Lady Rilch, it sounds like not all is lost. There’s a foundation that hasn’t really eroded all that much. Despite his reluctance to try group counseling, he does seem willing to talk things through. Perhaps the greatest problem would be if he put up a wall to shut you out.
Is it possible this is merely a lull? Finances and moods are typical marital woes, from what I’ve seen. Sounds like there’s the possibility that you can work through them.
My email, too, is in my profile.
Bullshit. He’s internalizing it and it comes out in spikes, just like what happened today. From his point of view, you are the one that needs counseling. Sure, it takes two to tango, and as you progress in your counseling he might realize that he could benefit from some too, but it looks like even you are admitting you need it. So get it. The next spike might just be papers from the divorce lawyer.
PunditLisa has so many good points. Please take her post to heart.
I talking from the other side of the fence here, the situation I’m in is more like your husband’s than yours. My wife get’s unreasonably bitchy because she takes work too seriously. Then she takes it out on me. I tried the “Don’t you talk to me like that.” line, time and time again. I get’s pretty friggen old pretty friggen quick. For one, it’s not how I work, and for another, I shouldn’t be in that position in the first place. There’s a problem with a learning curve here, but I’m not putting the blame on him. You’ve got surpluss emotion, so you think him talking back is no big deal. But to be the one confronting the problem is emotionally draining, and after a while a “screw it” attitude is easier. It’s harder to get hurt if you don’t care. But it’s harder to love too.
When Hubby and I were having serious problems, Divorce Busting by Michelle Weiner-Davis was a BIG help.
Good luck to you.
Rilchiam - first and foremost, I hope that the two of you can reach a satisfactory resolution to your problems and I’m sorry for your troubles…
With that said however, I’m just not buying the “he should stand up to me when I’m being a bitch” attitude that you expressed earlier in this thread.
In my mind, one the the most dangerous things in a marriage or long term relationship is our natural tendency to take our partner for granted.
The whole familarity breeds contempt syndrome.
If you wouldn’t speak to a stranger in a certain tone or you wouldn’t say address your best girlfriend in a particular manner, then curb yourself and don’t say it to your husband.
Period.
He should be afforded a special level of curtesy because he is your husband, and with any luck, you’ll be putting up with each other for the next 40 years.
And I don’t accept that you are unable to control your crankiness.
We can all learn to bite our tongues and count to ten.
He forgot the eggs.
Big deal.
Instead of (and of course, I’m just speculating here) saying “Sheesh how stupid are you-I only reminded you a million times to get them. I swear you’d forget your fricking head if it wasn’t attached” maybe you should get in the habit of saying instead “Well, at least you remembered how to find your way home. Could you make an extra trip and pick up a dozen tomorrow?”
See, I’m a sarcastic bitch and over the last 24 years, my SO has given me a lot of opportunities to bark and bite.
However, I’ve given him an equal amount of opportunity and, as I really don’t appreciate snarkiness being directed at me, I’ve learned to modify what I say.
So here’s Mr Rilch’s day it looks. . .
Gets up and his wife is cranky before he has to go to work.
Goes to work all day to make the money that keeps the family going, while his wife is trying to get her book published.
Has to stop for groceries after work.
Gets home to have his wife “decompressing” after buying groceries who snaps at him because he forgot the eggs.
Wife takes a nap and wants to wake up to Mr. Nicey Nicey.
Still, I think he had better things to say to get his point across to you than what he said. It sounds like you can still get this thing together, but not by staying on track you’re on now.
Get a job.
If you don’t want to get a job, wake up with a smile, get his lunch ready, do the shopping during the day, and greet him with a smile when he gets home. And don’t “borderline abuse him”.
And figure out your money problems! He married you but he’s not paying your debts? He’s charging you for pizza? That’s either the actions of a real asshole or a guy that is REAL sick of a woman who is acting a lot more like a freeloader than a wife.
Here’s the question I’d ask myself if I were you, “Am I HONESTLY putting in as much work per week every week as Mr. Rilch is?” And that work includes writing, shopping, errands, cleaning, doing what you can to get published.
If he works an 8-hour day, while you spent 2 hours shopping and 2 hours looking for an agent, and he gets home and you tell him “I cook, you clean”, well, that ain’t fair.
If he works that day and gets home and you say “I don’t feel like cooking, buy us a pizza” that ain’t fair either.
If he gets home and you want to take a nap, well, you get my point.
I’m not saying you’re not working. I have a hard time imagining how trying to get your book published takes up 40 hours per week, though.
Other than your post here I don’t know your situation, and as a divorced person I hesitate to gve advice… but only briefly 
.
I have a bit different take on this than most other posters. He probably still does small l “love” you, but (based on what you said he said) it sounds like he has closed, or is closing, the door on his desire to be your SO.
Sans kids and with money issues (as a couple) you’re not really in a place where you have the option of not working full time if you are able to do so unless he’s fully onboard with this getting published plan. Writers are notoriously difficult to be married to and the “getting started” part has busted many a marriage.
One lesson I learned in my divorce (her choice not mine, but overall in hindsight the best move for everyone) is that there is very finite limit as to how far you can go in being bitchy and expressing your anger in a relationship. Even if your SO regularly does irresponsible stuff that entitles you to be royally PO’d at them, the “burst of anger” stuff, if done often enough will wear out and break almost any relationship over time, and it sounds like you are on that precipice.
Although I thought I was fully entitled (at the time) to be acidly critical when my SO would pull some stunt that left us behind the 8 ball, or regularly forget and/or procrastinate about important stuff that she needed to do, in the end, and years after the fact of the divorce, I realized that I would never, ever speak that way to someone I respected, and when mutual respect is gone from a relationship, even if you still have “feelings” for someone, it’s over.
I think you need to deciide not so much if you “love” him, but do you “respect” him enough to keep your emotions in check when your feeling irritable during a mood swing. If this cannot be done you might as well put a fork in it or he will.
Doo do doo do .
I just realized that Trunk, Astro and I posted almost exactly the same advice within 7 minutes of each other.
The whole emotional lashing out thing?
You need to sort that out, and I think you know it. It’s up to you to decide whether you need a little counselling - it’s not up to your husband to decide by saying he doesn’t think you need it. Maybe he suspects that counselling would be no god to him, so doesn’t imagine it’d do you any good. Maybe he suspects that counselling would “enable” you in your anger-fuelled behaviour.
I’ve kind of been there with the emotional lashing out, and I reckon I’ve got over it. Took a little work, but it hasn’t killed me. Here’s what I have based on my perspective. I apologise if it’s all too much about me me me and not at all relevant to your situation:
1. I reckon that one reason people lash out is because they feel backed into a corner, even though they aren’t really. Sometimes people have ideas about the way things are that aren’t a full, true and accurate representation of the way things are. That stuff can be sorted out.
Maybe it’s related to your childhood - in which case you need to put that behind you. For example a grown person doesn’t need to worry about being a good little girl any more, but if she still had some kind of “button” about being told to be a good girl some kinds of perfectly innocuous criticism or suggestions would be likely to push that button hard, and trigger an inappropriate response of lashing out against the person she wrongly percieves of telling her that she’s a naughty and stupid little girl. Even if the person was only making a perfectly reasonable suggestion in a casual adult-to-adult way.
Gotta de-wire those buttons. Whatever your buttons are, that’s your business to uninstall them. Whether that takes the route of looking at behaviour and seeing how you can not get stressed to lash-out point about things, or whether that takes the route of delving into the past and taking out the buttons “at source” so to speak - well, you probably know what’ll work for you.
2. You can also help your husband out and cut down on his stress with the relationship. Getting a part time job would probably be a good way to go. Make sure he knows that you’re trying to make sure you pull your weight, and that you’re trying to make sure you fix the damaging behaviour. Then hopefully he’ll be less stressed. Gotta destress you (I mean retune the way you deal with life, not install you on a chaise longue with a servant peeling you grapes) and gotta destress your husband.
Nothing I can say here that hasn’t been said already, Rilch. You 've got my email if you wanna talk.
I think that everyone is missing this:
I think she does work, the work issue is more about the fact that she does not earn as much as Mr. Is that right, Rilchiam?
On the abusiveness issue, I’d only like to add to the idea already expressed that you need to avoid thinking the he can do anything about your bitchiness. Also, be prepared for a long road on clearing this problem up. Men can have a problem adding up little kindnesses. They tend to see larger ones and ignore the small ones. Additionally, this sounds like one of those issues where when you do it right, he will not see anything at all. So, if you avoid being bitchy he simply may not notice. That’s the sort of relationship problem that will take quite a while to fix. If you don’t mind a recomendation, I’d suggest trying to find a way that you can let him know you are avoiding bitchiness. Something like finding a behavior which avoids the bitchiness but is also visible to him. So, instead of counting to 10 in your head, drink a glass of water, or walk around the house once, something that he can see.
Of course, as others have mentioned it is still up to you to not be bitchy. And the most important thing here is to avoid thinking in any way that your reactions are his fault. Avoid even thinking that he could do something to remind you, or stand up for himself or whatever it was you said. Simply don’t even think that way. It requires an intense mental effort. If you are anything like me, the habit of being angry comes too easily to avoid sometimes. You simply have to “put the djinni back in the bottle” by force of will, so to speak.
Lastly, I truly hope things work out for both of you.
I’ve got to agree. Rilchiam’s husband, frankly, sounds like an unsupportive tool to me. I’d be bitchy, too, with someone doing this belittling power trip on me all the time. He sounds quite a bit like my ex-husband, whose attitude was “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine.” Also, “Anything I want is NECESSARY, but anything you want is a POINTLESS WASTE OF MONEY.” Rilchiam, he may have you convinced that everything is all your fault… but are you sure? My instinct is that he’s at least half the problem, if not more. Of course, I can’t say for sure without being there. But you sound a lot like me when my ex had me convinced that everything was all my fault. It wasn’t, and he even admitted it later on, after the break-up.
Getting a job sounds like a good way to go-- not because your husband belittles you with “you aren’t pulling your weight”, but because you need the option of being able to support yourself if you need to.
To all the folks telling the OP to get a job, it sounds like she has a job. That’s generally what “after work” and “could have sought out a better job” implies to me, anyway. I could be wrong.
It sounds like, as someone has previously pointed out, there’s a power issue at work here. Wage gaps can be a huge issue for some couples, but I’ll tell you from experience, it’s only an issue if you two let it be an issue. Right now, my husband makes roughly twice as much as I do, and that’s going to shoot up to about five times as much in a year or so. Yes, he pays the lion’s share of our mutual bills and pretty much all of our mutual entertainment, but I kick in a good-sized chunk of my paycheck to help with them, as well as paying for my personal stuff, the cleaning lady, the vet bills, and doing a lot of the basic grocery and household item shopping. Overall, though, he’s spending more money on the family expenses than I am, by quite a lot.
It’s not an issue for us. Even if I have to ask him to cover something I normally take care of right after he’s paid the mortgage, it’s not an issue for us. He would never make me feel like I was leeching off him (that’s the feeling I get about how Mr. Rilch treats you), or wasn’t living up to my potential, or whatever exactly it is that Mr. Rilch feels about your disparate incomes. He loves me too much, and more importantly he respects me too much, to treat me that way.
Does your husband love you? I think probably so. Does he respect you? Not so much, from the sound of things. Are you willing to spend the rest of your life living with someone who doesn’t respect you?
You’ve already accepted that you have anger issues, so now you need to do something about it. (It worries me more than a little that your husband would tell you that he doesn’t think you need counseling for this, to be honest.)
Given the patterns you’re describing, I’d suggest that you see a sleep specialist–if you’re waking up mid-sleep-cycle, or just generally not sleeping well, that would explain why you’re always pissy first thing in the morning, then get better after you’ve been up for a while. When I was adjusting to working nights, I was sleeping, but I wasn’t getting into the proper stages of sleep to feel refreshed. Consequently, I was constantly exhausted and ahem a bit difficult, especially first thing in the afternoon. I’d crawl out of bed snarling at the dogs, stomp around the house for a bit, and then be Susy Sunshine until about 8 or 9 at night, then I’d get all pissy again and be ready to spit nails by the time I got home. Once I started sleeping better (in my case it was as simple as getting a sleep mask to block out the light that filtered through the blinds), I became much less cranky, especially when I first woke up.
Something else you might consider is seeing your gyno. I’ve been much less cranky and moody since I got my IUD, and I think it’s the hormones. Seriously, I still have days when I’m just pissy for no real reason, and those are the same days that I have spotting, usually. It’s something to look into, certainly.
I did miss that about her having a job. I think I read “I should have found a better job as ‘I should have found a job’”. Or I thought that finding a publisher was considered her job.
But, I don’t understand anything about this relationship anyway.
What’s this business about “choosing her husband over her mother”? Its not the words of normal relationships. I have no context for that statement. Did she give a kidney to her husband when her mother could have used one? Did her mother say, “it’s either me or him”? Or did her mother ask her to go shopping one day when she had plans with the husband?
And the “shouldn’t that count for something?” Is there scorekeeping going on?
I don’t understand how she went grocery shopping for 2 HOURS. And additionally that he still had to go to Trader Joes?
I don’t understand why people buy DVDs at all, much less when they’re charging their spouse by the slice and not paying off her debt.
I don’t understand why she said, “So, where’re my eggs?” instead of “I think you forgot the eggs”. Or why people buy eggs by the half-dozen. . .or how a half-dozen eggs at one place could have been any cheaper by more than a nickel and is it really worth the chance that he could forget to save a nickel?
Oops. Yes, you are right. I wonder if people are making that mistake because Rilchiam’s husband seems (to me, at least) to act like she has no job at all, and is lying on the couch eating bonbons all day. She has a job, but apparently it’s not good enough for him. Ugh. Plus. she has ambitions to get a book puslished, and he seems not only unsupportive, but even sabotaging. Of course, I don’t know all that’s happening, so I might be off the mark, but I wouldn’t want to live that way, if my impressions are anywhere near accurate.
Mea culpa on the job thing. I didn’t read closely enough to see that you indeed have a job, but that it’s not a great job. I read your comment about Mr. Rilchiam thinking you were giving up on publishing your book to read that your job was trying to get it published. I really oughta learn to read closer. A thousand apologies.
The disparity in income thing is a whole other kettle of fish. I don’t know what job you have so it’s hard to give advice. If there are other jobs out there that pay better, you might check into them. Maybe part of your crankiness is feeling like your job is beneath you or that your skills aren’t being used to their fullest. If you’re a writer then you are undoubtedly a creative person. 9-5 jobs aren’t great for stimulating creativity, so maybe you could think out of the box. Landscaping, for instance, is a job that involves creativity all while paying the bills. Or, if your skills are more office related, maybe you could stick with a 9-5 job but look at publishing companies so that you could develop connections.
Anyway, as has been said, good luck on your journey.
Sorry this is happening, Rilchiam. I know it must be rough.
Ask yourself if you’d be treating him the way he’s treating you if YOU were the one bringing in the big bucks? No? So why are you taking that from him? In my marriage, the wife (me) is the one making considerably more money. We put all the money in one account, except for a set “play money” amount that goes into our separate accounts, and pay bills, buy groceries, and pay for entertainment out of the joint account. No arguing over who pays what.
I agree about checking to be sure there’s no medical reason for your mood swings. I take an antidepressant for anxiety problems. If I miss taking them for a couple of days, I turn in to a major friggen bitch, and it gets better when I start taking them again. Anxiety/depression, hormones, blood sugar problems, sleep problems…all things that can be checked, and taken care of if they exist. If they don’t, anger management classes really could be a help. They can teach you ways to avoid instinctively taking his head off on a regular basis.
I think the key to any marriage – and there are a lot of flavors to choose from anymore – is teamwork. You can be a stay-at-home mom and still be a team player. He can make all the money and still help with some things around the house because you’re a team. It sounds like the two of you are working against each other. You need to pull together and take an “us against them” attitude if you’re going to survive this complex world. Sometimes you just need to step back and look at it through “someone else’s eyes” to see where your situation could stand to improve.
I mostly lurk here, so feel free to ignore any advice I dish out 
After I read that, something that Rilchiam said popped back into my mind.
That last statement set off alarms for me, if it wasn’t facetious. There are things that an SO might do that are huge behavioral problems, and then there are things that are just personality quirks that really do no harm. When you get irritated at the latter, it’s just not productive. Does it really matter if he likes syrup that’s $3 a bottle or syrup that’s 50 cents? Is that something to confront a person about, or something that you should just let go about? It almost sounds like this is Rilchiam behaving like MinniePurl’s ex. Is it really necessary to make an issue of the guy’s fondness for a particular kind of soda or syrup, if he’s not going through gallons of it at a time? It begins to look like there isn’t any respect for either person’s choices, big or small.
I hope this all works out for ya, Rilchiam. Relationship trouble is by far the worst kind of trouble. 
I didn’t take the same thing out of that at all. For me, it was simply an example of the disparate lifestyles. She scrimps and saves and makes do, he can’t even use her generic syrup once, if he runs out.
Note the “HAS to” in that phrase. I believe this is the point she is making, not that she begrudges him a special kind of syrup, but that he can’t even make do when his runs out.
I really wonder why people like this stay married. What’s the point? There’s no prize for staying married so why live a miserable life?
Rilchiam, do you think your husband would be happier if you divorced? Since he’s expressed that, let’s assume it’s true. If you are not willing to become the person that will make him happy, why force him to stay married? True, you don’t have to change if you don’t want to, but it’s unfair to deny him a happy life. Let him go find someone who makes him happy and you can do the same.
From what you’ve described, I feel you are the source of the problem. Your attitude and outbursts are not acceptable so the responsibility for change should lie with you. It is unreasonable to ask your husband to change to accomodate your outbursts. But if he does change, he is a true sweatheart and you should shower him with love.
You should probably find a person is more hot-blooded and accepting of your attitude.