My abusive tendencies have ruined my marriage

[hidadsoup]

I’ve been with my husband for 5 years, married for almost 2. We have a 2yo DS and I am about 10 weeks pregnant with number 2.

DH and I have a fair amount of arguments. Unfortunately we repeat a pattern where I will tell him I’m upset because of something he has done or not done and then he will deflect it all back on me, refuse to listen and basically say,’you can’t be upset about this because you also do or don’t do this other thing’.

I’ve tried to bring his attention to it many times but he doesn’t seem able to see it or fix it. It makes me feel invalidated.

for my part I hurt him in other ways. I have called him mean names when things have been heated and yesterday I threw his shoe which was left by the door after asking many many times for him to please not leave shoes where they can be tripped over. I have thrown other things probably 3 times including once where I actually threw keys at his leg.

I know I have issues and I’ve had individual therapy and couples therapy. I guess I know what I need to do to stop my behaviour (mindfulness, catch the anger before it comes out) but I haven’t been capable of really committing to change so far.

dh and I don’t have sex, except to conceive recently we just don’t do it, it’s been an issue for me for about 3 and a half of the years we’ve been together (it’s him who won’t touch me). He does hug me and we will have a peck on the lips but that’s about it.

with all of this bullshit we somehow sort of muddle through most of the time. But dh has just let out a big revelation/confession, where he’s basically said I treat him like shit, he feels pathetic and feminine, he is scared of me. This is heartbreaking to hear, obviously I am aware that I have outbursts of abusive behaviour but he laid it all out like this and it all made sense.

the reason he won’t sleep with me, isn’t very warm, doesn’t like me to share his food or doesn’t offer me a cup of tea when he makes one , all the things that I get upset about, are all
because he holds huge contempt towards me for treating him poorly, which is of course fair enough.

we have had big make or break talks over our troubles and always end up with, we love each other, want to make it work, and perhaps most of all neither of us wants to be away from our son for any time.

but after tonight I feel it’s been a revelation and that it’s not serving either of us to keep going with this. I have just been in bits because for the first time I imagined him moving on with someone else and I actually felt happy and that that would be the right thing and what he deserves. It shocked me and I think I’ve just spent some time genuinely processing what it would mean to split.

not really sure why I’m posting other than to get it all out in one place. I know most people reading this will just say, what a shitshow, why bring another kid into this mess, which is a very good fucking question!

Have you looked into reactive abuse?

www.couplestherapyinc.com/the-signs-of-a-covert-narcissist-husband/#:~:text=Wives%20of%20covert%20narcissist%20husbands,constant%20insult%20he%20must%20endure.

Covert narcissist.

If this story was the other way round all the mumsnetters would be telling you to LTB.

Op: I'm abusive to my dh who was abused by his dad. He doesn't want to have sex with me because of my actions.

Posters: Obviously it's his fault. He's abusive for withholding sex.

I'm a feminist who will always find a way to explain a womans actions. But the op has been pretty clear (regardless of her reasons for throwing things at him!)

My dc's classmate 'A' suffered bullying from child 'B' at school for years and years. Then one day she finally reached the end of her tether and lashed out, because she simply couldn't stand it any longer.

Did that make A the abuser? No, of course not.

OP - I think you are a lot less abusive than your husband says you are. It seems to me that you are like 'A' - you are lashing out because you can't stand it any more. That doesn't make it right - but it doesn't make you the abusive one in the marriage either.

If you read OPs posts carefully you will pick up, though it is subtle, that OP came into the relationship with abusive ways and they likely go back deep. OP is stepping up and totally owning the fact that she needs to execute on the changes she knows will be of benefit to her. Her DP equally needs to step up to his past and communicate directly and without fear. They both have a part to play for their own futures (plural) because the life partnership is over.

Funny how that logic never applies when the man gets physically abusive.

Right? I feel like this is an alternate universe sometimes. The other person in the relationship can be toxic too but it doesn't mean that the abuse is justified. At least OP recognises and want to work on herself, thats admirable.

Not excusing you throwing things, but does he accept his part in all this? As in, he consistently fails to do his share and then when you dare to tell him how you feel, redirects it back to being your fault?

Yes that’s basically it. Not trying to absolve myself here (or maybe just a bit) but I’ve been thinking on it all and I only react so extremely (name calling, throwing) when we’re having a discussion that becomes an argument because he usually has no ability to see things from my perspective.

Eg If I tell him, I don’t think it’s fair when you don’t get up with DS when it’s your turn, he will manage to twist it around somehow, defend himself, deny, and it just escalates with me getting more and more frustrated that he can’t just hold his hands up and say, I can understand that and I’m sorry.

so some of the comments about reactive abuse have been interesting as it does resonate. And I’ve been thinking over it all more and it saddens me to realise the situation were in. Which is basically that we are just not good for each other and each have a lot of work to do.

I can also be quite controlling in terms of thinking things should be done my way. Eg he’s doing DS bedtime and DS is overtired, I can hear him just crying and crying and I can hear DH just trying to soothe him but in my head I’m thinking, why aren’t you trying to pick him up, or put him in his cot, offer him milk etc, do something to make it better rather than just saying ‘it’s ok’ over and over while he’s crying. But for all I know doing any of those things wouldn’t work either, just in my mind he never gets it right.

last night he was filling in a job application form online and to me the sensible thing to do is to write out the responses on a word document and save it there before copy pasting over. But he’s filling it out straight on the webpage and goes berserk when he accidentally swiped the trackpad and the website went back, losing his answers. Normally I would say something but yesterday I stopped myself, but I was thinking, what a twat.

Think that is the attitude i must be giving off to him as well to put him off me so much, I do understand where things have gone wrong and I know we are both to blame. Someone asked if on some level I think he deserves to be treated badly, consciously I know the answer is no and despite it all I love him and would do anything for him, but I do also think often that he can be incompetent, so not like he deserves bad treatment but I do think a bit less of him I suppose, and he feels that a lot from me. Sad all round

On the online form - normally I would say something as in suggest that he fill it in on a word document, not normally I would say something as in youre a twat. Just to
be clear. I don’t often say it to him but unfortunately I do seem to think it fairly
often

Another one not convinced you’re definitely the abuser here.

Look up reactive abuse. Deflection, minimising, gaslighting, ‘whataboutery’ etc every time you raise any issue can be crazy making enough to make a person start to lose it and look like an abuser when they really aren’t

Cross posted, just seen people have mentioned reactive abuse

I think you should urgently pursue seeing a therapist alone, OP. You do not seem able to unpick what is happening in your relationship. Or perhaps you do see what is happening but nevertheless feel to blame for it because that is easier than facing the truth that your partner does not actually even like you and hasn't done so for a long time.

Either way, it is over now which must be a huge relief.

Also, please remember that a LOT of posters on the Relationships board are blokes who have migrated from the Sex board since they put a stop to the dick pics and hook ups fest there. They are always to be found on any thread where there is someone (male or female) not having any sex, because that is their sole reason for coming to MN, to work out why it has happened to them.

I'm another one who thinks this is reactive abuse, OP. Not to excuse you throwing things and lashing out verbally - you definitely need to stop doing both those things and get therapy to work on the reasons you do them - but when someone repeatedly invalidates and dismisses and gaslights you about whether you're being reasonable or not, it can become unbearably frustrating and if you don't have other good coping skills, you can end up resorting to bad ones.

The big mistake you are making is continuing to try to get your DH to change, to accept that your requests are perfectly reasonable and to validate your feelings. You cannot get him to change; you know this, you've been trying for years with no improvement. LEARN THE LESSON.

YOU need to change. YOU need to accept that your requests ARE perfectly reasonable and his behaviours are those of an incompetent man-child, not an equal adult partner. YOU need to validate your feelings of frustration with his dismissive behaviours and bullshit like cancelling family holidays repeatedly but going off on boys' weekends.

You don't need to tell him all this, because... that's right, he will invalidate you and make excuses. You know the drill. It's pointless, and actually, another form of abuse if you just give him a lecture about how he doesn't live up to your standards.

YOU need to make the decision to leave a relationship that's below your standards. You know you are being repeatedly treated as being of little value, and you are even being told you are a worse person than you know you really are. You are tying yourself up in knots trying to find a way to validate your DH's point of view, even though you know it's pretty much bullshit. And that's resulting in you lowering yourself to behaviours that you actually don't even need to be told are beneath you, because you already acknowledge that.

In his ‘speech’ earlier DH compared me to his dad, his dad abused him very harshly, physically and mentally, and to hear that he sees me in the same light is disturbing to say the least.

I have experience with something very similar. It is very sad when someone has been abused in childhood, and that can lead you to treat them with kid gloves even when they are treating you badly or failing to carry out basic adult and parenting responsibilities capably (usually because they never had a decent model for how to do these things, have very low frustration tolerances and

But sometimes childhood abuse can also result in the victim developing a victim mindset, where they feel entitled to be babied and cossetted and repeatedly forgiven (because they were deprived of nurturing during their childhood) and anyone who says or does anything that makes them feel bad in any way (even justifiably or unintentionally) or doesn't give them everything they want, or makes requests of them that they don't want to fulfill starts to appear to them as an abuser.

Your relationship is clearly toxic and I think honestly the healthiest thing you can do is leave, get into therapy to understand why your boundaries are basically non-existent and you're making reckless choices like having another child with someone who seems to borderline despise you and hold you in contempt (as you do him).

Stop continuing to engage in arguments with someone who, if you take a giant step back and look at it objectively, cares pretty much nothing for your feelings, and start working out how to care for your own needs and your children's. When you get out of a relationship where you are being constantly triggered by devaluations, and work on proving to yourself that you can care for yourself in a way that your husband is never going to do, your self-worth will rise and you will find yourself willing to walk away from toxic relationships long before you get so frustrated that you are name-calling and throwing shoes.

have very low frustration tolerances and feel too ashamed of their deficiencies to ask for or accept help.

Not convinced you’re the abusive one here @hidadsoup

I just wanted to say how brave I thought you were for posting this, as it's hard to come to terms with a lot of what you've been going through.

I hope you're doing alright.