Submitted by ThrowRA240922 t3_yie0mc in relationship_advice
So I've had reddit for over a year but I've never posted anything until now. This is a throwaway account because I think my fiance might know my main.
Sorry in advance that this is so long but I feel like the details are important for context.
So me(31f) and my fiance(26m who we'll call Gary) have been together for 8 years and engaged for 2. We have three kids together (3, 3, and 7 months), and I have have an 11 year-old from a previous relationship.
Our relationship up until this point has been good. With having 4 kids, me working full time, Gary in school full time and working PRN, we are very busy but we make it work. There's always alot to get done around the house and with the kids, but we share the work load pretty evenly.
That being said, I feel like I do a lot. I work full time, and when I'm not at work Gary is usually gone to work or clinical for school and I'm alone with the kids. I'm constantly planning meals, grocery shopping, cooking, organizing, cleaning, folding laundry, keeping track of our calendar, making and taking the kids to doctor's appointments, giving meds, pumping (breastfeeding the 7 month old), we also have a 3 month old puppy that I primarily take of...the list could go on and on. I never finish everything I have to do so the list spills into the next day and more stuff gets added and it's just never ending.
I also keep track of and pay all of the bills and buy everything for our kids. Gary only works 4 days per month while I work full time, and my hourly wage is more then double what his is and it's been like this since he started school. Whatever money he makes is just spending money for him.
It's an exhausting life but I enjoy it. I try to give my family the best of me and I feel like I've been doing that. Gary does a lot too and I know this. I feel like communication is key in relationships so I always try to check in with him to make sure he's not feeling overwhelmed and ask him if there's anything more I could be doing to make things easier for him. He ALWAYS says no, that life is busy but we make a great team and things are going fine. Until recently I believed him.
Of note, Gary is easily one of the most mellow human beings I've ever met. His demeanor is always laid back and his temperament is cool, calm and collected almost all the time. He's the complete opposite of me. I wear my emotions on my sleeve and operate with what I consider to be an above average amount of anxiety at all times. He's the calm to my storm and it's one the things I've always loved about him.
The one and only minor red flag I've noticed about Gary in our 8 years together is his anger. It rarely shows up (typically only if he gets woken from his sleep at night because one of the kids is crying or something like that), but when it does it's explosive. Unsettling. Lots of unnecessary ranting and swearing. After it's over I try to check in with a light-hearted "you okay there bud? That was quite a bit of swearing" and he ways just apologizes and says he's fine and he's just tired. He once told me that he had to take anger management classes as a young teen because his dad had episodes of explosive anger (screaming, swearing, throwing things) and he began to emulate that behavior. I always just assumed the classes must have worked because these small outbursts were rare and he's SUCH a mellow guy.
So three days ago he comes home from clinical. I'm in the kitchen holding the baby and putting dishes away, my oldest is in the living room playing video games, and the twins are napping in their room. He comes in and asks how long the twins have been asleep. I tell him a couple hours. He says okay and goes upstairs to take a shower. Soon after that I hear him talking in the bathroom. It doesn't seem strange to me because I hear it on a semi-regular basis. I always just assumed he was on the phone, although thinking about it now that's not a great explanation because who talks on the phone in the shower? But anyways I've never even given it a 2nd thought. At some point I head upstairs to get the baby a bib and he turns the shower off at the same time. I can hear his words clearly now I realize he's not talking on the phone, he's ranting to himself, VERY ANGRILY. And he's talking about me. His last sentence is "And I'm sure I'm gonna have to get the kids up even though I'm the one the that's been up since 5 in the fcking morning. She's not gonna fcking do it. Fcking lazy a** btch".
I'm standing frozen outside of the bathroom door with three main thoughts.
- Who is this man? His voice was so full of contempt and hatred I didn't even recognize it. I spent a few seconds trying to convince myself that someone else was in the bathroom with him because I have NEVER heard Gary talk about someone with intense anger and vitriol like this. Especially not me!
- Obviously all the times I've tried to check in and he said he was doing fine have been a lie because how could anyone get THAT angry about potentially having to wake their kids up from a nap?!
- "FCKING LAZY A** BTICH"?!?!?! I do so much! I do so much for our family! And obviously he has no respect or appreciation for any of it if that's what he thinks of me...I felt so hurt....
He opens the bathroom door and sees me standing there wide-eyed, and it's like a switch is flipped and he's back to my Gary. In his regular completely calm tone he says "What? I'm sorry. I'm not mad at you. I'm just tired". And I'm so overwhelmed by everything I just heard and the fact that his demeanor could change so quickly that I don't say anything. I just grab the bib and run back downstairs. I don't talk to him for the rest of the day cuz I don't even know where to start and it's not like I can bring it up in front of the kids. So once they're all in bed he comes to me and starts by apologizing and telling me that he didn't mean what he said and he was just throwing a temper tantrum because he was upset that the twins were still napping and he felt like they should've already been awake. He said he failed me, apologized some more, and said he probably needs counseling for his anger issues and that he would look into it, and then just kept apologizing till he fell asleep.
I think I have to be done with the relationship. Thinking now about the times I heard him talking in the shower, to think that ALL those times he was likely just hatefully ranting about me makes me so uncomfortable. Thinking about how I thought we had good communication as a couple but clearly not because I had no idea that he resented waking the twins up from their nap that much and it could've easily been fixed with a simple conversation but he preferred to just hatefully rant about me in the shower instead. Thinking about how deeply angry he sounded in a way that I'd never heard and didn't even know he was capable of...after 8 years I had no idea that he had that type of anger inside of him. That he could feel that much anger towards me...and if I didn't know that...then what else don't I know?....and the language he used to descibe me? I've never even thought something so horrible and offensive about him, much less said it out loud...I could never. I love him too much. I give so much of myself to this family, only to get called a "fcking lazy a** btch" by someone who I thought appreciated and loved me....
I'm still trying to process the whole situation but I just can't see myself getting over this. I feel like I'm gonna spend the rest of my relationship with him walking on eggshells because clearly nothing I do will be enough for him and I don't ever want to witness that level of anger come out of him again but I won't know how to avoid it. And I don't know if it has the potential to escalate. I don't feel safe around him anymore because I don't think he's who I thought he was. I feel like he's been hiding this part of himself all these years...he's just always been such a mellow guy and the juxtaposition of who I thought he was vs what he demonstrated in that bathroom feels irreconcilable to me.
But like I said earlier, I operate with A LOT of anxiety and I can't decide if I'm being too dramatic about this. It was one incident. We own a home together, we have all these kids, we're supposed to get married soon...is this situation enough to throw all of that away? I need different perspectives because I really don't know.
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