My husband is a good man with a big heart who saw me through cancer when our daughter was only 4 mos old. I love him dearly, but I’m at my wits end. Any time I have the slightest complaint or even suggestion, he takes it as a mark of failure on his part. He says he judges whether he is a good person or not by whether his wife is happy, and if I’m not happy, he’s not worthy. I don’t understand this at all. It seems incredibly toxic to me, but I can’t exactly put it into words properly enough to get through to him.
Last night, we had an hours long discussion in which I attempted to tell him why I felt frustrated and stressed recently. We have not had a night home in two weeks (yay Christmas…), he works every weekend, and with my elderly mother moving apartments during the holidays, it’s just been pure stress. Oh I also have to buy all the gifts for everyone on his side and mine so that is always an annoyance. He’s not good with coordination of things like that.
His day to day consists of going to work at 6am at the shipyard, off by 3, and he picks up our daughter from daycare, comes home, and plays video games on his computer. I don’t have a problem with the games or that he plays. I play them too. My problem comes in the fact that he signs on the moment he gets home, and once that happens, nothing else ever gets done for the rest of the night until he’s blisteringly tired and goes to bed. Heaven forbid however that I mention my issues in even the slightest.
For instance, I have suggested that he start a load of laundry each day when he gets home and takes a break from his game to change it out (my medical condition is aggravated by the bending and lifting involved in laundry so he does it) and then he could play the game and there would still be clean clothes. He always rejects this suggestion and tells me that he knows he is horrible and he just won’t log on ever again. I tell him that’s not sustainable or reasonable, and to just please do one load of laundry a day before he logs on. At the moment, when he does do the laundry as he agreed he would, he pulls the laundry out of the dryer and crams them into a hamper which wrinkles them something terrible. When I get dressed for work, I end up having to refluff clothes in order to look half way presentable. I work at an office, not at the shipyard like he does, so the wrinkles do matter unfortunately.
I am just so confused by his responses. The laundry is just one example. Every time I complain about something he could improve he immediately takes the extreme solution which will not work and is largely performative. It’s like if I told him “If you don’t like how you look, you could just try cutting back on the soda.” and his response would be, “I’ll just stop eating. It’s too hard any other way. I have to make you happy or I’m not worthy of you. How do you even find me acceptable?” He often says, “There’s so much wrong with me, how can you even accept me?” I have told him, “There’s a lot wrong with me too. No one’s perfect. In that way of thinking, how can you accept me?” He says it’s different for him, that he has to live up to certain standards. 🙁
Has anyone had any experience with a situation like this? It’s just so mind boggling to me. I don’t want to get a divorce, but the constant pressure of trying to not depress him so much while still feeling seen and heard is killing me. Trying to reason with him and get him to see sense is not working. Am I the one with the issue here? Have I missed something? I’m so confused.