joke about him being grumpy to the delivery guy but he didn’t look impressed.

It’s just little things but he really flys off the handle. He also speaks to his mum like this (she came to visit recently) I called him out for it in front of her as he’s awful and speaks to her like she’s stupid. She never stands up to him but tells me she doesn’t like it and always gives me a look.

He’s in total denial that it’s an issue...or the only time he has apologised slightly more genuinely is when I made him go stay in a hotel for screaming at me about something trivial and threatened to leave him.

He’s speaking to me like this in front of our daughter who was upset tonight (she’s 2) and I’m so worried he’s going to do this to her when she’s older as kids make clumsy mistakes and mess things up all the time! He just has no patience at all and also worried about the example I’m setting putting up with this.

My mums thinks I’m crazy and thinks he’s sweetness and light as he never does this around her...my friends have seen it and commented on it.
You wouldn’t know it to meet him thats why I wonder if I’m being over sensitive but i hear how wrong it is when he does it to his mum.

Don’t know what to do I feel like I can’t do much about it at 8 months pregnant with a 2 year old. It’s the fact he doesn’t even apologise properly that doesn’t give me any hope of it improving

What an awful example for your daughter. Him for doing it, and you for tolerating it.

I am that little girl and let me warn you now what your future may hold. I am low contact with my parents although they live only a couple of miles away. I have virtually no relationship with my father and a very fragile one with my mother. I judge both of them for subjecting me to the kind of marriage they had, and still have. He has emotionally abused her for 60 years, and still she stays because “she loves him”. She is aware she sacrificed a proper relationship with her children to maintain one with him.

Don’t be that woman

I had a similar issue. Not to that extent but was heading that way. One day I said I had enough and I didn’t care for his excuses. Accept responsibility for his own actions or I was gone. I think you need to be a bit more forceful in letting him know you won’t accept it and call him on it every time. If no change, I’d suggest he spends some time at his mums as you don’t deserve to be treated like that and will not put up on it. Men have a tendency to treat you worse when pregnant because they think they have you so to speak and you will never leave them.

@Becka09009 I did 25 years of one of these....
or did one of those ‘I’m sorry but I swore at you because you did xyz’ as if it’s justified.

In the end, I told him, as he opened his mouth, "don't waste your breath, I have heard it all before".

Your Husband is a control freak. They can only say "sorry" so many times before it hits home and you realise he is NEVER going to change.

I am happily divorced now.

He’s disrespectful and rude to you
Your daughter will grow up thinking that this is how men talk to women; she could even find a partner in time who does this to her

I would start doing the same back to him. See how he likes it.

Actually I would probably leave him.

I get this as well I get screamed at if something is wrong I forgot his straw one night in-laws was on the phone he screamed at me. They were disgusted.

I’ve sent him a message saying if he doesn’t acknowledge this and sort it out or seek help for why he’s getting so angry and aggressive over the smallest things then we don’t have a future. I may not have the best self esteem but one thing I take very seriously is my role as a mum and seeing how upset our daughter was and the fact she’s now understanding more has really upset me and scared the life out of me.

His reply to message was ‘I have apologised what more can I say’ ...he really didn’t apologise, it was the ‘I’m sorry but what am I supposed to say when you do this’ ...how can he not see that doesn’t mean he’s sorry! That means I made him speak to me like that in his eyes.

He's be told that if he ever spoke like that to me again (let alone I front of our child) , I would be leaving him. And I'd follow through. There's no excuse for any aggression. There's no excuse for abuse.

What a big bully. I wonder if he's such a big man at work. Does he yell at men who are bigger than he is, or just at you? Cowardly fuckwit. Even his mum hates him.

I'd leave him. You're setting a horrible example for your poor dd

Emotional abuse. Leave him.

My mum is no wet lettuce. Many times she pushed back, gave him ultimatums, even left him on one memorable occasion when I was in my teens.

He would be nicer for a while. He could be nice, you see… he just doesn’t respect her enough to keep it up once he had her back in line.

He will swear that he loves her. But he has given her a life of misery with the odd high spot when she thought she had the upper hand. It never lasted long. Now she is effectively his career and despises him.

*carer

He thinks an apology, that he didn't really mean, is fine and he doesn't need to address his behaviour, this means he won't change. Yes it's OK to be annoyed if someone does something annoying but you can express that annoyance without screaming and swearing.

I had one of these. Was fab most of the time. But when he went, he went big time, over really trivial stuff. He's now my ExH. He shares residency of our daughter but is a lot better with her than he ever was with me. Occasionally he still can be a knob to her too. But she has a space away from him and we talk it through.
I tried everything to sort it. Ultimately he wouldn't speak to his boss like it, so why on earth does he think it's ok to talk to you like it.

[quote Unreasonabubble]@Becka09009 I did 25 years of one of these....
or did one of those ‘I’m sorry but I swore at you because you did xyz’ as if it’s justified.

In the end, I told him, as he opened his mouth, "don't waste your breath, I have heard it all before".

Your Husband is a control freak. They can only say "sorry" so many times before it hits home and you realise he is NEVER going to change.

I am happily divorced now.[/quote]
This. Tell him you have had enough of abuse and you want a divorce.

Then I think you have to acknowledge there is no future

@Bopahula that’s reassuring that at least he’s better with your daughter...it shows they can do it! I fear this will extend to her to some degree as he already has zero patience with the perfectly normal ‘terrible 2s’ behaviour and expects her to have the emotional regulation of an adult (even though he can’t regulate his own emotions!) like you say at least if separated she gets a break from it.

Funnily enough he has been called out for his attitude at work before..I know because we work for the same company (another thing that makes leaving more challenging...it’s a family business). He’s been criticised for being overly aggressive in meetings and the client wouldn’t work with him again...in his eyes they were all wrong / incompetent of course.

Pay close attention to AF in particular because you do not want to make the same mistakes her own mother made.

The only acceptable level of abuse in a relationship is none. This relationship is over now and should be anyway because of the abuse he metes out to you and in turn your child.

You are not a rehab centre either for some badly raised man so stop acting like one. He does this because he can and feels entitled to do this to you.

He can likely control himself around others so does not have an anger management problem. He has a problem with anger, YOUR anger, when you call him out on his unreasonable behaviours. These types like supposedly strong women as they see them as an additional challenge to bring down. And he will utterly break you and your child if you remain in this marriage for whatever reasons. Abusers can be "nice" sometimes but their niceness is short lived and an act they cannot possibly hope to maintain. They can also be quite plausible to those in the outside world but people like your mother do not live with him and therefore do not know the truth. You do.

What you're describing here is the nice/nasty cycle of abuse and that is a continuous one.

What do you want to teach your DD about relationships and what is she learning here from you both?. This is not the relationship model she should at all be seeing. You would not want her to be in a relationship like yours is and its not good enough for you either.

Find it within yourself to plan your exit from this with due care and attention. It is worth contacting both Womens Aid and the Rights of Women here.

I would seriously blank him totally when he talks in this manner

then turn around each time and calmly say afterwards - who were you talking to like that?

when he says you...
no, I wouldn't listen to anyone talking to me like that

then leave

He's an emotionally abusive arsehole OP, been there seen it done it.

He thinks he's got you where he wants you, as you have a young child and are pregnant. Leave him now. or waste 20 odd years of your life with this bully, and watch your kids suffer like I did.

But he will NOT change. This is who he is

He sounds just like my father. He had to set up his own business in the end because no one would employ him. He lost lots of work because of his short fuse and condescending attitude though and should have been a lot more financially comfortable than he was.

He has patronised the wrong people a few times and had to be rescued from a beating. He has driven away my mum’s friends and family until it was literally those two on their own. For many years she sided with him to make her own life (on the surface at least) more tolerable in an “us against the world” way. It did her no favours however, as he treats her like shit to this day. Only as he gets frailer does she get her own back. What a waste of a life.

He’s an aggressive bully and you’re right, this will affect your kids.

Similar in my family @AnyFucker. My parents’ terrible marriage made life horrendous for me and my sibling. She stayed with him too long because people got told to stay together for the sake of the children. In our case it was the last thing the children wanted. Leaving home was like being able to breathe for the first time.

You need to decide if you can live with this @Becka09009, but be aware of what your kids might go through.

@AnyFucker this sounds very similar to him at work..he’s good at his job but doesn’t understand that people won’t want to work with you if you speak to them like they’re stupid. Certain people he seems to respect or put on a good show for (my mum) but he does talk down to friends and colleagues...he just seems to get extremely wound up if someone isn’t doing something how he thinks it should be done. He shouted at me in IKEA for buying the wrong storage jars (in his eyes) and stormed off in a huff because I was being ridiculous and wasting money by not doing it his way.

I think I’ve known throughout most of this pregnancy that I need to leave..he definitely is worse when I’m pregnant he did this last time but then was a lot nicer in between ..obviously nice enough that I thought we should have another baby. I’ve been trying to ignore or minimalise it as I’m going to be in mat leave for a year and would rather leave him when I’m back at work so have more security...also scared of the whole 50/50 custody thing when I’ll have a baby so young. Really wish I had left so much earlier!

He’s speaking to me like this in front of our daughter who was upset tonight (she’s 2) and I’m so worried he’s going to do this to her when she’s older as kids make clumsy mistakes and mess things up all the time!

You're right to be worried about this and also the fact that she's being taught that it's ok for men to shout at women and that women are expected to do as they are told and not answer back.

He's a prick. You can't want to stay with someone like this for the rest of your life, surely? Even if you have kids together?

If I saw an eight month pregnant woman going to pick some shopping up of the floor and she was a complete stranger I would help her. Because I'm a decent person, not an arsehole.

You know what he is? He's a bully. There aren't many things worse for a girls self esteem than growing up in a house with a shouty bully who has a quick temper. It's a hostile, tense atmosphere and leads to a headfuckery when it comes to relationship dynamics and expectations.

The longer your children live in that environment, the more likely it is they will have partners who shout and them and make them feel like shit.