Passive agressive vs vengeful how do you stop hurting each other?

[Rico Len]

I've always thought that being passive agressive, people were the type to just calmly but purposely slip in insults into everyday conversation. However if the accusations against me are true, then it's actually more of a case of foot in mouth disease. I'm not at all a hostile person, I try very hard to treat people with respect, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid or that I lack the ability to censor myself. If you do something someone with less tact would call you stupid for doing, I'll simply be less rude about it and say something to the effect of 'that wasn't a very well thought out plan.'

Sometimes however I simply don't think about what I'm saying before I say it, especially if I feel at ease and comfortable with the person I am speaking with. The one example I cringe about the most happened back when I was a freshman in high school. I was doing some janitorial work after school with one of the teacher's daughters one evening, and we were having one of those typical dramatic teenybopper conversations, and I with all the sincerity in the world, and thinking only about the good side of the message I was trying to get across said "You know if you were beautiful all the guys in school would be lining up to be your boyfriend because you are just so cool."

I kept on walking across the school grounds and she stopped and asked "What do you mean IF I were beautiful?" My heart just dropped as it suddenly dawned on me how else that statement could be taken. . I felt like such an idiot and such a collosal asshole. Well from time to time that scene reinacts itself with different actresses but I'm always the constant. For the last 14 years that actress has been my wife. I do not attempt to try to upset others or make them angry or hurt them except when under far too much stress and provokation from that specific individual picking a fight with me. Even when people say or do things to hurt me, I'm quick to put the past behind me and act as though it never happened.

My wife on the other hand never seems to let go of the slightest of transgressions against her. I can't find a way to move forward. She won't let go of the past and I'm not someone that is capable of forgiving myself unless forgiven by some else first, but when she piles it on it's just crushing. She is so petty and over agressive and disrespectul to me now I can barely function when she is around. I am not a bad person, in fact I think I'm a pretty great guy, but I'm just so overwhelmed with guilt and regrets it seems impossible for me to make a case in my defense. I'm not a woe is me kind of person, but I do think I'm in over my head at this point because there is no two ways about it, I'm depressed.

We have 3 kids together a daughter who will be ten next month, a son who is eight and another boy who is three. My wife is the one who works and manages our money and I'm the guy that stays home with our youngest and takes the kids to school and do the cooking, cleaning and laundry, etc.

Friday after the kids got home from school and finished their chores, I decided to take them out to Taco Bell and then to the grocery store where my wife works at the deli and do some grocery shopping. When we stopped by the deli so the kids could say hi, I was told she went to urgent care because her stomach was hurting her and she looked very pale. So, worried, we left and went down the street to the urgent care facility to see how she was. Now, my wife has always been pretty tough so when we got there I was pretty worried, but luckily the doctor assured her that she was just having muscle spasms as a result from coughing so much, and that aside from fighting off the flu that's going around and having a touch of bronchitis, everything was fine. He gave her some prescriptions and sent us on our way.

Early Saturday morning, my wife and my oldest son both woke up vomitting. Now my son sleeps on the top bunk in a room shared with our three year old, and from five feet up the vomit hitting our hardwood floors created a collosal mess. So, even though I'm not the vomit guy (my wife handles that typically because I'm a big baby when it comes to that, but I deal with all poop realated messes because that doesn't bother me) but obviously my wife was in no condition to handle it so I did what had to be done. This included changing the sheets on both bunks, putting our 3 year old to bed in his sisters room, cleaning al the toys that were barfed on, cleaning up my older boy and getting him back to bed on the bottom bunk, and of course cleaning the floors, walls and bed itself from all the splatter, and then finally taking a shower myself so that I was no longer pukey either.

Afterwards I crawled into bed wide awake after having spent the last two hours cleaning, and got on my nook (like I am now) and posted a message on facebook about my eventful 4am awakening. A few hours later I get my daughter and three year old ready to go back to do the grocery shopping, and after setting up my sick son in bed with sick Mom and making sure they were going to be ok, I take off with the other two and head twenty miles back to town. After we get back, and I've got the groceries put away I come in and see everyone in our bed watching a movie on netflix together and having a good time of it, but since there's no room for me and I have no desire to disrupt everything and likely start the kids quarelling I just grab the barf bucket, clean it out then grab my nook and try to get comfortable on the living room couch.

That's when I check my facebook page again about 8 hours after the first post, and I've got messages like "And this is why I never want to get married and have kids" and "what a great dad and husband!" "Looks like it's super dad to the rescue!" "I wish my husband would clean out the barf bucket but he won't even be in the same room as that" etc. and then there's a message from my wife saying "Next time maybe you can try not being such an asshole about it."

It was like a blow to the gut. I know I was complaining while I did it, but I wasn't directing my complaints towards her. I was trying to psych myself out so I didn't throw up myself. When I was showering off our sick son before we left to go grocery shopping, my wife was yelling at me for using water to shower, do laundry rinse out the bucket, and then to flush it down the toilet. I tried to ignore her and remind myself that 95% of the fights we've had in the history of our relationship have happened while she was either on her period, or a few days before it started, and that not only was she on her period, but she was up throwing up last night too. So I was very well controlled when I informed her repeatedly that I was not scalding our son in the shower, he just didn't feel well despite all the water running elsewhere while he was in the shower. I ignored completely her calling me a ****er and an asshole, but here it was again, where she likes to hurt me most, on facebook in front of my friends and family because I find that humiliating.

I don't want to fight with her, especially in public because she wins. I always look like a jerk because when I'm not calm and collect, I say things I don't mean. Not just hurtful things like I meantioned earlier, but I make poorly reasoned arguements as well. She is very well spoken, and I'm just not. She can easily make me look like the bad guy, and since I'm not especially innocent either, I really have no legs to stand on. But I'm not the bad guy!

I don't know what to do. If I try and write something like this down to have her read what it is I really truly mean, she throws it in my face and says I am straight up lying. Or she says I'm just being a baby and that I'm just crying as always (I don't cry BTW) and feeling sorry for myself. I know I've hurt her, but the one not well thought out comment I make every six to ten months that hurts her doesn't justify her cruel treatment of me does it? How can I stop this cycle? I'm not a bad guy, and I want to stop feeling this way.

[Boisdevie]

If my partner treated me like that she'd by my ex-partner very very fast. Seems like she has very little respect for you. If you want to save the marriage I'd suggest marriage counselling.

[michelle23]

I agree your wife sounds like she spends half her time trying to wind you up just to gauge a reaction. You should stand up for yourself. There must be a breakdown of communication here where you are finding it difficult to actually talk to each other.

I agree marriage counselling may help you both to focus on the positives and learn a healthy way to talk to each other. If this upsets you this much-you need to do something about it now.

Sometimes people just forget why they are together and take each other for granted. If that doesn't stop now, you will become more and more miserable as time goes by.

Maybe she is unhappy that she has to be the breadwinner? I'm not sure but if this is a problem-you should talk about that too.