New User Warning: May Contain Copious Amounts of Venting

Hi Everyone, I am new to this forum and was hoping to get a few things off my chest and hopefully get some advice or support. I post on a number of other boards around the web but I'm not ready to air my dirty marriage laundry where anyone knows me. I've been reading through some of the threads here and there seems to be a lot of supportive posters and a lot of you with problems similar to mine. Hopefully, this post won't be too much of a rant but I have been holding things back for a few years, so no promises! Basically, I feel like when our marriage was younger, I could handle his personality better but now I'm starting to feel crushed under the weight of his criticisms and outbursts. It's hard to articulate exactly what the issues are so maybe a few anecdotes will illustrate things. I'm almost embarrassed to post these. I feel like the person you marry (or choose to have a relationship with for really any period of time) is a reflection of yourself. When I think about some of the things I've experienced over the past 15 years and the fact that I am still with him, I start to think that something is wrong with me for sticking around for so long. That being said, however, I have the two most awesome children ever and even though my husband is very tough on them, he is a very loving father. Thinking about our family breaking up leaves me breathless, literally. I would never want to take my boys away from their father but I don't know if we are going to make it. What prompted me to start talking about this was an incident that just happened this weekend. We were about 45 minutes into a 6-hour trip. One of my sons was with us and we were on our way to pick up our other son from camp (he'd been gone for a month and my husband was beyond excited to see him again). We started talking about the stock market and how much stocks cost and how much you would gain if a stock went up, so some math questions came up. Well, apparently my son and I were not answering his math questions quickly enough and he started getting really mad. I tried to explain that sometimes I actually have to, you know, put some thought into doing mental math. And he was like "why do you have to think about a problem like 6 x 3?" and I was like "that was absolutely not the question you asked. you asked about stocks going up in value meaning you have to know what the original investment was, how many shares you own and how much you earned when it went up". He sai d "it's the same thing! they are both just as simple." And here is the basic problem: he thinks he said A and when I say "I heard B", he totally blows up at me (or my boys) and says that we don't listen to him. He was screaming at me and eventually turned the car around and took himself back home (my son and I went on the trip without him). Now I know that he felt bad because when we got home, he had done a bunch of chores around the house (which he rarely does). However, the bottom line is that I cannot take his yelling over stupid **** anymore. And yes, that was all over a math problem. He basically called me stupid, too. Then this morning he got all bent out of shape because I asked him to do me a favor. Frankly, I rarely ask him to do anything because he complains about it so much. He doesn't like to go out (his increasing reclusiveness is also becoming an issue) but in this case, he was already going to the store where I needed to return something. This was something that I bought for our son who was going with him. Seems like a no-brainer to save me a trip. But then he starts asking all these questions about why it needs to be returned and what's wrong with it and did you google this or google that. It was pretty clear he just didn't want to do it. So again, he's basically berating me for not having every detail about exactly why I need this thing returned. Why can't he just ****ing return it for me when he's going to be at the store anyway?! The other problem I have (which may be mine - I'm not sure but I could use some insight) is that I am the one who works and he doesn't and I really don't feel like he does enough around the house given that he doesn't work. I work from home so I am always here, which means that I have the time (usually) to help with chores and errands. But if I don't have the time, he still expects me to do it. So I do all the grocery shopping (because of the aforementioned aversion to leaving the house), I cook all the meals, I take care of all shopping (like right now, it's back-to-school time and I am taking both boys shopping for all their clothes and supplies), I make sure all the bills are paid, I take care of any kind of service appointments (lawn care, pest control, appliance repair, etc.), I take the boys to anything they need (practice, doctor's appointments, friend's houses). I just feel like I deserve a little more consideration for the fact that I have a job. Now I know that I could just ask him to do all these things but I've given up. He gives me so much **** about it that I've stopped asking. I think he's got some serious social anxiety issues. He used to see a therapist but she made him wait one time, so he stopped going (he's all about giving up on people after one mistake). I'm not really sure where to go from here. I don't want us to break up but I really feel like we have a serious communication problem. The more I bring it up, the more upset he gets. Then I end up capitulating and then feeling like crap because things never change. At least I feel better having said all this.

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