My husband and I got into an argument today because he decided to clean the washer by dumping in a bunch of vinegar and bleach together. I didn’t realize what he had done until I smelled something like chlorine, he told me what he put in, I panicked, set the washer to drain, and ran around the house opening windows.
He then proceeds to roll his eyes and tell me that it’s perfectly safe and not toxic and that I was being dramatic. I literally had to pull up Google and show him that vinegar + bleach = toxic fumes. He continued to roll his eyes/shrug it off and make me feel stupid for reacting the way I did.
Then, he says “well if your dad didn’t stink up our washer doing his laundry here, I wouldn’t have even had to clean the washer.” For context, my dad is disabled from a stroke, but is still able to live independently, and we help him out by doing his laundry at our house when he visits (that’s something he’s not able to do himself, and he doesn’t have a washer/dryer in his apt). My hubby gets along with my dad and has never complained in any way related to him before. This was just such a weird, out of the blue thing for him to say.
The gaslighting about the toxic fumes + the insult towards my dad had me livid at this point. I did my best to explain why I was mad, and he kept saying things like “I don’t care” and “it’s not a big deal”.
I decided to pack a bag to stay at a hotel. He followed me into our room as I was packing and starts yelling and bringing up prior arguments from literally YEARS ago. I ignored him and simply to him I’m not entertaining this behavior any longer. Right as I was walking out the door he just yelled “F*** you!”
So here I am staying at a hotel for the night. He hasn’t texted or called to check on me at all. I sent my location to my sister for safety purposes since apparently he doesn’t care.
This is not how I expected this day to go.
I was just reading comments on a different post and someone said they can’t imagine their husband ever yelling at them. Is that the norm? I’m worried I’ve gotten used to a miserable marriage and I don’t know what to do. We’ve been together 10 years.
28 comments
How long have you been married?
No, it is not normal to have a spouse who yells at you like this.
He’s done with you if he blew up on you like this. Prepare for a divorce.
Him almost killing both of you is a big deal, but him invalidating your feelings and getting mad at you is what’s going to end your marriage. You need marriage counseling immediately or you’re headed to divorce city.
Please listen to the people here – this is abusive behaviour – feel free to take this quiz here https://www.loveisrespect.org/quiz/is-your-relationship-healthy/ any score above 0 is worrying.
Good luck and please, take some time for yourself – you deserve so much more and so much better
My partner doesn’t yell at me; I don’t yell at him. We get snarly, snappy, and short tempered, but we don’t call each other names.
Yeah, yelling at your spouse is toxic and unhealthy. How honest are you to your loved ones about how your husband treats you?
Look up divorce attorneys and make a meeting. A consultation is not committing to anything. It’s getting some information so you can understand what next steps for a divorce would look like so you have a better idea of your options.
I think you should also speak to a [DV advocate](https://nomoredirectory.org/), tbh. He just tried to kill you both and shrugged it off. I’m pretty concerned this was on purpose.
He almost killed you all by being stupid with dangerous chemicals and then insulter your dad. Wtf this guy really sucks
Reading this 6 hours after being posted… I really hope OP is still at the hotel.
Just go to the hot tub and order yourself a nice drink and imagine what life would be like if you didn’t have an abusive spouse
I have been with my husband 14 years and he would never yell at me like this or dismiss my concerns. This is not a healthy relationship.
I’ve been with my fiancé for 6 years and he has never even raised his voice at me, let alone yelled. He has never called me names, he doesn’t invalidate my feelings, and I would instantly break up if he said “f*ck you”. I don’t tolerate abusive behaviour, ever.
Most accidents happen in the house. Including this one. People think everything you can buy in a store is problem free, but that obviously isn’t true.
The most stupid thing my husband has done so far was putting dish soap in the dishwasher, because there weren’t any tabs anymore. Thankfully this is just an annoying and kinda funny mistake and not a deadly one.
The yelling and blaming is problematic. I would understand that this would have been shocking news and that he first had an inappropriate reaction to it. Let’s be honest there are very few people, who can deal with being wrong and make a stupid big mistake (and in this even a deadly one, that hard to take). But he did went way overboard. The problem I see is that he still hasn’t apologized for it. Normally people calm down very fast and than the guilt and shame kicks in. But I see none of that. He is really stubborn in a situation, which is a sign of immaturity. There is a chance, that he truly believes that this isn’t his fault.
Your husband has communication issues. He is a person who keeps a mental list of arguments and inconveniences in his head, to pull them out to justify his bad behavior. I know that he wanted to minimize his actions, but this is uncalled for.
In the best case he had a panic reaction due to the gravity of his mistake and couldn’t deal with the shame. In the worst he is dismissing his wrongdoings trying to shift the blame to you.
You need to judge for yourself what is really going on in his head and weather you can live with that or not. I would recommend counseling at the very least. Your husband needs help to learn proper ways of communication and acceptance of his own emotions.
So… seeing as you almost died or at least avoided a debilitating life long injury, he needs to take the lumps and swallow his pride. It was an honest mistake to make, but it’s complete idiocy to not understand the level of danger you both were in after hitting him with the evidence. Geez, the closing of the throat alone should have been an indicator something was up.
Look, Darwinism is a thing… if you’re gonna stay married to him, make sure you take you a really good life insurance policy for him, and know that you will be a wealthy widow… probably sooner than later.
My partner yells at me and have short temper, and seem to be common in his family, even if he is not meant to be an a*se. I didn’t use to yell but i started mirroring his behavior. One other thing that seems normal with his family and I always hated is the fact that i have to repeat myself several times and how he always say I’m overreacting and/or being dramatic. Which is extremely disrespectful, makes me feel invalidated, sad and frustrated.
After almost a decade, we are having a break because I thought it was somewhat normal. If we stay together or not from now on, i hope he takes this break as a form for him to look at himself and learn that is not because we grew with certain behaviours means that we shouldn’t change.
Your husband is a bully. And an asshat
Is your husband sober? Cause it wouldn’t shock me if there is a drug or alcohol involved here.
Never ever yell at my wife, it’s not a normal behavior and is typically the sign of an asshole
My husband has yelled at me one time for a much fairer reason and even that had me questioning our marriage and off with him for days. And that was after a sincere and heartfelt apology. In some instances yelling can be sort of excused I feel, but it depends on the aggression involved for me. I hate being yelled at. It’s really infantilizing.
Does your husband frequently have trouble admitting when he’s wrong? This sound like a very immature response to avoid accountability.
Hey, I saw your post and was just going to read and leave but your last paragraph got me. I grew up in an abusive home to the point I was recently diagnosed with DID. I have been married for 14 years now. My husband has never yelled at me, not once. My kids have never been yelled at or spanked or hit. They are 13 and 11. Once when they were younger my husband used a tone of voice with them when he was trying to be stern that reminded me of my father. It bothered me so bad that my husband has actively been mindful of his voice since.
I broke the cycle. I told myself I would never allow the things that happened to me to happen to my children. I am still dealing with DID and PTSD and so many physical health issues due to the home I grew up in but my children won’t have to deal with that. And I’m getting help.
Recently my kids learned other homes aren’t like ours. It’s been hard for them to hear about other kids dealing with parents constantly fighting or kids hating their parents. It’s been said explaining these things to them as they thought most homes were like ours. Most people assume my husband and I have spoiled brats when we talk about how they are raised but they aren’t. And when people meet our kids first they assume we are uptight and strict because our kids are extremely respectful and well behaved. It’s actually really funny especially when the first group meets our kids without realizing they met our kids.
I’m not sure if my answer helped but I don’t know if it’s normal but know that my husband would never think about yelling at me let alone do it. I also know I deal with so much but stressing about how my spouse treats me is not one of them.
My dad and my partner both struggle when feeling guilt/guilty. They respond with anger and attempt to make the feelings someone else’s fault or like the other person made a big deal out of nothing. Basically that someone else is causing them to feel guilty on purpose. He needs to seek therapy for this as this is an inappropriate response to his own feeling of guilt that he’s trying to not acknowledge bc that means he was in the wrong (that’s how he sees it anyway). And as your response escalated (getting mad, telling him you weren’t tolerating his behavior and then leaving) his guilt escalated so his anger response escalated and since then, he’s either convinced himself that he wasn’t in the wrong and you have been entirely unreasonable or he’s continued feeling guilty and continued to feel angry. If he cares about your relationship he will get therapy for this as this is unhealthy for himself as well as any relationships of any form he has. Perhaps individual therapy or couples therapy but he definitely needs to work on proper ways to deal with negative emotions that trigger his defense mode.
His response to you when you told him he made toxic fumes is known as DARVO, which stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. It’s a way to manipulate someone and is frequently used by narcissists and abusers.
Was this interaction in line with how your husband usually responds when you argue? If this was a one-off event, then it’s possible you could work through it but if he’s always like this then I would try to get out. You say you worry you’ve gotten used to a miserable marriage, was it always miserable? Were there red flags in the beginning that you ignored or have things changed? I ask because a sudden personality change can be caused by a medical issue, or it could just be that he’s hiding something.
Don’t go home yet. Write him a long email telling him that you won’t live in an unhealthy relationship anymore. List out in detail all of the other times he has gone way overboard in his anger. Reading it all out at once, and knowing that you haven’t forgotten any of the details, should be a sobering experience for him. Tell him that he needs help and you pray that he gets it.
My husband and I call this having “the syndrome.” You do something you shouldn’t, you can’t admit that you were wrong, so you lash out at the person who brings it up.
I have also noticed people who want to end relationships, but don’t want to have to be the one to say it, will be behave in wild ways to get the other person to end them.
By the way you talk about it, this sounds like it might just be how you interact now. That’s not good either.
What do you think is the best goal for you here? Is it the two of you working on your marriage? Is it you separating?
You don’t want to live this way the rest of your life. If you imagine yourself happy in five years, what does that look like? Is he in that equation?
The dude f*cked up and can’t take ownership of it. He should have used vinegar and baking soda. The same effort you put into your google search to show him vinegar and bleach don’t mix, could have been used by him to find out how to clean the washer instead of just guessing.
I’ve been with my guy 3 years and we’ve never had a fight. I can’t imagine yelling at him or saying f-you.
Props for realizing the chemical he accidentally made. You sound smart.
No, that’s not normal. It seems like he felt like he was stupid for not knowing about the danger he created, and turned it in to your fault. When that didn’t work, he pulled a bunch of old arguments out to show you that even though you weren’t taking responsibility for his ridiculously inept actions, there were many other times that you were wrong so you might as well be wrong here too. When that didn’t work, he had a tantrum and cursed at you.
I don’t feel safe around people who cannot accept that they are capable of wrongdoing, and I really don’t feel safe around people that need to make their wrongdoing someone else’s fault. His behavior is ignorant, childish, and prohibitive to personal growth. This would be my hill to die on. Is it yours?
I bet after OP left, her stubborn husband filled the washer back up with bleach and vinegar to prove a point that he did it and nothing happened. Possibly why he’s not responding when she left to a hotel. Gonna need an Ouija board to make that long distance call now.