I hope you're feeling better soon - headaches and stomach aches are the worst. I think we're in different parts of the UK but there are a lot of viruses going around right now.
Do you think when your husband gets competitive or critical (it sounds like he really needed to share that he disliked or disapproved of your friends) a different approach might work? It sounds like you were defending your friends or even yourself for liking them and enjoying their company. I was thinking of what Flying Solo was saying on her thread about responding to her husband's criticism and the way that has made things easier for her and might even have encouraged a change in his behaviour.
My therapist once advised me to respond to barbed remarks and critical comments from my H with a very mildly expressed 'you might be right' - then go away and think about it on my own, decide if I want to make any changes, then make them without further discussion with him. Obviously if he asked me for something in particular, 'I want you to stop seeing your friends who I don't like' then I'd respond directly, but otherwise, I'd just acknowledge he'd spoken, acknowledge the possibility that he might have said something useful to me, but not engage with it verbally further. No defending myself, or justifying my choices, or explaining myself, or anything like that. What also helps when he's moaning about something that isn't really anything to do with him is to gently say, 'can you tell me what you want?' - if he just wants me to listen to him whinge, well, I might or I might not depending on my own needs at that time - but it is a phrase that reminds him he is an adult responsible for working out what he needs and expressing that, rather than just criticising me relentlessly whenever he's uncomfortable in some way.
When I remember to do these two things (which is not often - I tend to get very upset and reactive around his criticism) it helps. It does sound like your husband was out of sorts, and snappy, and uncomfortable seeing you with your friends, and perhaps uncomfortable with what your friends might think of him and your situation - and rather than dealing with that himself, he was dumping those feelings on to you. It must have really bothered him for him to bring it up the day after.
