Hi sisters,
I am at my wits end with my husbands behaviour, and looking for some advice on ways to approach him to help him control his stress/anger.
We’ve been together 9 years, and before we had kids, we seriously never fought. We got along so well, I could honestly call him my best friend.
When our first was born 3 years ago, it was obviously a massive change and a hard but welcome challenge for us.
I noticed a few little changes in my husband, but nothing that bothered me.
When our frost was 5 months old, my husband changed careers and entered into a great paying job, however it’s shift work, so was obviously an adjustment for him.
I did my best to support him any way I could when he was coming off those night shifts, taking bub out for the morning so he could try to get some sleep.
About a year later, we started having issues in our marriage - just arguing all the time, never yelling but a lot of passive aggressive behavior going on on his end, and we just didn’t really talk much. I felt it was just easier to avoid him, as anything I said got turned into an ‘attack’ somehow and we’d fight.
This last year we’ve being going good again, I understand that young children are stressful, and as our son grew older I noticed my husband beginning to relax a little bit.
We then had our second son, who is 6 weeks old now, and it’s like a switch has been been flicked again, and my husband is back to that person who I feel like I have to walk on eggshells around.
What’s worse, he has zero patience with our 3 year old, and resorts to flat out yelling when he’s not behaving in the way he believes he should be. I’ve tried to speak to him about it, and I always acknowledge how hard he works and understand he’s tired (says the mother of a newborn who’s breastfeeding!).
I’ve just automatically taken on 100% of care of our youngest, as I just do not believe he could handle it. I’d rather be exhausted than stressing my husband out, it’s just easier.
Now, I had very strong feeling that my husband has a bit of PND with our first, but he wouldn’t hear it.
So to wrap things up, I guessing I’m just asking advice on how I can approach my husband and speak to him about this, as it’s getting to the stage where our oldest just doesn’t want to be around him, because he just gets yelled at.
I know this upsets my husband, but he won’t do anything to try and get help with his stresses.
He also gets extremely defensive the moment I try to talk to him about this sort of thing, or nay issue that we’ve had, so maybe I’m not approaching it in the correct way. A lot of conversation end with the line ‘Well this is who you married, I don’t know what else you want from me.’.
But he isn’t who I married, at all! The fun loving, positive, funny guys is all but gone. I see glimpses of it when he heads out of the house to the gym or with a mate. But any family outing is just miserable, and I am really sad about that .
4 Replies
Sounds like maybe he has post natal depression? Happens to men as well. I’d get family to take the kids for weekend and spend some quality time together to really talk it out. Away from home if possible
Was he on board to have a second child?
I probably would have waited until first was older if he wasn’t coping.
The important thing to remember is that holding onto him while hoping he will change is not your job, and is toxic. You can give time and help him where he needs it, you can be direct and tell him this is not ok and he needs to seek help or make changes. But at the end of the day he has to be the one to do it, and you must keep the standards in your home high. You can support him by holding him accountable and if need be, waiting a set amount of time while he works on this from outside the home. Dont get sucked down with him, its very easy to do, to jump into the role of holding it all together, but your kids need you both to be functioning well.
This is my husband to a ‘t’. I feel as though I could have written this post. Constantly angry for no apparent reason. Only knows how to deal with things by yelling and is down the kids throats constantly before even stopping to find out what’s going on. He was not like this ever prior to children. Is ummm used to comment that he didn’t know how to yell or get angry because was always so calm about everything. Anytime I bring it up we just end up in a fight ourselves. It’s at the point I can’t deal with the constant negativity at the moment and it’s really effecting my mental health as well. (It certainly didn’t help that we unexpectedly fell pregnant with #3 which was certainly not on the agenda - now 4months old). Following for some advice as well.