Me and DH have been together for 13 years. We have 1 DC together (3 years old) and another on the way, I’m currently 27 weeks pregnant.
We have the occasional argument but certainly nothing ever aggressive or violent and our relationship for the most part is happy, until today.
DH has been doing a lot of work on the garden for weeks now. It’s a large garden and originally he was landscaping a small part of it but he’s got carried away and is now redoing half the garden. This started last summer, stopped over winter and he started again this April. Unless it’s raining he’s out there digging most evenings and weekends, leaving me to take care of DC and the pregnancy exhaustion is beginning to take over. I sometimes feel like a single parent because I work (just Mon-weds), then do all the cooking, cleaning and taking care of DC. He seems to think this is easy. While I appreciate him doing all the labour in the garden, he’s got a bit obsessed with it and he could pay someone to help him. We aren’t rich but we have savings for someone to come and do it, but DH has renovated our whole house over time and “likes projects” in his words. So he wants to do it on his own.
I tried to speak to him about this earlier and it immediately escalated into an argument with him getting defensive. He said that I’m spoilt, need to stop moaning and that I don’t understand what hard work is and that I’ve never had a hard days work in my life. Then he called me a dickhead so I told him to fuck off, which I’m ashamed to admit was in front of our 3 year old DS. He said “what did you just say to me?” And came towards me, I honestly thought he was going to hit me but he snatched my phone out of my hand and threw it hard at the door. Then he went over to it, saw that he hadn’t broken it so threw it even harder at the wall. It’s caused damage to it along the bottom but somehow didn’t break, but it has dented the wall. Then he took the phone and hid it so I couldn’t find it.
I have been in tears for two hours which I’ve been trying to hide from DS. DS witnessed all of this and was absolutely petrified and screaming. I am genuinely scared of my husband, he’s never reacted like that but it’s showed me what he’s capable of. I could go to my mums house but I don’t know what to do long term. DS won’t let DH near him now and keeps saying he doesn’t want daddy to be mad and that he’s scared of daddy. DH is now saying that I’ve turned DS against him because I’ve been crying this evening and it’s me that’s scaring him by crying, rather than because he lost it. And he said afterwards “that’s what you get when you tell me to fuck off”. I have never seen this side to him. What do I do?