We were away this holiday weekend at the motorcycle track for H's racing. He was so excited to have both me and his daughter there. I always hate the beginning and end of these weekends where packing and unpacking and setting up is involved. I can never "get it right". If I move something, it's wrong. If I don't help because I know it's not going to be right enough, he gets upset that I'm not doing anything. I basically can't win. Well the packing and then the set up went fine and even the packing up leaving the track went fine. I get that he's tired from the weekend, but he was happy and chatty all the way home yesterday. We turn down our street and he sees that the side of the road where he wants to park the trailer is already filled up with other cars. Here we go. He starts grumbling and parks the truck, in the middle of the road with the hazards on and gets out. Not a word to me or his daughter what he's doing so I assume that we are to get out. We are sort of fiddling around getting out and he's standing in the driveway looking pissed at us saying "Give me the house keys!" Alrighty! I give them to him and follow him in the house. I am dawdling behind him and he grabs the other car keys and turns around to come back out of the house. Of course I am standing in his way and he tells me to move. We still don't know what he is doing. He backs up our other car and park that in the street and then moves the truck and trailer to in front of our driveway. Still not a word to us. He asks me to make something to eat because he's going to shower. Then we get a whiff of this awful smell and that pisses him off even more and goes "Did YOU forget to shut the fridge all the way and the food is rotting?" He checks and it's fine. Then he goes "Maybe YOU forgot to take out the trash before we left?". I don't answer him but I did take it out before we left and he checks and says that's not it. We narrow it down to the wet cat food that's been sitting out in the bowl for 3 days. Oh dear husband, you mean the wet food YOU insisted we leave out along with the dry food??!!
Anyways, we think that he is going to take a shower and I find something to eat, but then daughter goes out to the truck to get her backpack but it's locked. H sees her trying to open the truck and goes very sternly "Do you NEED something out of there?" D knows he's getting in a bad mood and says "No it's fine" and he says "If you need something then get it" and tosses the keys at her to which she ducks from because she wasn't expecting it. Well he makes a huge thing about that going "God job on catching those. Why would you move out of the way when I threw them?" Then he adds me to the mix because I was bent over watering the flowers and says "Well Mapper's big head was in the way which didn't help". What is the deal?! All of a sudden our mere presence is pissing him off. Then we thought he was going to take a shower but then instead decides to unload the truck but not a word to us about it. Ooookaaay! So we know if we don't help we'll here about it so we start helping in silence wondering if we are unloading correctly or putting stuff in the right place and just waiting for him to explode on us. He doesn't, but he's not very nice about the whole thing. We go out back to check the garden and just then 5 planes fly over in formation. He yells for D to come out and look. She comes out and is very distinerested and says she's going in to do the dishes. His reply is "Why couldn't I have had a cool kid"? How mean is that?! He then took his 30 minute bath and then went to bed at 5PM only to get up at 7PM for 10 minutes and go back to bed. This is his one weekend a month with his daughter and this is how he decides to spend it.
When he gets like this he expects us to read his mind and we should know exactly what to do and where to go because he won't talk to us. If we do one little thing wrong he goes off on us. If we stay out of his way and don't help we get the snide "Fine I'll just do all the work while you 2 just sit and watch tv". I hate the walking on eggshells never knowing when he's going to get so angry.
Anger Rages
Submitted by ADDAngry on
Dear Mapper,
I have hundreds of stories JUST like yours that I could tell. My ADD husband of nearly 18 years is irritable, sometimes super angry over little things and the rest of us (me and two now teen girls) are left walking on eggshells around him. It is so abusive emotionally when he explodes unpredictably using profanity and throwing things like a 2 year old tantrum. He is on Meds (Vivance) but I think they wear off towards the end of the day which is exactly when we interact with him most (after school, after work). He was against Meds for years until we hit rock bottom with our marriage (after a public rage incident) and finally started seeing a marriage counselor with experience in ADD/ADHD. The Meds definitely changed him for the better but the private rages continue in our home. No one would even believe me if I tried to explain. Because just like your story, it seems so out of the blue and he is otherwise a wonderful person. Every time it happens, our hearts are hardened to him just a bit more. I came to this website looking for advice / support and I just registered so I could respond to your post because it is exactly the kind of story I live with. I hate his anger outbursts and he never realizes what they are doing to us. We all deserve better. Hang in there.
I'm wish I could give you a
Submitted by copingSAH on
I'm wish I could give you a hug right now. We know all about the odd rages attacks that happens -- that nobody else in the extended family ever gets to see, except myself and our kids. I know if feels like the loneliest struggle of a lifetime. His sister is coming for a visit soon and I so want to explain what happens but she won't see any of those behaviors while she's here because he is so good about keeping it under wraps, so I'm already feeling a bit hopeless about getting any support anyway.
I hope you and your daughter get to do things you both want to do together and make some good memories on your own and not wait for someone like your dh to be even-keeled all the time. It is rare. If my dh is happy, it becomes almost manic and it's all about his interests. But we are grateful when it's been a "happy day". But it is difficult to see a full connected life every day. I don't know what to make of a marriage where we don't really know our husbands except for their own interests and/or upsets. Enjoy life when it is good but when the bad start happening, we learn to disappear for a while...
Your post brought tears of recognition to my heart reading it!!
Not your fault
Submitted by jennalemon on
He was hiding something in the truck he didn't want you or d to know about so he is starting fights so that you are off balance and not looking at what he is doing....asking you to make food while he is outside with the truck.
hiding something sounds plausible
Submitted by dedelight4 on
jennalemon, I agree with what you said about hiding something. I could be wrong, of course,but this IS pretty extreme behavior. But, then again, the ones like my husband who don't work on their ADHD do some odd things.
No there was absolutely
Submitted by Mapper (not verified) on
No there was absolutely nothing hidden in the car because I was there to pack it up with him when we left the track. There's isn't anything there that he would be hiding. He was simply upset by all the other little things that her going out to a locked truck just added to another annoyance. However I just can't understand him getting so bent out of shape over nothing!
And he is really different
Submitted by Mapper (not verified) on
And he is really different when we have company. If people are there and he says something to me and I don't hear him and say "what?" He repeats his words very calmly and lovingly. However if it were just us and I said "what?" his response would have been a very irritated repeat of what he just said followed by "clean all the wax out of your ears!" Or if I tell him something he will say "that's nice" but if there's no one there he will immediately refute it and tell me I'm wrong.