Living with an angry man

[mebaasmum]

How do you deal with living with someone who is constantly angry, DS2 especially seems to not be able to do anything right. The smallest thing like not putting his shoes away is enough for rage. Then he complains ds2 doesnt talk to him!!!. There is alot going on to make DP angry/depressed but its not healthy to live with

sgb...which do you think it is in this particular situation ?

The OP above says: "The smallest thing like not putting his shoes away is enough for rage."

She said "rage", not "irritable snap".

Hang on, things are getting confusing here, are we still talking about mebaasmum's (the op) situation, or gooseyloosey's?

Some good points have been made since I was on earlier.

I think they are meshing into one, MOTN

One difference is that OP is concerned enough about her H's behaviour to have started this thread, while gooseyloosey seems less worried. That's why I think it's important to ask if they're comparing like with like. OP's child is showing distress (not talking to his father), goosey says her dcs are not.

As it happens, shouting isn't part of my parenting repertoire. That's just the way I am. I do also think it's a rubbish way to discipline children, as I tell my DH. He is shouty and short-fused. He's equally loud and effusive with his affection and delight. That's the way he is.

It seems on MN that it's okay to shout as much as you like, so long as you're not the father. I have witnessed some revolting shouty behaviour from mothers in RL - and I don't mean stressed out teenage mothers shouting 'do you want a smack?' in Tesco: I mean angry, shouty, horrible shouting from well educated, middle-class mothers who should know better. I ended one friendship over this when my DS became a target. If she'd been on MN to describe what she did, though, she'd have had a mile-long list of supportive posts saying we've all been there and not to worry about it...

smithy, I don't agree

I think angry, horrible, out-of-control shouting that frightens children and makes the whole family tread on egg sheels would be equally poorly-received, no matter the gender of the person doing it

if a bloke posted that his wife was doing it...he would get supported

the fact is, these men are not posting are they ?

in actual fact, they don't appear to think there is anything wrong with it

it is women posting, about how they have to constantly "manage" and "placate" and "shield" dc's from the effects of what their partner is doing

and every time she rationalises, explains away, shields, makes excuses etc etc...she is colluding with it

so that nothing changes...only that a child's innocent view of the world gets chipped away at a little bit more, her own self-esteem takes just little bit more of a denting

and the shouter, the verbally-abusive one, continues to act in the same way...because they are enabled to do so

I grew up with this

my mother didn't protect me from it

it stinks and should not be supported...in any way, shape or form

AF et al- can I give a slightly different point of view- I grew up in a home where my mother was the rageaholic abuser and my father the enabler.

He connived constantly at her rage and would never go so far as the OP does e.g. to make her apologise or try to shield us. In fact, as we got older, he just projected his own anger onto us and blamed us for either provoking her or reacting to it and making her worse.

It was a horrible way to grow up. I think I shut down a lot of my emotions. I still struggle with intense depression and rage issues of my own. I think, at my worst, I have 'reenacted' some of her behaviour with my beloved eldest son and I am trying my best to make it up to him now- but the stuff about children's 'sponge-like brains' absorbing the parent's anger worries me deeply He is only 6 so I hope there is still time to heal.

I grew up pretty much hating my mother. But still, I don't think I would have wanted dad to leave her and banish her from our lives. I wanted him to acknowledge mine and my sister's hurt, try to protect us, and tell her what was unacceptable and what she needed to do to get better. He never did any of that of course.

Abusers are not evil people through and through. They are human beings. My mum has done 20 years of psychotherapy for her own problems and is now a good grandma though she still cannot acknowledge how thoroughly she damaged my sister and I.

To clarify: I was thinking more of Gooseyloosey's situation, which may be more of a case of (as Smithy puts it) a father who shouts when angry but is equally and frequently affectionate to the DC, whereas the OP's situation sounds a lot worse.
And I do shout at DS when he's being exasperating, but I don't call him abusive names or tell him I hate hiim/wish I'd never had him or any of the other horrible things one sometimes hears angry parents yelling at DC - my shouting is more along the lines of 'I told you to PUT YOUR SHOES ON!'

I don't think we're sympathetic to men and hostile to women.

If someone posts that they shout at their dcs and they're acknowledging a shortcoming and wanting to do better, they'll generally get sympathy.

If someone comes on and is full of anger at spouse/dcs and mentions in passing that they shouted but feels fully justified, that person will get a more critical reception.

The former is more likely to be female, the latter male (I'm thinking of one incidence of a man who posted self-righteously that he had to drag his lazy, selfish wife out of bed to mind the children and he clearly expected to be applauded for his concern for the children). But gender is pretty much irrelevant - the attitude is what matters.

I wanted my father out of my life as a child

I would happily erase him from it now

I did well in life despite him

my mother is a shadow of the woman she should have been

my parents I feel sorry for...him because he never got past his anger at the world and alienated all those around him...her because I could never respect anyone who would put up with 40-odd years of verbal abuse and belittling

and who would stand by while he did that to his children too...she must have felt she could keep a lid on it, control it in some way

but she was deluded

SGB is right. My mother never apologised, and would frequently tell me I had 'ruined her life' etc while shouting, that I was a 'spoilt brat', fat, ugly, etc. That is real abuse.

I did once or twice find myself doing the 'spoilt brat' line on ds1 and I knew then that I needed help.

I've kind of gone the other way now and am scared to raise my voice- tbh he responds a hell of a lot better to that even though he occasionally can't actually hear what I'm saying...

I think if my mother had shown affection at times when she wasn't shouting, if she'd been irascible but loving, it would have been OK in the end. Yeah I might have picked up bad behaviours but I wouldn't have ended up as depressed as I have been and had so many problems with my own parenting.

I think we need to respect the OP's judgement of her own husband and not do the kneejerk 'leave him' reflex. He is not a monster, clearly. He needs help. Perhaps we should be focusing on how OP can help him to find his own way out of his rage?

OP can help him find a way out of his rage ?

oh, purr-lease

I do also think that a parent who occasionally shouts at a naughty child and apologies afterwards is not doing damage but almost the reverse - the parent is showing the child that people make mistakes and do things they shouldn't, but that they can acknowledge these mistakes and apologise, which is not a bad thing to teach DC. None of us are perfect parents.

sgb, I think you are on a different thread here, seriously

don't understand why SGB is 'on a different thread'?

If you love someone who is behaving badly you help them get themselves out of it. With the main impulse to change of course coming from them. And I don't think in this case that that involves kicking him out.

If he flat refuses to get help, change, or recognise what he's doing over months at a time then maybe OP does need to reconsider what she's doing in the relationship but I think that's far from established through this thread!

People who abuse need help and believe me OP's kids may not necessarily thank her for kicking out a man who has an anger problem but is otherwise a loving father. We don't have the evidence on this thread to see how 'far gone' he is. But Goosey didn't strike me as a surrendered, thoroughly enabling wife and it's patronising black-and-white thinking to assume that a. she is and b. her husband is 'beyond help'.

I feel I am a lone voice on this thread and that fact is seriously depressing me...so I am gone

< has to resist very, very hard to throw in a parting shot >

AF: I am responding more to Gooseyloosey's situation, as I said before the OP's situation sounds more abusive. GL's H sounds more like a good dad who shouts sometimes - she does not mention him belittling the DC, she says it's infrequent and that he also regularly expresses and demonstrates affection for the DC.

I sort of get fed up of yanking my own childhood out for another shake over these threads. Here goes, anyhoo:-

My mother "buffered" us from my Dad's abuse - in her view. We certainly appeared well-adjusted, as that was the aim of the sick programme they carried out between them. She taught me - a child - to understand that Dad only did it because he was tired, worried, ill, whatever. After the usual succession of eating disorders, out-of-control behaviours etc, I went on to marry 2 abusive arseholes who systematically extracted every shred of self-respect, money & the rest they could from me. Naturally, I did this because my darling mother had trained me to "understand" men who behave like that

Buffer??! I want to vomit.

The trouble is that everyone who has posted their own anecdotes and experiences here are thinking about their own personal situations. Some people were subject to abuse by their parents or partners; a terribly damaging thing, of course. Others are talking about people who are overall good people but who have problems with anger or mental health issues. It's totally unhelpful for anyone to be making sweeping statements about the OP (or goosey) without knowing a great deal more detail about them and their situations.

I am a shouty, ranty mum. And I swear too. Not at my children but in their presence. I do not tower over them and hurl abuse at them but I yell and bellow and say 'I don't want to do this anymore', and 'don't do this to me' and other horrible things. I slam doors and throw things (again, not at the children but I know I have frightened them with my anger at times).

I have anxiety and anger problems; am taking anti-depressants and awaiting CBT. Many, many times, I have been ready to leave the family home as I feel my OH and children would be better off with me living elsewhere and I am petrified of damaging my children. After I get angry I cry and cuddle them and tell them I am sorry and it isn't their fault. And that reminds me of what I hear about physically abusive husbands apologising to their beaten wives after the event; and then I feel sick and hate myself. My OH has implored me not to go and insists it is better that our children have a present, loving but flawed mother than an absent mother.

I don't know but I am just being honest here.

Mind you, OP does say her OH is constantly angry, which does sound pretty awful. I think some of the other situation that have been discussed here are a bit different.

i think you can be shouty and loving.

thats not the same as being angry all the time

its about proportional measures of each emotion, you can be angry as long as you are proportionatly nice/understanding/helpful /other

which is how most people operate.

I can tell you this for nothing, when they are old enough your kids will blame you too. you won't be some little woman martyr in these sequence of events, they will ask themselves, why you stayed or why you didn't do anything about it.

its a natural progression from dad hating to...mum enables his behaviour...mum hating.

you're not doing yourself any favours.

But isn't the difference here (in goosey's case) -

that she is asserting her dc's rights not to be abused by calling her dh out on every occasion that he yells at them?

By telling him it's not ok, in their presence, by asking him to apologise?

I think there's a big difference between that way of reacting and the way those mothers have or had - to excuse it, gloss over it, tiptoe around it, "understand" it, buffer it.

Without knowing all goosey's details, as many of you have said, tis difficult to comment but I think that element may be very important.

Af, grace, if your mothers had operated like that would it have made a difference do you think?

Mine did! "Oh, don't say/do that, you'll make them insecure!" (Correct, he did.)
"Daddy's sorry" (Really??)
"You're not fat/ugly/stupid/horrible, Daddy's in a bad mood" (But the messages still sank in.)

I realise this forum can seem too quick to "diagnose" a severe disorder in someone's partner, but the problems posted often are severe. Living in the thick of a disordered family, you are very strongly motivated to minimise the issues and, of course, anything can seem normal (or normal-ish) with everyday familiarity.

I've shown my Mum some info on Antisocial Personality Disorder (sociopathy) and, while she'll recognise my father fits the profile, she cannot reconcile it with the "good, if bad-tempered" man who lives in her heart. This despite the fact that his own, doting mother said she thought there was something wrong in his head!

I think it's because of this powerful, though understandable, tendency to self-delusion that we tend to come on strong.