Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group
Abuse is a general term for the treatment of someone that causes some kind of harm (to the abused person, to the abusers themselves, or to someone else) that is unlawful or wrongful. No one deserves abuse, period. Abuse can be emotional, physical, or sexual.
This is my first time on this particular site. I have been married for 21 years, we have 2 boys ages 13 and 18. I have been going to therapy for almost 2 years with our youngest as he has some issues, ADHD/ODD. This until we started therapy. We got it under control for the most part, still issues with school but no more violence at home from our youngest. Lately, my son has refused to go to therapy, so I started going on my own in March to continue to get guidance for our son. My husband has not been involved in the therapy for over a year now since he started a new job that requires him to work 75 hours a week. In these therapy sessions with just me alone a lot of things have been coming to surface and the therapist has brought them to my attention. My husband refuses to make any decisions so the responsibility falls on me then when it is not a good decision he blames me. He blames me for everything that has not gone right in his life and I am beginning to think he lives on stress. he will come in the house after work and you can see him looking for something to get upset about like the house is a bit messy the dishes aren't done. In the morning it is just as worse. He yells at me if he can't find socks or if his clothes are slightly wrinkled. And when it comes to the kids, OMG. Especially our youngest. he has some pretty serious behavior issues at school and we met with the school earlier this week to discuss sending him to alternative school for 8th grade next year. We needed to make a decision as I have been meeting with school officials for teh past few months about this. This was the first meeting he went to and he started a fight with me in the school office prior to the meeting because the therapist, whom he had never met, was going to be there. He has somethign against the therapist...anyway I had asked him to go to therapsy with me so we could get on the same page in order to help our son. He says yes one day and then insults the therapist the next day and refuses to do. Same thing about the school decision. I didn't want to commit to sending our son to alternative school without my husband being on board...one day he was, the next day he wasnt, etc. It's like he wants a reason to be upset with me and to blame me for anythign that goes wrong. he wakes up every day telling me how stressed out he is and he doesn't feel good, very pessimistic. IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY! I don't feel I can leave as it would crush our youngest son and he has enough issues but holy cow. I am so very frustrated. Does this sound circumstantial to the issues or does it sound like emotional abuse? I don't know, but it's getting to be too much. By the way, I work a full time job that is on the stressful side, I deal with the teachers/principals daily. I have 230 emails from his resource teacher alone since this past October. Every one has an issue, I deleted the ones that didn't count. I am trying to be happy, I am taking an a parenting class for parents of kids with severe behavior issues, he refuses to even read the books and just criticizes everything I do as well as the kids. WTF? Sorry so long, it's really been building up. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. :-)
You mention having a stressful job outside the home, yet also get to deal with the housekeeping and children, with little / no assistance from him. He then has the temerity to criticize all your efforts in this regard, whilst refusing to help with any of the difficulties!
Your husband's behaviour is unacceptable, IMO, as he is taking zero responsibility in the home and any / all difficulties with the children. His behaviour is over-burdening you, so I'd say yes, he is abusive.
Take care
and in my opinion, abusive. Not participating
in the family's decision making is the other
side of being controlling. It's actively neglectful,
and so ----- abusive.
Then using anything that happens (to
which he avoided participating in decisions)
as an excuse to be angry and criticize you,
is abusive.
Basically, the patterns you describe are
typical of being passively agressive.
It's not about a situation or circumstance.
It's about his dysfunctional behavior patterns.
Please make sure to take good care of yourself.
If he's insulting the therapist, NOT good either.
However, my question is -are you noticing this behavior now after 21 years?? Has he been like this before?
Although I have to admit, 75 hours is A LOT to work a week, I think. No WONDER he is irritable. I'm not excusing his behavior, but I don't think that's healthy if it's a permanent job like that.
rockym-you were asking in your last post (the big long one) whether he is abusive or whether it's just a bad situation:
I've been sitting here at my computer for about 3 minutes, and already can see that he is totally abusive!
you have to have everything in the house perfect, but he'll still find things to get mad about (check!)
you feel that you have to lie about where you are going, due to him being jealous and accusing you of having an affair (check!)
he doesn't help parent, but blames you for when things go wrong-especially things that are out of your control-like the actions of your kids (check!).
apart from the being jealous, your husband sounds a lot like mine.
If our toddler lost the remote, it was my fault for not keeping an organized house, or for not watching the kid properly.
if the house was a mess when he got home, I had to tell him what I did all day and how long it took, and he couldn't figure out why I couldn't just take 2 hours out of the day to keep it clean.
Like you, I lived in a fog for years. I was lazy, tired. my husband 'sometimes had a bad temper'. everyone lived like this.
the day that I woke up to it was a scary day, indeed.
but it was the best day ever, because I realized that it wasn't me, it wasn't 'just life' and that I could have something different.
There's a reason you joined
this forum and posted. You
know, even though the couples
therapists, typically ---- didn't
pick up the problem. (I'm going
to bump the thread on couple
counseling for you.)
I hope you enjoy or have already
enjoyed the graduation. I hope
you'll keep taking good care of
yourself, so the years in front
of you will be abuse-free.
Take very good care of yourself.