iamloved1978

Hello. 1st timer here. I hope I'm in the right spot. I'm engaged to an alcoholic. He's been sober for 5 1/2 years now. Yeah! He attends his meetings when he can. He has several sponsees that he loves helping. We were planning to marry this year, but we've seem to have hit a rough spot and my heart hurts. His patience for things seems to be running low. We've been together 2 years now. He was not like this in the beginning. He has his own business that has hit a slow spot and I understand the stress. I have my own business and a regular full-time job, so I get it. I try to encourage him to go to his meetings and meditate, like he did when we were first dating. We've had our fair share of arguments and worked through them. Today, we had an argument and he absolutely lost his temper and screamed at me until I thought he was literally going to explode. My mother witnessed it and was about to call the police she was so scared. I'm at a loss. I feel like I'm encouraging and supportive and loving and respectful but when is enough enough? I'm not making excuses for him or myself. I'm certainly not an idiot, but I am doing something wrong?

LexieCat

Hi, loved,

If you haven't seen any signs of controlling, possessive, or abusive behavior, he might have just had a meltdown. Those CAN happen to anyone. Without knowing more it's hard to say whether his sobriety is at risk. The fact that he's still going to meetings and working with sponsees is positive, but the fact that he screamed at you to the point where your mother was frightened is concerning. Were YOU scared for your safety? What was he screaming about?

Obviously nobody should have to put up with screaming from a loved one, so if this becomes a regular "thing" I would be rethinking the wedding plans.

I doubt you are doing anything "wrong"--sounds like he's got some issues he needs to deal with.

Welcome, glad you're here.

iamloved1978

Thank you, Lexie :-)

Honestly, his cat is peeing everywhere in my house. So I just calmly mentioned that he may need to Google the issue to find a solution. Right away, he snaps, "well, what are you doing about it?!" I'm like well, I was not aware that I needed to do anything. I kinda felt like he was placing the blame in my direction. He has already taken her to the vet. She was given medication. This is another issue. Anyhow, the fact that I feel I presented it to him in a non-confrontational way and it escalated very quickly the way it did does scare me. There have been other little issues with him and his temper and I know better. I do love him. I love him very much. I also know that I will not live fighting him for the rest of my life.

dandylion

iamloved.....I think I see some red flags, here.

Trust me...if anything is an issue before marriage...it will always...ALWAYS....become a much bigger issue after m arriage.

dandylion

LexieCat

Yikes, well, peeing cats have been known to send me into a tizzy. Fortunately, I have no one else to yell at (though I've been tempted to call my adult son who begged me to adopt them during the one year he lived with me before he moved across the country and left them with me).

Have you ever discussed his temper? Does he feel badly after he snaps at you?

One thing you can do is to tell him you won't be spoken to that way and just leave the room. You might try telling him once things have calmed down that if he yells at you like that again, you will leave the room and discuss it only after he's calm enough to speak to you respectfully.

What do you do if he gets angry? Do you yell back at him? That usually doesn't make for productive conflict resolution.

iamloved1978

I do not yell back at him. I tell him that he is not going to talk to me that way, and I walk away. Then, later when he has cooled down, we can talk about what happened and how to fix it. But it all comes down to the same issue with him almost every time: he's just ready for a fight. If I say the sky is blue, he will want to say, "no, it's not" just because he can. A couple of months ago, we were driving on the interstate with lots of 18-wheelers and I politely asked him to slow down. His response to me was, "I'm not going to be the type of husband that jumps every time his wife asks him to do something." At the time, I'm thinking like huh?? I don't believe that was an appropriate response, but I just let it go. And now, I'm like DUH! That was my sign! He's already prepared himself for a fight with me, and we haven't even married!!! I truly don't understand it because he was not like this up until the past couple of months. Things have changed for him. I understand that. I've been as supportive as I can, without allowing myself to be a doormat. This is not the same man that I fell in love with.

atalose

Oh but it is!!!!!

Everyone puts on their best behaviors in the beginning of any relationship. Some can actually carry that out for a few years but as the saying goes……..a leopard cannot change their spots.

If you cannot accept him exactly how he is today then you really have no business moving further with this relationship and especially getting married.

Any time we find ourselves questioning ourselves and thinking if only I did this or that then he’d go back to how he used to be and change, we are fooling ourselves and headed towards very unhappy waters.

LexieCat

Yeah, I think that particular statement, "I'm not going to be the type of husband that jumps every time his wife asks him to do something," puts a different spin on things. That, to me, looks like a control issue, not just a temper issue.

I don't think I'd be feeling real comfortable about what the marriage is going to look like.

FeelingGreat

Hi, could he be getting more stressed in the lead-up to your marriage? That comment about 'not being the kind of husband who....' seems to come from apprehension about your future as a couple, but it could also be something that's happening in his work life or even a crisis about his sobriety.
I suggest you wait until he's relatively relaxed, sit down with him and ask him to do pre-marriage counselling with you. If he refuses, think hard about whether you should go ahead and marry him.

honeypig

Wow, I hadn't remembered it until now, but XAH also used to say to me on occasion "I don't want to be a 'yes dear" husband." I had forgotten all about this until you posted the thing about "I'm not going to be the type of husband that jumps every time his wife asks him to do something." XAH is a very passive/aggressive kind of guy, and so it was unusual when he'd say this and I took notice at the time.

Recently he complained that I'd changed so many things in the lower unit of my house, where I live, that he "didn't know if there was room for him there any more." WTF? We are, after all, divorced, and living in separate units of the house, even if at the same address, for the time being...did he honestly expect I'd keep it some kind of shrine, awaiting his return?

Well, anyway, back to your post--yes, from my experience, I'd say that that statement, small tho it seems, could indeed be a harbinger of way bigger things to come. It seems like making a mountain out of a molehill, right? But if you're hearing that said now, and especially in a situation like you describe (really, he is not going to slow down b/c dammit, he is the man and you, the lowly woman, have no say in your own physical safety?) I have a bad feeling that you're going to hear it a lot more as time goes on...

Be careful.