long time poster but name changed.
Not sure where to start but I think my husband is manipulating or sabotaging me. I am peri so could be hormonal paranoia but something isn’t right and I’m in bits. I think he’s making life so unbearable that I leave and then I’m the baddy. His whole persona is a kind and loving man to the outside world. Leaving me wouldn’t fit.
He is reacting angrily (and I mean furious - shouting and talking over me, really aggressive look on his face) to any tiny little things that he perceives as me criticising him. It’s been a few weeks now.
i try not to react but then when I do he says I’m aggressive and that he won’t talk to me outside of set meetings.
He went away for a few days a week ago and has come back calling me ‘abusive’. At worst I’m critical or a ‘nag’ (in the context of having to work so hard for him to just do half the domestic stuff when I work longer hours - he works a day to two a week) - so you could reframe it as me fighting for equality or fairness.
I think he’s gearing up to separate. I wanted to last year because he was getting into physical altercations with our son and I’d tried everything I could. I think it wobbled him and he brought it up the other day that I’d wanted to ‘reject him’ from the family. In truth I was at a loss what else would make him see that how he was being with DC and me wasn’t ok. He did a lot of work and has changed lots of his behaviour with DC and no longer gets physical (it was pushing him away, dragging him somewhere and generally meeting his 10 year old meltdown with aggression rather that parenting). I said at the time I’d call social services if it happened again and if he didn’t change it he’d have to leave. He has changed it.
In the last few weeks he’s been really reactive. To tiny things (e.g. me putting washing up in the bowl when he was washing up and I was helping - shouted really aggressively).
I try really hard to not react. I try not get pulled into this horrible horrible pattern but sometimes I bite and I shout back. If I repeat ‘please stop shouting at me he does momentarily but then it amps up again).
He has now cut me out of his life. He has no interest in mine. He’s cold. He’s seething. He shows me no empathy or affection. He’s called me abusive. When he has a go at me about something if I defend myself he says I’m gaslighting him (e.g. tonight he spoke to me aggressively, I said something passive aggressive back (not proud but I’m human and deeply hurt) and he shouted at me for causing a row. When I said he’d talked to me aggressively and only then had I responded passive aggressively, he denied it. When I said I know he did and I showed him his tone of voice and his hand gesture (very obviously aggressive) he said I was trying to gaslight him.
Nothing I do is right.
my fear is that when he was away he saw a few mutual friends. My paranoid brain is thinking he’s talked to them with this narrative that I’m abusive. None of them got in touch to say they were sorry not to see me. He organised it without inviting me when he usually would. I fear that he’s setting it up so he’s got a support network when he ends things or when he finally drives me to. He’s been working out for the first time in our entire marriage. I fear that he’s realised he’s not much of a catch and is getting ready to go dating.
Then I think that’s not the man I married and I must be paranoid - but he’s unrecognisable. I’ve been crying for two days and he’s shown no empathy. None. In fact in the face of his aggression and him not listening to me I cried in pure frustration and hopelessness and he said ‘oh and now you do this - cry’. So cold and mean.
I dont know why I’m posting really. I’m just really upset. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m going mad. I have one friend who knows what’s going on but I shouldn’t dump on her too much as she’s got enough to deal with herself.
im just really sad and alone tonight. Any words of encouragement welcome.