Long AF!
I hope it’s okay to curse on this forum, I honestly don’t know if it falls under the etiquette rules and I’m so heated rn. 

I’m posting here because when I try to google my issue for comforting words, I can only find the inverse. I’m sure you can relate. FmBPDl

About a month ago, my husband and I had a huge fight. It had to deal with parenting our son. There has always been somewhat of a power struggle between us. I think my husband is too harsh sometimes, and I have to work really hard to bite my tongue when he’s parenting so we appear on a unified front. I was a single Mom for 6 years and I’m still trying to break some old habits. I also feel I need to say he’d been drinking the last time we had a big fight. He crossed a couple of lines that night including calling my dad a pussy for leaving my mom. He later apologized. Whenever I get really upset and we fight about something, he also always deflects to me being a stay at home Mom now and how I’m so privileged to be given everything. Insinuating I’m being ungrateful because I’m mad at him. 
 
Every time he does something that really triggers me, I leave the room and find a quiet space by myself. He will go and seek me out because he “wants to talk about it”, despite me telling him to leave me alone, that I’m angry, and that I don’t want to talk about it right now. If I don’t give him an exact time when I’ll be ready to talk, he dismisses it and forces me to talk with him now. 

That night, we eventually came to the decision that if he did or said anything that I didn’t agree with regarding the kids, I wouldn’t say anything in the moment. Then I could pull him aside and we could openly talk about it. 

This evening, he’d said a few things to our son I thought were too harsh for the situation, but I kept quiet and didn’t make any faces. Later, my son comes up to me and showed me a broken toy. He asked me how to fix it. I tell him with some tape. He asks if I can help him. My husband immediately barks “No, you can figure it out yourself”. Like, it’s almost as if he was waiting for my son to ask the question so he could jump in. 

Our son left to go outside. I told him that he shouldn’t have interrupted me, that I was having a conversation with our son. I said that the same rules that apply to me need to apply to him as well. Both statements were cut short before I could get the words out. I literally quietly got up and went to the bedroom to try and diffuse. It’s like he sees that as an invitation to come in and argue why he’s right and I’m wrong. 

I started out calm and told him I was angry with him and that I wanted to be alone. When I didn’t tell him how long I was going to be angry, he refused that answer and decided we were going to talk about it right now. He’s been drinking tonight also. 

I quickly escalated from there. He’s telling me that he gets to jump in when he sees the need because he’s his dad and I’m coddling our son. I explained (yelled at this point) that the topic he jumped in on was irrelevant because it was a conversation I, not him, was having with our son. Basically that he was being hypocritical. He disagreed again, and he sighed big and said “Woman!” This pisses me off to no end and I have asked him innumerable times to not call me woman when he’s angry like I’m less than because I’m female. Mutual respect. 

I began yelling. I began cursing. When he again refused to see what I was trying to say and said he didn’t care if I was mad at him or about my opinion and that I was wrong, I told him to get the fuck out. I also yelled fuck you and to fuck off. He yelled that I didn’t get to disrespect him and say those things to him in his home. 

His offenses included telling me I was privileged to be able to have the luxury of sitting at home all day. That I came to run and hide in the bedroom and that I was being immature. 

The staying at home privileged thing is a whole other fucking problem. He’s brought this up almost every big fight we have. It’s an invalid and moot point. First of all, I was on my own for several years, raising my kids, working a full time job and some of the time was in school. Had my own place, paid my own bills. Didn’t need no man, I wanted him. Granted, it was hard. I made too much for assistance, and not enough to not be stressing. 

I continued to work full time while he was in school full time. When he went active duty, I’d just given birth and left my job as we were moving across the country. When we arrived in our new home, I had a lot of trouble with identity. I felt worthless because I wasn’t supporting the household financially and my job was always how I identified my worth. I’d never been in the military, and I know a lot of people describe different experiences, but I felt like all the soldiers would hate me because I was a spouse, a dependent. I felt inferior. But me staying home was always a part of our plan. On any given day, he’ll say how glad he is I get to be home and he gets to provide this life, that it makes him feel good. Especially having two kids and a new baby, paying for daycare wasn’t worth me getting a job when we could comfortably have me stay home. This is an incredibly common setup for military families. This is the only baby I’ve been able to stay home with. We planned for when the baby gets old enough for pre k, that I still wouldn’t have to work, that I’d be able to go back to school and get my degree. He did everything possible to try and make me feel accepting and confident in this new life. When he says shit like I’m being ungrateful or he wishes he had the luxury of staying home or that it’s crazy that I’d sit there and say the things I say to him when I’m so privileged, that he gives me everything, it’s a slap in the face and immediately recants the positive things he said to me in the past in my mind. It’s literally enough to almost push me over the edge and tell him I will eventually leave him if he doesn’t stop. 
And also, I work a part time job that I take a lot of pride in. (It actually has in-house daycare)I take care of three kids by myself, sometimes around the clock for weeks, months on end, I do all the domestic shit. He doesn’t cook, clean anything, repair anything, wash any dish. I mow the grass, I make his breakfast, lunch, and dinner, he only does his own laundry. He doesn’t have to lift a fucking finger. And I’m going to start online school in the spring as my therapist and I discussed it’s a good idea and it’s something I can give back to myself.

You guys, he made me feel like a piece of shit. He triggered me and I wanted to hit him in his stupid face. He kept getting closer and closer to me while we yelled. I kept warning him to get the fuck away from me. I felt like a caged animal. He treated me like some child that he needed to lecture. Not like his equal. He said him being a father allowed him to throw down the trump card over me. 

At this time, I’m sitting outside. Because I know he wouldn’t come outside in front of our neighbors to fight. My two year old is still inside playing. Husband is playing video games. I really just want to take the kids and go for a drive. I don’t have a baby sitter, family, or apparently anywhere I can go to diffuse in peace. And I don’t want to leave the kids when he’s angry and drinking. He wouldn’t be abusive. But I don’t want them to feel stressed and I think I’d be the more responsible parent. He literally told me last time I was trying to leave during a fight when I had the kids in the car, that he was going to call the MPs on me if I left to go for a drive, despite me telling him I was going to take them to a park or to get ice cream or something. He later apologized. 

I feel like I’m going to absolutely fucking explode and no one gives a flying fuck. I’m shaking. This shit is HELL on my recovery.