I have a friend with two children the same age as mine. We've spent a lot of time together on 2 maternity leaves. I find her husband difficult, but who cares - I don't see him nearly as much as I see her and I didn't marry him, she did. However I have always been a little puzzled by the strength of my reaction to him - how apparently trivial interactions live on in my mind, riling me for far longer than necessary, and I have often tried to talk myself out of this. I have sometimes wondered why he doesn't seem to like me and what I have done that might have got us off on the wrong foot.
FINALLY I have realised that it is nothing to do with him not liking me.
Everything he has ever said or done to me makes complete sense if you look at it through the prism that he doesn't regard women (he does this to all his wife's friends) as fully human. He talks over me, tells my friend to do other things, in or out of the house, as if I were not there (me and my dcs having been invited over by her to spend time with her and her dcs), he sits down in a chair I have momentarily got out of to wipe a nose, leaving me standing or looking for another one, appears when "working from home" and tucks into food that my friend was about to offer to me, etc. All this is pretty rude and I interpreted it to mean he didn't want me around and wondered why. He is superficially friendly, says hello, etc, so why does he behave as if I were not there or he wishes I were not? I suddenly realise: if you imagine I were a dog, all this would be normal. In his mind it would be ridiculous for you to imagine that his wife's time or attention is taken up by an ignorable entity like a woman, a mere other mother.
That is all. I feel clarity now.