My husband seems to only communicate being passive-aggressive or just aggressive. For example, if he is looking for a piece of mail he can’t find, he will say “I love how you just throw away all my mail”. Or “I love how you always think you are right”. If I say something like “can you tell me what mail you are looking for, because I went through our mail and opened all the envelopes, the only ones I threw away were junk mail and credit card offers”, it only makes him upset, and tells me I’m obviously wrong and that I should get my facts straight because I obviously threw away his mail. Usually he eventually just gets loud, or says “fuck you” to me, and either leaves the room, slams the door, or yells at me to leave and close the door. I have asked him to come to counseling with me so we can learn better ways to communicate. I’ve read books about active listening, and try to offer solutions, and possible compromises, but things end up with him always raising his voice and having honestly, a tantrum, and me keeping a lower voice and using positive phrases, but always ending up exhausted and feeling like I can’t have a normal conversation with him. I don’t seem have this problem outside my marriage when communicating with friends, family or coworkers.
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This is emotional abuse, and no amount of softening your tone is going to get him to stop abusing you.
You sound like you’re dealing with a toddler.
You can’t get him to stop doing anything, but you can vocalize your hurt + frustration. He can either acknowledge that, respect your feelings and apologize to you – or he will continue to do what he is doing.
There’s nothing you can do to monitor or make sure he doesn’t go from 0-100. That’s all on him and his own emotional regulation
“I don’t seem to have this problem outside my marriage…” Because HE is the problem, not you. You can’t make him change. All you can do is figure out what you’re willing to live with. I’m guessing this isn’t something you would like to live with indefinitely, since it’s bothering you enough to ask the internet about it.
You deserve better.
You can’t he’s probably already stuck in his ways and if he didn’t always talk to you like this then I would suggest it’s probably something that’s wrong in the marriage if he did always react this way then you need to recognize the emotional abuse and be able to walk away because it will not get better I’m going through something so similar and I’ve just realized it’s his narcissistic Tendencies it’s not me and I need to stop owning his problems