Angry no more

[MJontheMend]

Your question seems to me that you accept the premise that he has the right to make such a statement in the first place.

Well, first I should state for the record that my H wouldn't say anything as blatantly disrespectful as "Get out of my way you fat dog." to me. Let's consider one of the cr*ppy behaviors that actually happened on Wednesday morning. I walked into the family room where my H was already sitting and sat down to eat a bowl of grapenuts. He gave me a look of great disdain and got up and left the room. So the question becomes do I believe my H has the right to give me disdainful looks? As a free citizen of the U.S. who pays half the mortgage on the house in which he gave me the look I do think he has the right to behave in that way. I also believe he has the right to, for instance, not honor a sexual commitment to me. So I think what you really meant was that I was accepting the premise that he has the right to behave disrespectfully without any repercussion for his behavior from me. In a sense, I guess you are right because the fact that I had to check my mental list to figure out if I was deserving of such behavior means that I accept that there are some circumstances under which I would be deserving of disdainful looks from my H. This is obviously bad thinking on my part because I am giving my H too much power in determining whether I am worthy of being treated with respect. If I go back to my grocery shopping example. Let's say there are a hundred different ways in which my H has criticized my grocery shopping in the past. If I accept that getting any one of these 100 things wrong when I go to the store means that I am a f*ck-up and therefore worthy of disrespect or criticism then I am constantly going to be subject to disrespect or criticism. Therefore, I have to have boundaries with respect to disrespect or criticism that would apply even on occasions when I do really f*ck something up.

Tell him such a remark is disrespectful, you will not stand for it, he doesn’t like it when you make such remarks to him, that you think he is projecting his own frustrations onto you and you are not going to be his whipping boy any more, and that he needs to be a man and assert himself when needed at work and stop bringing the crap home.

I actually have said versions of this to him before except I left out the part about not liking it when I do it to him because I really never do or say disrespectful things to him. The only two exceptions to this I can come up with is when I got drunk a few weeks ago and told him he was a "fastidious pr*ck" and a while back when I told him I'd have to go get a "man" to help me carry my boxes because he wouldn't. Both of these outbursts were very unusual for me. However, in the situation Wednesday it didn't feel right for me to follow him out of the room and verbally nail him for the disdainful look. So I just gave him the cold shoulder for the rest of the morning and eventually he became quite huggy and placating so I guess my behavior/reaction "worked". Perhaps if I hadn't had to hesitate wrong-mindedly to figure out whether I was worthy of a disdainful look I could have just given him a disdainful look right back. In retrospect that seems like the appropriate response.