My Husband's Anger Is Getting Worse (Reader Asks)

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The original letter below has been slightly edited for typos and anonymity.

Reader Asks: How Much Anger Is Too Much? My Husband’s Rage Is Starting to Scare Me

“My husband and I have been dating since 2001 and moved in together in 2008 and got married in 2014. He has always been a musician with a day job (usually). I was in college for social work when we met. I started working at Kroger as a florist 15 years ago because it’s unionized, provides benefits for working part time and it worked with my other jobs schedule. I got raises and ended up making almost as much as my other job but with better benefits so I quit social work job and have been at Kroger 15 years. Kids get insurance through me. My husband got insurance through me for years while he was unemployed and only working for a millionaire friend 15 hours a week as a “helper”.

So 5 years ago we decided to have a baby, our son, G. My husband has always claimed to have insomnia but really he just chooses to drink coffee well into the night, take late naps and try to fall asleep with the tv on. Then he will sleep in till 15-20 minutes before he runs out the door before work in a horrible mood or if we are both off, he will not wake up until 10:30, noon, sometimes it’s already dark by the time he emerges from the bedroom.

But if it’s a weekday/workday for me and he is not working or if he was working later like when he didn’t work full time, he would expect me to bring the kids to his parents house before I went to work at 7 so that he could sleep in. I just refuse to do this anymore. He freaks out on me when I wake him up and threatens to do something stupid if I don’t leave my job and come home. Calls me names, threatens to drop the kids off at my job.

Well I dealt with this with our son and when the son was 3 I had 2 miscarriages, that Dr. wasted me and I also lost my grandmother who I was close to. My husband was a jerk to me at her funeral and ruined it for me. Told me I was being the jerk and took our son early from our family gathering to got back at me for not being attentive to him enough (sex and emotional intimacy).

I would try to text him from work throughout the day to chat and to see if he was awake to pick up our son from his parents house in the afternoons at 3. Some days I would have to drop off my son while my husband slept because he SAID he had to work sometime that morning and then I wouldn’t be able to get ahold of him and I would drive all the way to his parents house after that to get our son and he would have just picked him up or still been in bed when we got home.

I would also text my husband during the day to see what groceries to buy for dinner that night and the rest of the week. Usually he was still in bed. So this creates an environment where I was resentful, tired and felt ignored. I was pissed. There was a coworker who I interacted with briefly a few times a week that worked in the opposite side of our large store at the loading dock. We had some rapport. He was good looking, funny, and helped me lift heavy things. I would joke with him because it was entertaining and we exchanged numbers so that he could call me and let me know if we had a floral delivery. He did this with many make and female colleagues but would tell all the women to not ever text on his off time because his wife got very jealous and to delete the text messages as sometimes they were flirtatious or inappropriate - in a joking casual way.

So one day I was sad about my grandmother and he asked what was wrong as he helped me throw away the trash. I told him my grandmother was dying. I could have just said nothing but it was nice to have some one checking on me. He asked the next time I came through the back room. After her funeral I told him when I was throwing the trash away that she had passed and thanked him for his kindness, hugged him, and gave him a kiss that he turned into. It was a quick pop kiss but we were both shocked. The next week he said something about it and I said it was just a pop kiss like I would have given my grandfather. Then a month or two later he texted me from his home on our time off. I was not pleased and tried to silence my phone. He asked what I was doing and I said why I am with my family right now and wanted him to stop bc my husband was gonna think something was going on. He apologized saying he had a few beers. I also said I gotta figure out how to not make this messages go through to my sons tablet. A few days later I told him I loved that he was thinking of me and all but please don’t text me like that on our off time. And that I wasn’t mad or anything. I said that to keep the peace. A few days later he texted I had a floral delivery. I went, got it, no incident. Things were cool as I wanted and normal.

Then I got home and my husband confronted me with finding the texts on my sons tablet. Raged on me for days about having an affair. Showed up at my job to fight him. My colleague filed a police report on my husband. My husband would wake me up every hour to terrorize me. Yanked my phone from my arms after wrestling me to the ground while I was 5 months pregnant. Called me names and yelled at me in front of our son. Would sabotage Halloween events with our son holding our son so that he couldn’t come to me when he was reaching for me crying.

My husband also broke my Apple iPad because I let my son play games on it and he considered it dirty because he found those texts on there. I should also mention that I changed the name to a girls name to protect my peace 2 years later still raging on me.

The latest is that he still chases me outside when I try to leave the kids with him when I work weekends and most recently he has been getting more and more irritable when I try to bring up any parenting concern. Last night he watched the 1 year old for about 2 minutes and when I walked back over to them she had something in her mouth and it was a jagged piece of glass from the yard. I said something and he got so angry that he had to drive away for a minute to calm down.

What worries me is how angry he is getting. He hates that when he barks back at me over my concerns, that our son notices and reacts by running by me.”

My answer: A man’s feelings are not license to terrorize his family

The verdict is straightforward and clear as daylight: this man is dangerous, his abuse has been escalating for years, and I think you need to stop asking how to make him understand your concerns and start asking how to get yourself and your children safely away from him.

I don’t say all this lightly.

Women are often told that every relationship problem can be solved through better communication, more empathy, more patience,