Marriage Ending?

This post ended up way longer than I intended, I apologize. Thank you to anyone who reads this and has any advice!

My husband and I have been married almost 5 years. We’ve known each other for a very long time. Our relationship has always been very laid back. We’ve always enjoyed our time together, had only a handful of small disagreements, and overall have been extremely happy together. I have two children from a previous relationship, and we have one together. He’s always been a caring and loving husband and father.

But last year, everything slowly started changing. We bought our first house right before the pandemic started. So the five of us moved into a new home and we were adjusting. Going with the flow of him working from home, me going from staying home with just our youngest to all three kids and virtual school, and the kids getting used to all of the new things. Everything was going well for a while! We were figuring it out, and enjoying the extra time together as a family once the day was done. No travel to and from work/school to take up more time. More time playing games together, cooking together, watching movies, etc.

As summer was coming to an end, we realized things would be this way for a while. So, we started trying to get a better routine to help us stay sane while all being home together. As the last months of the year went by, my husband became more withdrawn. Spending many nights up late to play video games, not waking up on time in the morning and being tired from only a few hours of sleep, seemingly more irritated towards me and the kids, stopped doing things around the house (with me or alone, we used to clean together). Everything started to feel off. We started having more disagreements than we ever had. Some turning into outright fights with him yelling and angry, and me crying asking why. It seemed like every little thing was setting him off. I tried so many times to discuss it, but I wouldn’t get very many answers. If he was upset, he would tell me that it’s me, I’m the problem- but would never tell me why. If it was a normal day and I tried to bring it up, he would just say nothing or say he was sorry and walk away. He became very closed off and all but refused to communicate.

Our time together disappeared. Our time as a family became just the kids and I. Every day when he was done with work, I would worry myself sick over IF he was going to be upset about something. If I would say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, not do enough. I tried to stay out of his way and give him space and time to relax and wind down from work since he had finally mentioned that work was very stressful. He eventually told me I was too quiet and didn’t spend enough time with him, he felt like I was avoiding him. I explained why I was giving him space to have time to himself and he told me that’s not what he wanted. I tried to get back to the normal way of things, but it started all over with him being upset all the time.

Throughout this year it has gotten increasingly worse. His anger has become unbearable. He’s become extremely unreasonable, yelling awful insults at every turn and completely shutting down and refusing to talk. He tells me I’m controlling if I even say something like “you hurt my feelings and you were a bit mean, what’s going on”. He calls me crazy, then he’ll yell at me to leave and he will walk away and not talk to me for at least the rest of the day if not longer.

I finally packed the kids up last weekend and left. We stayed with my parents for a week, but I agreed to spend the weekend here so we could do Halloween activities as a family when he asked me. Before the kids and I came back, him and I discussed our relationship and he said he wanted to work things out and missed us together. I told him that we both needed to start therapy and that was my requirement for us to try again. He asked me to come back right then (Wednesday), and I told him that it wasn’t a good idea and we needed some time to figure things out and set boundaries and work on communicating. My plan was to go home today, but things were going well so I decided to stay another night.

Everything was perfect all weekend. He was gentle even when I could tell he was frustrated, he was caring and spending time with everyone and happy. But today he got upset with one of our kids. Afterwards, I explained that it was kid A that did what he got onto them for, but kid B. I also told him I thought he was a little angrier than he needed to be and he may want to apologize. He immediately blew up telling me I was wrong (even though I saw what happened) and insisted he didn’t do anything wrong. He started yelling and when I mentioned he was being a big mean to me as well and asked why, he started telling me again that I’m controlling and that everyone has to bend over backwards to please me. He said he wasn’t going to “do this” with me and left the room. He came back out yelling again and telling me to leave. I asked where all of this was coming from, and he started telling me because I’m crazy, I’m psychotic, I’m insane and just to get out of his house. I waited quite a while and asked to openly have a conversation about what happened and how we can communicate better. He agreed, but a couple minutes into the conversation after I shared that I didn’t like it when he yelled- he said he was going to say something and my response would decide if we continued the conversation. I told him I didn’t feel that it was fair to judge my response on whether he would be willing to talk to me, that it felt like it left it open for him to judge ANY response I gave and use it as a reason to be upset and stop talking. I told him if he didn’t want to talk he could just say so and we would stop talking, that I wasn’t trying to force him to talk. I wanted him to be willing to talk and if he wasn’t, then we wouldn’t and I would leave him alone. He told me that by saying that he already got his answer, that I wasn’t listening to him, and he was done talking and walked away.

This has been a pattern in the past. If I say anything that he disagrees with, he starts yelling and ignores everyone. He will refuse to talk about things, refuse to take any responsibility when he hurts someone, and avoids anything that entails any conversation past what the person did to deserve whatever action he made.

Im at the point that I just don’t know what to do. I’ve tried to communicate better, made sure I’m very calm and polite, tried different times to discuss things when no one is upset, tried to stay quiet all together. So many different things I’ve tried over the last year, and nothing seems to help. I don’t know if I’m not communicating clearly, or if I’m saying things wrong and making it worse when I’m not trying to. I don’t want our marriage to end; I love him more than anything. I really want this to work. But I don’t know what to do anymore and I’m so lost.

If anyone has any advice, thank you in advance! I truly appreciate it.