Things that irritate me about my spouse

The BBQ Pit
1

sigh

For the last couple of months, my wife’s been anywhere from confrontational to downright bitchy every single fucking day. If it’s about something that I’ve made a serious mistake about, I don’t object to her bringing it up. But even little fucking things is a reason for her to start an argument lately. (And no, she’s not pregnant.)

Example 1: A couple of weeks ago we were to make a Mexican cassarole for a pot luck dinner. A couple of hours before we were to go, she asks me to brown the ground beef. So I do. Then I go an extra step and add the taco seasoning that we’d picked up just for the meal.

She comes into the kitchen and flips out when she sees the seasoning in the beef. “Are you reading the recipe!?”, “Do you know what recipe to use?”, “I just asked you to brown the meat!”, “I didn’t ask you to think, I just asked you to brown the meat!”

She got the recipe off the Internet and took over, mumbling that she hoped she could make something of what I’d done.

The cassarole turned out perfect, but guess what!? The recipe called for adding the taco seasoning as per the seasoning package exactly as I’d done!

Example 2 (why I’m writing tonight and also sleeping downstairs): We’re planning our daughter’s first birthday party, writing up the invites. Since we’re having a petting zoo bring some animals, we’re holding it at friends’ house because they have a big yard. So she asked me to write up instructions out to their house for our church friends. No problem. I use Mapquest.com to make sure that I have all the roads named right, as well as their name changes.

Later tonight, we had to run out to a drug store to get some anti-itch cream. On the way back, she asks if I’d printed out the directions. “No,” I said. “But they’re the first file in the history list in Word.”

“Did you set them up 4-up per page?” she asked.

“No, I just typed up a step-by-step list.” Before I could continue to say that I wanted her to proof it, she starts ranting.

“How are we supposed to get 8.5 x 11 sheets into the little invitation envelopes?”, “What do you think, that we were just going to hand out 8.5 x 11 sheets?”, “Why didn’t you ask what format I wanted them in?”, “Why don’t you think ahead!?”

So you see my dilemma: do I think ahead too much and risk overdoing, or just as much as she asks and not do enough to be of use to her?

Oh, one more example: a couple of nights ago I forgot to lock the car. Someone in the middle of the night then came through and rooted through all the unlocked cars they could find. Nothing missing, amazingly. OK, I got bitched out about that. Then tonight when we run to the drug store, I reach the car first and find it unlocked. I look at her and say, “Oops, it’s unlocked,” knowing that she had had the car keys last. “You have the keys,” she replied. “Yes, but I got them out of your pocked because you unlocked the house this evening while I carried the baby upstairs to her crib.” Silence. No apology. So apparently it’s OK for her to leave the car unlocked at night, but not me.

sigh Thanks for reading my rant.

2

Damn, man, there’s something going on there.
Did this happen gradually, or fairly quickly?
Because it could be a sign of something physiological.
Luck to you- from the sounds of it you might want to start sleeping lightly…
:wink:

:frowning:

3

AWB, you have my deepest sympathy. As I was reading your post, I thought “What could be making a rational person behave this way?” Then I got to the part about your daughter’s first birthday. OH! That explains (but does not excuse) some of it, anyway!

Sounds like she is suffering from major stress, and therefore you are as well. Perhaps she just has too many irons in the fire, trying to maintain control over more details than any human possibly could. That leaves you getting stuck, as you’ve mentioned, not knowing if you’re doing too much or not enough. If you try to pitch in, you inevitably get something wrong, but if you don’t do anything, then you are a lazy ingrate!

Your wife definitely needs some TLC, and so do you. Vacation, maybe? :wink: Be sure to spend some time together as man-and-wife, not just as mom-and-dad. Treat her gently. But don’t take all the abuse, either, because that is not fair. It’s all a two-way street.

I really hope that the two of you can find your common ground once more, and that things improve. Take care of each other… after all, you are on the same team!

My best wishes for happiness go out to you and your family.

4

Just tell her the kitchen is an inapropriate place to use that type of language, and if she wants to act like that she should just take it to the pit.

I see your dilema as worrying too much what your wife is going to think.

C’mon man…

Warning: Sexists Comments to Follow
If you let her know that you are agonizing over what she thinks, then you are dead. This is a woman. The mother of your child. She has POWER. You must keep your fear secret.

Stand up to her.

If my SO threw that thinking comment at me, SHE would be sleeping on the floor. (and vice versa) When she acts up, call her on it. Piss her off. Tell her if she doesn’t watch it, then you will put her on timeout.:slight_smile:

Let me help you out here. You could say:

*So apparently it’s OK for her to ________________, but not me. *
…and the answer would still be the same:)

5

I’m so glad my wife is utterly perfect in every way. 8^)

6

Welcome to “FUCT”

aka Fatherhood Under Child Terrorism - characterized by mobile childern, bitchy wives, and no sex.

My husband is a charter member.

7

You know what, I should just pass right by this thread. I shouldn’t comment. I should go find something else to do. Unfortunately, I feel compelled to do post.

AWB, I apologize. Let me explain. I don’t know you and I don’t know your wife. I have no idea really why she is acting this way.

But when I read about how she reacted to your cooking of the meat, my first thought was, “And?” I didn’t see anything wrong with it. In fact, I was thinking, “How could he do that? He didn’t have the recipe, what if he had fucked it up? Why couldn’t he just do what he was asked?”

And then I stopped.

You didn’t actually do anything wrong. You didn’t mess anything up. I am a mega-bitch. I don’t know why I would react that way either. I just would. (So goes my reputation for being sweet!)

I snap at my husband exactly the same way your wife is snapping at you and immediately after I do it, I am sorry. I feel like Sybil most of the time. It’s not PMS and I’m not pregnant–I don’t have an explanation. The only logical thing I can think of is that she is overworked. My schedule is painfully hectic and I have tons of stuff I have to do and be responsible for. Sometimes this will affect me so that I enter into one of these moods. I’m not saying you’re not overworked–you probably are.

Basically, I just want to apologize to you on behalf of all women who act this way and don’t know why. You (probably!) don’t deserve this treatment and I don’t know why we give it to you.

8

geez are you married to me?

I blame the kids personally… I was sane and rational until we bred…

but geez man, learn to follow directions! :wink: Especially unvoiced directions… they’re the important ones.

9

disclaimer: I don’t know you or your wife, this is just my opinion, which may or may not be valid.

Underneath the hellhound face of mega-bitch is an ordinary person. She’s just in an unbelievably shitty mood — maybe stressed because she’s scared of failing to carry out her responsibilities. Trying to reason with a person in an unbelievably shitty mood is not an efficient way to proceed.

This is my advice. It’s probably not worth the shit in my arse - I’m young, and my partner and I don’t have children yet.

Here goes.

Hopefully, somewhere in your busy day will be one tiny calm patch. Take advantage of it. Take your missus by the hand and say you’re sorry. I know that you want her to apologise to you, but ‘sorry’ is a good way of getting under the harsh exterior of a mega-bitch. It works on me. Say you know you’ve been annoying her recently, and you’re sorry. This ought to give her the opportunity to realise that you’re a good bloke and she shouldn’t yell at you. If not, then you could gently point her in that direction. If your wife is anything like evilbeth or me, she’ll already be sorry.

10

I, too, have been known to snap at my loving husband for no good reason. I, too, blame it on stress. We have three kids, two of whom are going through adolesence and getting D’s in school even though they are very bright, I’m in school full time myself, money is tight because I can’t work, etc., etc. Is all that an excuse to bitch out my husband? No, but I do it anyway.

I don’t mean to, I don’t want to, but sometimes, when it all is piling on, it seems like the slightest little thing from him will set me off. It’s like he suddenly becomes a lighting rod for all the pressure in my life.

My totally amateur, non-psychology trained opinion is that I, and many other women like me, do this because our husbands are safe outlets. We know they’ll still love us, and stay with us, (mostly, anyway), even though we are being temporarily terrible to them. We count on being able to take it all out on them, and then make up for it later.

It’s still not a good excuse, or nice, or right, but I think that’s just how some of us wimmmin folk work upstairs.

11

Are you married to my ex-wife?

I had the SAME problem for a LONG time in my previous marriage. I never did find out just what her main malfunction was. It never mattered WHAT I was doing, but, whatever it was, it was wrong. She eventually left.

I’d suggest having a long talk and some quality time together to try and figure out what seems to be the problem.

Good luck man.

12

I was browsing through some old newspaper ads on the James Lileks website. This one for Chase & Sanborn coffee reminded me of this thread.

Stale coffee. That’s the problem. :stuck_out_tongue:

13

My $0.02, FWIW - that was a very rude thing for her to say, no matter what her mood. I would feel humiliated if my so said something like that to me. You are her husband, not her servant. Bad moods and snappishness are fair ball in a relationship; rudeness and meanness are not. IMO, she needs to be called on it when she crosses the line like this. Let her know (calmly and politely) that you sympathize with whatever is bugging her, but this type of behaviour is not acceptable.

14

Don’t do it. Don’t enable her and let her justify her BS actions.

My feeling on this is that once you let her know that she can roll over you and YOU will apoligize, then the relationship is dead.

Be a man. Stand up for yourself. Don’t be abusive to her, and don’t accept it when she is abusive to you.

And for God’s sake, don’t act like it was YOUR fault when she is abusive. No matter what happened in her day, and regardless of what she is thinking, nothing justifies being constantly abusive to another person.

Especially someone you love.

15

I suggested using ‘sorry’ as an gambit. Then you let her know that she shouldn’t be abusive.

See the following lines that you didn’t quote from my post.

16

Call her on it now! I, too, am a mega-bitch in nice-girl’s clothing. I used to snap at my DH (dear hubby) for the littlest things.

I mistook his silence for acceptance. Every once in a blue moon he points out how hurtful my words can be. I used to be a lot worse. Now I think before I snap and apologize (or at least try very hard to) when I do.

Don’t let your feelings fester. Tell her now exactly how you feel. Don’t think you’ll be any less of a man by telling her how hurtful her words and actions are. No woman, who truly loves her best friend (and I hope you two are best friends), wants to continue hurting him.

17

To Poison Ivy, Sue Duhnym, evilbeth, Primaflora, Tansu, and Lucretia,

Thank you all for your words of advice and anecdotes about my problem. It’s nice to know that beside there being other husbands that this happens to, there is also a reason that needs to be delved into. It’s good to hear the female perspective, and I’m glad you read through my male ranting enough to give me sound advice.

I would guess now that it’s stress. I guess don’t see it, because I work one full-time job and 1 part-time job and think that I should be the only one with stress. I don’t know if I just have the feeling that staying home all day with a cute baby is not stressful. (I know it isn’t, having had to care for her many times by myself.)

We get into a cycle of: [ul]
[li]me going to work early[/li][li]coming home early to take care of the child while Mommy rests[/li][li]baby taking just a nap after dinner (when she should be staying down for the night) or[/li][li]Daddy going to second jobs while Mommy puts up with restless toddler until I get off work[/li][li]Daddy staying up until midnight until baby is tired enough to sleep until dawn.[/li][/ul]

As you see, I start losing sleep too, which my boss at my main job notices, giving me more stress, etc.

So both of us get stressed. She vents daily, but I keep it in a little longer and explode.

I’ll work on seeing that both of us destress without taking it out on each other.

Update:
I fixed the directions as she’d wanted them done initally before I fell asleep. I slept on the couch, still a little angry at the last fight, but still wondering why.

I left for work early, before she or the baby awoke. While I was in morning meetings, she called and left messages asking to meet for lunch between her doctor’s appointment and the baby’s. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get away. But she did get a hold of me after her appointment and 1) said she really didn’t expect me to sleep downstairs last night, and 2) said she was sorry. What exactly she was sorry for, she didn’t say (having me sleep downstairs?, the directions fight?). I apologized too, also not saying why (I was sorry that we fought). So we both are apologetic, and perhaps that’s a start.

Guys: I appreciate your feedback too, but it seems that your advice would probably just stir the pot some more. “Be a man. Stand up for yourself. Don’t be abusive to her, and don’t accept it when she is abusive to you”? Freedom, are you or have you ever been married? This stand would either get me castrated or divorced, and probably both.

18

I only seem to get to the telling of my feelings after things have started to boil over. I hate to reply to every criticism, but I do recognize that I don’t want boil-overs anymore.

I’ve noticed that she’ll talk through the baby to ask me to do something that I should’ve (or she think I should’ve) recognized needed doing. E.g., “CRB, ask Daddy to play with you some more”, “CRB, tell Daddy you’re hungry.” It’s cute to a point. The trouble is, if I’m involved with something else when she makes this kind of request, I think she’s talking to the baby and ignore their private conversation.

19

AWB says:
I would guess now that it’s stress. I guess don’t see it, because I work one full-time job and 1 part-time job and think that I should be the only one with stress. I don’t know if I just have the feeling that staying home all day with a cute baby is not stressful. (I know it isn’t, having had to care for her many times by myself.

Stress, like love, it not a bowl of sugar that runs out. AWB, I respect that working two jobs with a baby in the house is exhausting. But she’s not just caring for a cute baby. She’s dealing with the house, cooking meals, and occasionally dealing with a screaming hellspawn she’s like to leave in the closet just long enough to go to the bathroom in peace. Both of you are under a great deal of sleep-deprivation which is probably mostly responsible for the bitchyness.
Reading over your schedule it sounds like you have no time as a couple. That’s not good. The fact that she’s using the baby as a puppet to try to talk to you may mean that she’s not getting nearly enough time with adults. Is there any way to get the baby into daycare two mornings a week so she can get the shopping and cleaning done in calmness and sanity?

20

AWB

The future Mrs. Freedom and I have lived together for 3 years. She can slide into mega-bitch mode occasionally, but I just stop whatever I was doing, let her know she stepped over the line, and walk away.

If you want to grovel and live in fear for the rest of your life, go ahead. I would rather be dead or single though.

It’s your life…you get to do whatever it is that makes you happy. I wish you the best.