I think my job is making it hard to tell if I’m in a bad marriage?

[curlyblondey]

A few weeks ago my husband got us tickets (£5) to an ‘alternative’ club night in a local town. This isn’t my thing (it’s his), but I’m always happy to go along usually.

Thursday night comes and I told my husband I was feeling down and that I might not be feeling it on Friday. I’m extremely stressed at work at the moment which I feel I don’t have anyone to talk to about so I just feel overwhelmed. further to all this, This week I’ve been on a training course so have been up at 04:15 every day.

last night comes around (the night of the gig), that was supposed to be doors open at 21:00. It got to about 18:00 and I told my husband I didn’t feel up to it.

well, he completely flew off the handle and said he’s never arranging anything ever again ,(he never does btw). I got upset and explained that I’m tired and feel flat and that I wasn’t in the mood for drinking.

I went up to bed, where I stayed. Husband hasn’t bothered to come up and has slept on sofa? i know this now means I’ll be ignored all weekend until I apologise.

I am more than happy to apologise and I always do, but is this my fault? What could I have done differently?

I am a police officer and have dealt with hundreds of domestics ranging in severity and I feel it’s really skewed my perception of what bad treatment is? Please help, as I’m not sure anymore x in

Well for a start I wouldn’t be apologising! If you are always apologising then the first person you need to deal with is yourself. The hard truth is that once you allow yourself to be a doormat then people will wipe their feet on you, he is being a bully.
can you get a few days off and go somewhere by yourself? You need to decide if you want to continue with this marriage and some counselling will help for you initially and for both of you together if you decide you want to stay.

you need to take control of your domestic life. It’s is a cliche but one that is nevertheless true that most of us go through dark patches in life and this will pass. In the long run I suspect he will respect you more and treat you better if you don’t allow him to bully you.

good luck.

You are not obliged to go to something just because he’s unilaterally decided you both should go. He’s a DICK for not being sympathetic to your difficult week. A normal partner would say - darling I can see you’ve had a really tough week, would you rather we got a takeaway and had an early night? Or at the very least if he wanted to go he could go on his own. Don’t apologise. Things will never get better if you do (they might not anyway but at least you might have a chance).

Don't apologise.

Your relationship is under too much stress because you both are over worked.
Can you cut some stress out of your routines?

It is normal to able to go out and relax every week or two - preferably every week. It is normal to feel disappointed when life becomes a burden. Not nice to scream at loved ones.
Do you suggest outings that suit you? You both need to be catered for.

Consider downsizing your home, pulling kids out of private school, taking cheaper holidays, cutting your work hours etc.
Your relationship is not coping with your over demanding lifestyle.

What is an 'alternative' club? I don't think it's reasonable for him to fly off the handle at you or sulk and not speak to you all weekend. Does he often treat you like this?

"i know this now means I’ll be ignored all weekend until I apologise."

So he does this a lot?

Silent treatment is manipulative passive aggression and is classed as abuse. Yes, it's a bad relationship.

Well he shouldn’t be giving you the silent treatment and sulking but to leave it till 6pm to say you weren’t going out would be pretty disappointing to him if until then you went along with saying you were going. I think you should have made a decision much earlier, not just hinted that you might not go. But yeah his behaviour isn’t great.

Yes you are in a bad marriage. There is a book that might be worth a read by Lundy Bancroft - Why does he do that.
The silent treatment is emotional abuse.

I don’t think we have enough information here to go on.
I wouldn’t appreciate my husband being moody because of me not wanting to do something, especially after the week I’d had, but the main issue is another.
Are you as a couple compatible when one of you is a police officer?
My husband has a job which involves a host of challenges such as continuous unpredictability of when he is home or away, for example, and has certain risk factors involved.
This type of job is more difficult to navigate than your bog standard 9-5, both for the person doing it and the spouse. It requires a partner who acknowledges and willingly accepts that the job has repercussions on the marriage and family life.
Marriages that last are ones where both parties aren’t continually swimming upstream, in the search for a lifestyle that isn’t compatible with their reality.

I would be upset and feel like our relationship wasn’t a priority if DH cancelled a rare night out just because he felt tired (we have very few nights out as a couple), but ignoring you all weekend crosses the line into abusive IMO.

A very self-centered, immature behaviour from your husband. Makes it even worse that it's around something that he enjoys and you clearly don't. So he by far prioritises his little fun time than the wellbeing of his own wife. What primary school boy-level treatment is that? You are definitely not to apologise, what is there to apologise for? Did you decide to feel tired and down just to spite his little fun time? Don't think so.
You detailed this one example, so it would be a bit hasty to put the "bad marriage" stamp on yours, but it is heavily and certainly leaning that way, sorry. Someone not prioritising your well-being, or just in general your relationship is a bad partner.

You don't need to apologise but you did leave it late to tell him you're not going. He chose not come to bed cause he's a dick! If he chooses to ignore you then that's on him but not enough context here to say whether you're in a bad marriage.

"he completely flew off the handle and said he’s never arranging anything ever again"

Surely he's the one who should apologise and certainly not you

Benefit of the doubt here. Could he be feeling hurt that you didn’t want to go out with him. I don’t think you need to apologise as such but maybe try and explain how you are feeling and why you didn’t want to go out.

I would be disappointed if my DH cancelled a rare night out that I was really looking forward to because he'd had a bad week. He probably needed the night out with you as much as you wanted not to go.

So being disappointed would be entirely understandable. However f my DH let me down when it's something he wouldn't normally do, I'd be more concerned for him and how he was.

And flying off the handle is never OK, and it sounds as thought this stuff happens to you regularly. Which means you are being controlled, and made fearful, and walking on eggshells, in your own home.

It's really worrying that you as a police officer can't recognise abuse because it's on a lower lower level than some of the things you see. I would be worried that you are not picking up on on this sort of thing if you are called out to what for obvious reasons I wish the police would stop referring to as "a domestic."

As for your own relationship, yes, he is behaving in an abusive manner. The question is for how long do you intend to keep apologising to him before leaving? For your sake, I hope that's not long.

You’ve made a lot of rude assumptions there. I absolutely can identify DA at every level, but it’s hard when it could potentially be happening to me. I’ve seen it in a million different forms, but it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that it could be happening to me.

OP I think you can see what is real and that this is DV but I also understand how deeply disorienting this must be. I work with abused women everyday and required intensive specialist support to recognise that I was in a v dangerous and abusive relationship myself. It went to marac and I still didn’t really understand how bad it was because of the gaslighting and the boiled frog analogy. It shocks me now, well over a year since I got out. So don’t beat yourself up for not seeing it. You are in it, so it is a lot harder. If someone is manipulating you or if there is a high level of coercion, you won’t see it - that is the purpose of what they are doing! But you can see now that this isn’t ok. Write it down. Then write down the other things he does that aren’t ok. Look at the Duluth power and control wheel. Ask yourself honestly how many of those parts apply to your relationship. At my most confused I wrote it all out with names instead of “him/me” and seeing it like this, more like a case study from work, helped me see how very bad things were.

what a condescending and unpleasant post

OP you are human in the end of the day, and of course you will want to know what to do, thats just natural human behavior. You are allowed to ask questions, feel jittery with what to do next. For those on here who feel that you should be on top of everything in your own personal life due to your line of work, I am sorry life does not work like that and there are people in every corner of life and line of work, who feel they need guidence, its normal, its normal, however it is not normal for people who are on here to judge you due to what you do for a living, and therefore somehow should just know how to handle life in all corners of your personal life.

It is harder when you are in the middle of things in your own relationship, regardless of what you do for a living. Blimey people get a grip, and OP its one thing learning what DV looks like, but an entirely different kettle of fish when one finds themselves in it personally. That is a whole new experience and often we as individuals willl gaslight ourselves because we should just know. And never be in this position ourselves. Just have everything perfect and in line.

All I can say is your own experience at home will confuse you, because of your training, because of what you see out there, and its hard to compare it to your own life, if not impossible due to your line of work. Give yourself a big break here and know that you are allowed to ask, you are allowed to be human in the end of the day. DV can happen to anyone.

Can you mirror your own happenings to what you know, and then see it objectively? Do you need to apologise?

What a stupid uncalled for response