I feel like screaming

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Im on here after yet another argument with my husband. he has run off again.

Everytime I try to discuss with him how his actions/what he has said make me feel i.e. me left feeling crap it ends up with him shouting me down, name calling and just about anything to avoid actually discussing what i want to discuss.

Just for a change he has gone off in the car and switched his phone off. Im left in the house as dd is in bed and im quite literally shaking with rage at the sheer frustration of not being worthy enough for him to either acknowledge how im feeling or at least discuss it. Why does it always have to be about who is right/wrong?

And before you suggest it we have been to one relate session and are waiting to book the next. I just don't know what to do anymore as I can feel the screaming rage inside bubbling up to explode.

Please help - im on the verge of either drinking myself silly or calling family to pick me & dd up just so he can return to an empty house and know how shit it is to have someone run away just to avoid talking to them. I know neither is fair on dd but I cant do this anymore

Lock the door and leave it locked. Persist with the Relate, and bring this up at the next RElate session

The door is locked. But he will just pull on the driveway and sleep there in the car. Three guesses why the neighbours avoid us like the plague! But that's his 'I could'nt give a f*ck what they think' attitude which is'nt that bad when it just applies to nosey neighbours but he seems to think it inludes his wife aswell.

This coming after years of 'I don't know' being his response to anything I ask. Thought we had got through that phase but it appears that he has evolved from stonewalling to this.

Is this something that can ever be resolved by going to relate etc or should i be considering more drastic action?

Well, my ex used to do this. The running away, the "I dunno" as an answer to everything, and even turning his back on me and putting a blanket over his head when he didn't wish to discuss the debt he had got us into.

the Relate counceller was very good, and bluntly told him that ignoring me was no more acceptable than me shouting, and if I started off trying to have a reasonable conversation, he should have the courtesy to give me reasonable answrs.

One thing I did find worked, when he ran off, was to not chase at all.

So rather than sit and ring his phone, leaving messages and waiting for him to swtich it back on, I'd turn my own off, unplug the housephone and go to bed. Ex ran away to get a reaction, to punish me for daring to question his behavior. If I didn't react, and instead went to sleep like I would have done anyway, I hadn't been 'punished' and he hadn't succeeded.

However.

We split up in the end. There were other issues too, though, which you may not have. The Relate did help a lot, and actually it helped us communicate in the aftermath of the breakup, which would have been a lot worse without the Relate and the skills it gave me to deal with it.

TBGP is very very wise. He has never learned how to negotiate, or how to resolve an argument. He may feel that there can only be a winner and a loser and he needs to be a winner. Probably something learned or not learned in childhood. Will need fixing by experts.

Lookign at Mumsnet it strikes me again and again that 'badly behaved' dps get away with it because the other dp lets them in some way or another (this is not gender-specific). Bad behaviour only stops when the badly behaved person realises that if they keep going they will lose something they really value, and/or when the partner of the badly behaved person stops 'rewarding' their behaviour (either by putting up with it or by responding in the way they want eg chasing after them and apologising). And the recipient puts up with it because the alternative appears to be armageddon. But actually, as TBGP and I both discovered, a little short term armageddon may be a very worthwhile thing to put up with.