This is not a binary situation. You aren't limited to
"Must continue bearing the burden as is"
and
"Must get out in order to stop this"
There are things you can do while in the relationship that can impact it. Obviously, your wife can and does listen to you to some extent as evidenced by the animal situation.
Characteristics of People Pleasers: 1. People Pleasers rarely consider their own needs, wants, and desires.
2. People Pleasers take any criticism as fact, and immediately suffer a deflation in their own self-esteem.
3. People Pleasers feel an extraordinary fear of abandonment.
4. People Pleasers blame themselves for everything that ever goes wrong.
5. People Pleasers are more concerned with others' feelings than their own.
6. People Pleasers have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, expecting of themselves magical abilities to fix the significant others' in their lives.
7. People Pleasers learned early in their lives to bury their own feelings, needs, and wants, and keep them buried until they get help for their problems.
8. People Pleasers chronically confuse pity with love and self-sacrifice with caring for others.
People Pleasers are often the unwitting contributors to family dysfunction, although they are far from being the only culprit in a dysfunctional family. People Pleasers tend to have Injustice Collector counterparts: the Injustice Collector in the family remembers every slight, real or imagined, and throws it back in the People Pleaser's face, while the People Pleaser scurries to set things right with the angry Injustice Collector. The cycle will repeat indefinitely, because the particular dysfunctions of the People Pleaser and the Injustice Collector are a perfect fit with one another: Injustice Collectors feel entitled and People Pleasers feel that everyone ELSE is entitled.
End quote.
I think aspects of the above apply to several of the men who post here. In the same way that the LD spouse can control the sexual relationship, the crankiest, most outspoken person can control the marital relationship.
There really are hills to die on, ie. issues to fight for. One of them would be damaging words and actions toward your children. It's one thing to vent about a child being difficult or whatever, but what you described earlier sounds much worse than that. Is it not possible to say, "do not speak to me about our children in this way."?
