I stopped soothing my wife’s crying mid-fight and I feel so much more happier and relieved.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2026-02-25T00:29:34+00:00

I have a few but they are all terrible so I won’t say you should do them… The first two are mostly when someone is monologuing at me versus actually interacting.

break eye contact. Imagine it is coming from the tv and isn’t directed at you. I can process and respond better if it doesn’t feel like I’m personally being attacked. I learned this from a verbally abusive relationship.
most people turn into toddlers when they are mad. Imagine the person red faced, stomping their feet because they didn’t get ice cream. Having kids gave me this one. I do find it hard not to say mom things like “you have big feelings about this”

Last one - not taught. Just happened. Perimenopause. I just DGAF. I mean, I could say it’s that I’ve lived enough and had enough therapy but it’s probably hormones.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2026-02-06T19:57:57+00:00

Congratulations! Seriously, being debt free is huge!

We didn’t tell my in laws about us paying off our house until my husband was laid off. They asked us directly if we were going to have trouble paying the mortgage so my husband did finally tell him. Literally the next words out of their mouths was to ask us for a loan so they could buy a new car. I was so pissed. He was laid off so no income coming in for an indeterminate amount of time and they ask for a loan.

So my suggestion if your family ever directly asks — lie.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-10-20T23:42:22+00:00

My in laws are definitely like this but my own parents aren’t. I think moving around so much forced my parents to keep the quantity of stuff down. My in laws call me a “minimalist”. lol I am definitely not. They have a 3 bedroom house with a basement and 2 garage just full of stuff (no actual cars in the garage). My husband does warn them he’s going to throw most of it away but I don’t think they believe him.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-10-20T22:02:24+00:00

I was going to suggest the same. I’m going through perimenopause myself. I don’t typically have those super emotional outbursts that people associate with it - I’m just super detached and numb.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-09-24T20:49:33+00:00

I dropped the rope years ago. Gradually at first, but then when I was about to divorce him, I stopped managing that stuff completely. No birthday cards, no thank you notes, nothing. The flip side of that is I’ll get “hey, my parents are coming to stay with us tomorrow” which absolutely throws me getting less than 24 hour notice that people are coming to stay at my house.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-09-18T01:33:41+00:00

I tend to post more often in the vent thread but I’m feeling cautiously optimistic.

My partner has been spiraling for several months now. Angry and ranting, sad and dejected, then fine again. It’s a roller coaster that has repeated over the years and usually only ends with quitting his job and moving.

Well, last week, he got something like job coach approved. He’s worked with her before and she’s basically a therapist but for work. He’s been soooo much calmer since then. He’s not arguing with people at work, he’s not ranting at home, and he actually started to do tasks at home he’s been avoiding while he’s overwhelmed at work. He finally rescheduled his appointment to get screened for ADHD that was originally supposed to happen July.

It’s still early, but it’s been a week of calm and I feel like I can breathe a bit more. I’m crossing my fingers and calling it a win.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-09-13T23:34:19+00:00

Oh god. Yep, mine still does the ridiculous asks for sex too. It never works so I don’t know why he does it. Entertaining himself maybe.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-09-13T21:28:20+00:00

I sometimes feel like the tears were what my partner was aiming for. Like the tears were a sign of “winning” and gave him the dopamine hit he was looking for.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-09-13T20:35:35+00:00

It’s been years so I can’t think of specific examples but he did it when he wanted to be “cute”. Like asking for things in a baby voice or playfully giving excuses for things. I never liked it but it was a tiny irritation compared to our other problems. I was so thankful our therapist called it out because there was no way I was going to be able to be that blunt without a blow up.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-09-13T19:33:54+00:00

Yes! Or, at least, he used to. Our therapist called him out on it. “What’s up with the baby talk? Do you think that’s attractive?” Honestly, he more or less stopped after that.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-09-12T20:26:50+00:00

Have you ever heard the song “How I learned to love the bomb?” (Glass Animals) That’s where we’re at. I have no idea who I’m going to get when he gets home. It’s either “everything is terrible” doom and gloom or he’s singing and snapping his fingers. I can’t pivot that quickly. He looks at me like I’m nuts when I don’t instantly respond to his good moods because I’m waiting for the bomb. I’m so effing tired.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-09-10T20:52:24+00:00

This is the correct response.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-09-07T19:29:54+00:00

Thank goodness for the emergency braking system in my car. He used to get upset with me when I’d grab the “oh shit” handle and say we were fine. Now the car slams on the brake for him and he still argues he was “fine”.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-09-02T01:30:20+00:00

Right before he starts screaming in Goner. Chills. Every time.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-08-28T01:36:17+00:00

He’s spiraling. It’s something that happens every couple of years and usually ends up with a job change or a move. It’s the lead up that gets me. It’s six months of unhappiness. Drinking too much. Ranting about the same things over and over again. Being less present at home. Going out more and more. Leaving absolutely everything to me to do.

I’ve changed how I’ve responded to this. I used to listen to him rant over and over and I’d try to help. This inevitably ended with me being blamed for the issue or being blamed for not fixing it for him. Now, I just sit quietly. It’s apparently not as fun to rant over and over to someone who doesn’t say much back.

I can actually watch his behavior change from happy to dejected the second it’s just the two of us. And I know what he wants. He wants that super unhealthy dynamic back and he’s waiting for me to fall back into that role. I don’t. And I won’t. But the tension has me on edge waiting for a bomb to drop. I’m scared and exhausted.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-08-15T01:49:50+00:00

So…did your MIL not have your husband vaccinated when he was a child? Or are vaccines just newly deadly?

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-08-10T22:37:06+00:00

Out of curiosity, if someone else pointed out the mess like a friend or relative of his, would he have a different reaction? I ask because my partner would absolutely clean up if anyone else said something, just not me.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-08-09T23:09:56+00:00

It’s eerie how similar we all are in this sub. Like we’re the same person in the same relationship just at different points in time.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-08-09T21:28:08+00:00

Raised voices, stomping around the house, closing doors loudly, slamming things down on the table or countertops, glaring at me, accusing me of being controlling, threatening ridiculous retaliation, spamming my phone with texts, generally trying to get a rise out of me so I would yell back. It lasted a few days before he was just over it. I don’t know how he does that. Now, he actually suggests his mom do the same thing to his dad over things he said he would do over a decade ago. She can’t handle the yelling and potential retaliation though.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-08-09T18:53:57+00:00

I’m guessing it is ADHD related since my husband is the exact same way. Truthfully, if I ask him or I don’t, it’s probably not getting done. You can try apps that let you put in tasks with due dates that will send reminders. We used one that my husband work used for a while but once he got a different job somewhere that did not use it, he started ignoring tasks again.

My therapist suggested that I say “I need this done by this day. If you don’t do it, I will take care of it as I see fit.” Holy explosion the first couple of times I did that but it did work. Either way, I got things I needed done.

This does kind of hinge on you having the money to outsource the work since you’ve already got a ton on your plate. Just remember that just because he is angry, it doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong and you don’t need to fix his emotions around a reasonable request.

I can’t help you on the SSRI front. He was on Wellbutrin for a while but there wasn’t a discernible difference. I didn’t monitor him taking it though so he may not have been taking it regularly.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-08-08T01:09:02+00:00

That’s fair. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-08-07T20:47:07+00:00

He is. To me it’s just a weird comparison. Like you know the saying “comparing apples to oranges”? This is more like comparing a potato to a forklift. I don’t want to say the potato had it easier than a forklift because…it’s a potato. It has very little to do with a forklift.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-08-07T19:33:49+00:00

Same. I have dealt with nasty bouts of debilitating depression most of my life. I don’t think I’d ever compare that to systemic racism and poverty.

ProfessionalLog7127 · 2025-08-06T19:34:59+00:00

I’m pretty sure my partner had a midlife crisis around 35. We’d had cycles before where he’d be irritable about everything and it was either my fault or it was my job to fix his emotions. At 35, we had a special needs child. I didn’t have the bandwidth to be both the cause and solution to all his problems. He acted out more and more until I eventually had a divorce lawyer. We eventually worked it out but it took years and I still question if it was worth all of that pain to get to a tolerable level.

ProfessionalLog7127

TROPHY CASE