Would you stay?

[pheebs93]

Me & my husband have been married nearly two years, together ten. We rarely have any issues except he does struggle with stress/anger which has gotten worse this past year. He'll shout at strangers if they bump into him sometimes, and get annoyed in bars if people cut the que etc. He once swore loudly at a lady on a train who squeezed past him when he was putting lugggage away. In the car if someone pulls out on him & they're in the wrong sometimes he'll dangerously chase them in his car, pulling up to their window & swearing. It makes me very uncomfortable & has got to the stage i get worried about going out.

He does suffer with mental health , possibly ADHD the last time he spoke to someone but he's dropped off taking it any further. When he gets in one of those 'moods' he'll be funny with me & give me the silent treatment until he comes out of it, it once got as bad as he walked out on me in a bar on holiday as he felt 'stressed' in the environment, got annoyed with me when i brought up his obvious mood & stormed out.

He also makes no effort to go out with me, any date nights we have are me & if i didn't suggest stuff we would literally not leave the house together. I know he cares about me but he doesn't seem to care about doing things with me.

Everything else though is fine, i guess my question is would you leave with those red flags or would you put them aside? I guess everyone has flaws so i don't know if i'm overreacting to his.

And yet I have been diagnosed with both and have never once raised my voice to someone I meet in public.

It seriously is no excuse for abusing other people.

The whole MH thing is so beyond the pale now. He has temper tantrums and is a grown man. This is not MH related. Doubt he has MH. Over diagnosed excuse for lack of accountability to keep our societal standards low. Tell him to stop being dramatic and embarrassing you by acting like a child. Put your foot down about it and I'm sure he'll change. Too many excuse bad behaviour and act flummoxed about its continuation. Speaking from experience!

I would be massively uncomfortable with anyone behaving that way towards other people. Are you in the car with him when he's driving dangerously to "chase" other drivers who have annoyed him? That's a form of assault.

If there are no children in the picture then I don't think you owe him anything and yes I would leave. He's a grown man and he's responsible for his behaviour adhd or not. Mental health difficulties or not. I have worked with many, many young men with both who at times could lose temper but who also were deeply regretful after - it doesn't sound like he cares.

I think my main concern would be how isolating this will get for you. Not only that you worry about going out with him but that other people won't want to spend time with him. If a friends partner acted that way I wouldn't want to be around him, meaning I might end up having to see my friend less. I also think it's interesting that you're not long married in the grand scheme of things and this behaviour is intensifying. I would worry where it'll end up if he maybe feels secure enough to start impacting you more.

I personally would think hard about whether it's even safe for you to issue him an ultimatum where he gets help and goes for therapy individually and with you. If he reacts this way to small things then surely you must worry on some level about his reactions to things you need to bring up that he might disagree or feel strongly about? That's unacceptable in any relationship. Do you want to have children one day or are you expecting to be child free?

If it were me I'd just leave, if you ever want to have kids then I'd definitely never do it with him.

I’m not going to read all the other responses.
This one nailed to for me.

Tell him to stop being dramatic and embarrassing you by acting like a child. Put your foot down about it and I'm sure he'll change.

Or, if he's sticking to the abusers' handbook, like they all do no matter how unique and special they think they are, he'll decide that you need punishing for calling him out on his behaviour and he will escalate. He'll escalate anyway so the only thing for you to do @pheebs93 is to get out of the relationship.

Bad, angry, driving is a common tactic by abusers.

Please do not subject children to this. I ignored all the very same red flags and both my daughters have probably lifelong mental health problems from witnessing his outbursts. Good men aren’t capable of this type of behaviour, full stop. So it doesn’t matter how good he is most of the time, nobody should ever be subject to this and believe me, it’ll only get worse, never better.

Do you think that if you had children, they would thank you for picking him to be their father?

Thankfully you don't. If you do and he acts like this in front of them, they WILL be seriously scarred for life. If you do stay with him, please don't have children. I say this with the greatest respect and care.

No, I wouldn't stay. Been there, done that, never again.