I’m currently ill, which is a know ‘trigger’ for my husband who struggles with empathy. He’d planned to go out with a friend today, but when I asked if he might stay in with me to help with our child, it all blew up. Some of the things he said to me included:
I love my parents to the exclusion of him (and everyone else) - I love them dearly, we have a great relationship which he doesn’t with his. Plus, one of my parents is dead, which particularly stung.
He only loves me ‘some of the time’, and since having our child ‘it’s like living with a stranger’. I had a very tricky pregnancy, birth and depression after the one-year mark, so I appreciate I’m not always sunshine and rainbows. I just don’t know what to make of this.
That I don’t need him home when I’m ill - ‘It’s just a virus for God’s sake, get on with it.’ This is not the first time he’s said this.
He said, ‘I’m sorry this isn’t going the way you’d like’ when I got upset during our argument, then, ‘Maybe you need to listen to how I feel…’ as a follow-up (I do listen to him - he very seldom shares his feelings anyway)
That I've ‘ruined’ his day out, ‘just like you always do’ - he says he never goes out, but has done three times in the last week (albeit after child is in bed). When I mentioned this, he replied, ‘There’s nothing stopping you from going out, go out with your friends - if they don’t want to see you or you they, that’s not my fucking fault’.
He has such an aggressive and nasty argument ‘style’, but doesn’t recognise this in himself. I’m scared it’s going to rub off on our child when they’re older and I’m just exhausted. He says I’m the problem, and I know I’m not perfect. But I don’t think I’m that much of a sh*t wife overall - I’m the breadwinner, primary carer for our child, and I do all of the life admin etc.
I don’t know what I want from this post, really. Perhaps just to vent. I think I want to leave him but our housing is quite tricky at the moment, and whichever way I move, I’ll be skint. It’s all just a big mess.