Feeling Angry in Staying Connected

I’m having a bad morning.

First, I woke up in the early AM hours for no particular reason and had a hell of a time falling back asleep. I want to lie on my stomach, but then I worry about smashing my fetus. So, I was trying to lie on my back or either of my sides. I kept tossing and turning trying to find the right position. When I lie on either side, it feels like my shoulder is being slowly pulled from its socket. It’s painful. My neck also felt tight, like my pillow wasn’t the right amount of fluffy. I wasn’t watching the clock, so I don’t know how much sleep I lost, but it felt like a lot.

Luckily my daughter slept in until 7am, and my husband got up with her at that time and let me stay in bed until 8am. Once my husband left, I slept much better. I realized the problem, as it has been for a while, is that he’s created a giant sinkhole in the bed. All my muscles feel tight because I’m trying to sleep on a fucking slope. When he leaves, though, I can just get in the sinkhole. We need a new mattress.

When I got up it seemed like everything was fine. My husband ran off to poop, as per usual, and I got my daughter ready for the day. When my husband came out to take my daughter to my in-law’s for the day, my daughter had gone in the bathroom and shut the door. She’s been doing that lately when she poops. My husband called through the door and told her it was time to go, and she just kept yelling back, “Poop! Poop!”

I smiled and said to my husband, “At least she’s communicating.”

I could see him getting all flustered. He was complaining about how they were already running late. I pointed out they were only 10 minutes late, and he was like, “10 minutes makes a big difference!” I guess I could have been more empathetic, but all I can think is how he completely creates his own schedule for his entire 40-hour work week (of which he typically works closer to 35 hours). So how can 10 minutes be that big of a deal?? But whatever. I just emphasized that the kid needs to poop. There’s not much anybody can do about it.

At this point, I had started my breakfast. I had coffee brewing, sausages in the microwave, the stove burner turned on with olive oil in the pan, and I was just getting ready to crack my eggs when my daughter comes out and announces she’s done. My husband says, “okay, let’s go change that diaper,” and my daughter starts insisting that mom change her.

I was like, “No, I’m busy!” She starts crying, of course, and my husband just looks at me with this helpless expression on his face. So I’m like, “Ugh! Fine!” and I turn the stove off and start marching angrily around the kitchen counter.

Suddenly, my husband is like, “No. Stop!” and he puts his hand out to signal me to stop. I just looked at him for what his plan was and he was like, “Just stop,” and proceeded to try to pick our daughter up so he could change her. At first, I was glad he had intervened. Our daughter, of course, screamed and protested. I heard him carry her into her bedroom, struggle with her for about 30 seconds, and then start yelling at her that she was going to get time out. He put her in time out and she just screamed, and screamed.

At this point, I was frustrated, because

1) this is a problem. She wants me to do things for her all the time, and my husband always does the helpless thing. Like there is nothing he can do to have authority over this two-year-old child. I’m like MAN UP, dude. Figure it out. Jesus. To me, the obvious way to handle it would be to calmly tell her that she can have timeout, or she can let daddy change her diaper, and let her come to terms with the options. Not yell at her.

2) I get that he got angry because, in addition to him having developed a reliance on playing the helpless role, he was already flustered about running late. But this would not be a problem if he had more structure to his week. I feel like he is in a constant state of winging it that is very ineffective in pretty much every facet of his life!

You know what it is that’s pissing me off? This is triggering my family-of-origin issues. I can’t stand victim mentality. I can’t stand when people don’t take responsibility for their own lives and just expect me to throw them a god damn pity party about it. I just want to tell him to get his shit together.

But then—I almost forgot to finish the story—my husband turned on me. I went over to him and whispered so our daughter wouldn’t hear that I would change her stupid diaper, and he was like, “No! You had to go and make this massive thing out of it!”

Remember how I said that one of my symptoms of pregnancy is suddenly filling with rage and lashing out? Yeah, well, you know that him talking to me like that FOR SURE brings out the beast in me. I lost it. I just started screaming and yelling about how I was upset, yes—which I had every right to be. I was in the middle of making my fucking breakfast and he just expected me to stop what I was doing. But I said I would do it. HE was the one walking through the house with a dark fucking cloud over his head because he was running late, and now he’s gone and ruined EVERYBODY’S morning.

I pretty much just screamed him out of the house. Neither one of us ever apologized.

So that’s that. I know that when I get mad I take it too far, but I still feel strongly that I was justified in my anger. This is a really tough time in our marriage. I just feel like we’re drifting further and further apart, and I just hope that we don’t drift so far that we can’t fix it.

Another thing that really irritates me is that we never got our 2020 tax return. Last summer I asked my husband about it, and he assured me things were behind schedule due to covid. Last fall I told my husband that I’d like him to follow up with our tax people about it, and he said he would. Winter came, and I asked him when he was going to call, and he said, “when he has time.” Guys, literally months have gone by and he hasn’t done it, and when I ask him about it he just gets defensive, raises his voice, says he doesn’t have time (BULLSHIT), and then again says he will when he can.

I get that this is something I could just do myself, but the thing that stops me is the belief that this falls under the category of things that we’ve agreed are his responsibility. So I feel a little stubborn about it. The other day I had another “losing it” moment where I started screaming about how it’s literally been months. “Just squeeze it in!” I yelled, and he finally called. What he found out was that we SHOULD have gotten our tax return LAST SUMMER, and that one theory about why we haven’t is because of identity fraud. I didn’t say it out loud, but all I can think in my head is what a fucking idiot he is for letting so much time pass. This was supposed to be our FIRST tax return where we get to claim a kid. It was going to be THOUSANDS of dollars.

Anyway. I have to get ready for work. I’m just going to have to leave this on a sour note this morning.

Last updated January 13, 2021