A few months ago, when I was still pregnant, my husband said to me, “You are nothing but a bitch”. When I looked at him in shock, he doubled down and told me I have been a bitch for years and he can’t stand me. He said this in the car with our 2 year old in the backseat. She became very quiet in that moment, and I know she knew something was not right. He did not apologize and did not tell our daughter it was not ok or correct himself with her. We simply went to our appt and pretended everything was fine.

(For context, I was acting a bit bitchy bc we were already 5 minutes late to our daughters check up and my husband wanted to stop and get a fountain pop first... I told him we don’t have time and he should think about his priorities since he’s a 30 year old father and not a 15 year old skater)

Anyway, my point is that 1) this still bothers me deeply as he said it in front of our daughter. 2) I am normally not the type of woman to tolerate this kind of BS. If we were not married and had no kids, that exchange would have been an absolute deal breaker. I would’ve just opened the car door and rolled on out, bye bitch.

He doesn’t speak to me like this often, but he does put me down, make the the punchline with his family, mocks the things I enjoy, that sort of thing. He says it’s “just banter”. Once he told me that having sex with a woman after she had a baby is like “moving back into your house after it’s already burned down”

My point is... these things would be reason enough to end things if we weren’t married, but because we have two children and are married, I feel obligated to put up with it. Like there needs to be more of a tangible reason to leave other than “he called me a bitch once”.

Does anyone else sometimes feel like we tolerate shittier conditions when married bc it’s harder to leave? Like you try harder to keep it together because of the marriage. At what point is separating justified? Why is it that something that’s a dealbreaker in a dating relationship is merely a therapy talking point in a marriage? Shouldn’t our standards be HIGHER for a husband than a boyfriend?