I’m 32 years old, I have a 3 year old and I’m due with #2 in April. I’ve been married for 4 years, my husband is 41.

He is generally a great partner. He cooks, cleans, changes diapers. We work well together. He does most of the physical lifting in our relationship, I take care of the mental lifting. We both work full time jobs. I bring in more financially and work longer hours.

His main complaint about me is that I don’t help out with as much cleaning as he would like, my main complaint about him is he is negative and very quick to react without thinking through the situation and anger is his default. He is aware of this, he blames his father, he’s gone to counseling, he takes antidepressants, but I would be lying if I said it was getting better. Neither of us are perfect.

Last week I was getting our 3 year old ready for school, he went to the bathroom and came out hysterical begging me not to yell at him like daddy for peeing his pants, saying it was just an accident.

I was shook. I knew my husband yelled, I knew he’s constantly bitching about this or that, but I had no idea that our son was living in fear of being yelled at for normal child accidents.

I grew up with a stepfather who yelled, and berated me for the littlest of things. I make it a point not to do that because I don’t want my son growing up in a state of fear like I did. I barely raise my voice 99% of the time because of my childhood and because my husband yells enough for both of us.

So today, our only day off together, we decided to start going through some of our sons baby clothes to see what we really needed for baby 2. Our son was across the hall in our bedroom watching TV while we worked in his room. I had everything separated into bins and labeled by size. My husband was stacking stuff on top of one of the bins we hadn’t opened yet. Once we worked through all but that one I asked which one was left, he pointed out that he stacked a bunch of bottles and stuff on top of it, so I asked him to move them to see what was in it. He overreacted and aggressively swiped everything onto the floor, including the post it that said what was in the bin. He opened the bin, and instead of checking the size on a onesie, he decided to throw the onesie in my face. At this point I asked him to leave the room and said I would finish things up myself as he couldn’t control his emotions and was physically throwing things around. I asked him to leave 3 times before he started moving towards the door. He started screaming ‘shut the fuck up’ at me. Prior to his screaming the situation wasn’t loud enough for our son to hear, he was watching his shows safe from the madness. At this point, I lost it. I have a kid who is scared of him, he’s throwing things around the room including AT me, he’s yelling at me and telling me to shut the fuck up in front of our child.

I this point I am yelling. I’m repeating what he just said to me, reminding him of the fact that our child is scared of him, and that he just threw a tantrum and threw something at me, telling him what an actual piece of shit father he is just like his father was. I called him ‘Little (FIL’s name).’ I saw red.

I am so embarrassed this happened within earshot of our son. But at the same time I’m not sorry for anything I said to him. He lost it over me asking him to move a few things that he mistakenly piled up on top of a box we were in the room to go through. This type of tantrum happens regularly. Most times I ignore it. I don’t give it attention so it doesn’t escalated. But clearly not addressing it is not stopping it from happening. It’s not protecting my son from being afraid. The behavior is not changing, it’s just escalating.

So here we are. The good news in this, I can afford to support myself and my children financially. I have family support. I have a great group of friends. I am extremely lucky that I don’t rely on him for much more than lawn care, and cleaning, and I can afford a maid and a landscaper if I couldn’t find the time (or didn’t want to) do those things myself. I’m capable I’m just lazy lol

I love my husband, I generally WANT him around, but I do not NEED him. Life would continue, peacefully, without him here.

I want my children to have their father around, in their home, daily, but not at the expense of their (or my) mental health.

So what the hell do I do here?

Thanks for reading and any insight to this disaster.

*Update*

He just came and apologized for what he did. He has no explanation for his actions, he just knows he can’t lose his family, he wouldn’t survive, he’s going to be different and make changes and all the other cliche things abusers say after they’ve done something wrong.

Thank you all for your comments. I know what I have to do here. I just needed an objective 3rd party opinion.

To the person who suggested I was gaslighting his behavior. I am by no means a perfect person. Do I always use the best tone? No. Do I always say things perfectly? No. But I will absolutely not take any of the blame for how a grown man treats a 3 year old. I don’t emasculate him, if my success professionally/financially bothers him it’s not because I have done something other than succeed and for that I won’t apologize, it’s not in spite of him or instead of him and other than be proud of myself I don’t ever even bring it up, we have joint accounts so my money is his money. I don’t nag him to do anything. As far as what I contribute, I handle all the finances including taxes, I handle any and all maintenance (home, cars, pool), I handle all the scheduling of the entire house (myself, him, our child, 3 dogs), all the paperwork is completed by me, for everything from daycare to our drivers license renewal, I plan and shop for all meals, I keep things organized, I also work from 8am-7pm 5 days a week as a sales manager. Don’t forget I’m 7 months pregnant. In return he handles the dishes, laundry, floor and bathroom cleaning, snow removal and yard work. He also cooks dinner 3 maybe 4 nights a week. Childcare responsibilities are pretty even but he definitely has changed more diapers than I have. Admittedly he does the physical labor that keeps our home running, I do not accept the accusations that because I don’t do laundry I don’t contribute. Honestly I’d rather hire someone to do his chore list for the amount of bitching he does about it. I just do not have the time (or energy currently) to do more.

Sorry for the rant I just can’t even believe I had to defend myself after explaining my 3 year old is afraid to have an accident. But that’s the world we live in, victims are always instigators right? Yeah.