J. Peirano: My husband is constantly annoyed and stressed - and I've had enough

I live with my husband and our children (5 and 2) in a loving family. When my husband and I met, he had been alone for a long time and was used to certain processes and behavior, a lot of freedom and certainly just "his calm". He also comes from a family with older, very anxious parents who spoiled him a lot. I myself am a good 10 years younger and grew up in a large family.

Unfortunately, the big problem in our family is that, in my opinion, my husband is very uncomfortable, annoyed and quickly stressed in many areas. He lets the little things spoil his mood, often the whole day.

J. Peirano: The Secret Code of Love I meet nice men. But after three months at the latest I ghost them

According to his own statement, he is not overly challenged in his job and seems basically satisfied in this area. At least 80 percent of the household and care work is left to me. Despite this, apart from his lack of resilience to stress, he is a loving father.

In his free time, he does a lot on his own and often withdraws at the weekend. I give him this freedom because I know that he is a person who needs a lot of time and balance for himself. As a result, since the children were born, there has actually never been any time for me alone, because he is overwhelmed with both children and I only leave them to him in an emergency with a bad feeling, because I know that he naturally takes care of their well-being and safety , but feels very stressed and uncomfortable with it and of course cannot hide it from the children.

If an unfriendly neighbor does not greet him, a child has done something he considers dangerous (unfortunately he is much more anxious than I am in his parenting views, but does not enforce these views, but always points to me as the culprit for causing the children are allowed to do such things), the tired children do gymnastics at dinner - there is quickly a reason for him to get angry and often to announce this out loud.

As a rule, I then become the target of his anger without knowing anything because I try to calm him down or find a solution, sometimes reacting annoyed or tense ("Don't let the neighbor spoil your day!" / "If it's so stressful for you, ask the neighbors what's going on!", "The children must be allowed to try things out too." etc.) or he disappears into another room, growling. He always claims that he needs a lot of rest, but doesn't see that he is the biggest unrest factor for me here.

Family celebrations and the like in particular are always a stress factor with him, because in recent years there has hardly been a celebration where he has not made an unpleasant impression or started a quarrel in our own small family or, from a certain point in time, not celebrated more. Even our own wedding was so stressful for him that he wanted to start a fight with me. Again and again he forfeits it with his overreactions with acquaintances and relatives, which puts a lot of strain on me as a person in need of harmony.

If I want to talk to him about the events, he either (if he is aware of his overreaction) ridicules the situation a bit, or says that we just don't fit together or that I have changed a lot and that a breakup is the way forward the best solution. The situation quickly ends in mutual accusations. But since he hasn't been won over to family counseling so far, I don't know of a satisfactory solution at the moment. I know he's a wonderful person and he just can't get out of his skin in situations like this, but I don't think it can go on like this either.

One is your husband's low tolerance for stress. This personality trait can also be called neuroticism because it is characterized by

There are now many psychotherapeutic tools that can help people with neuroticism and low stress tolerance to be more composed. This includes: setting priorities and learning to ignore unimportant things, promoting concentration (so that you are fully present when you are looking after two children, for example, and fully adapt to the situation. This reduces stress enormously). You can train mindfulness. MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) courses are very effective, which I have often written about here and which have been proven to help to become more relaxed.

Dr. Julia Peirano: The Secret Code of Love

I work as a behavioral therapist and love coach in private practice in Hamburg-Blankenese and St. Pauli. In my PhD, I researched the connection between relationship personality and happiness in love and then wrote two books about love.

You can find information about my therapeutic work at www.julia-peirano.info.

Do you have any questions, problems or lovesickness? Please write to me (maximum one A4 page). I would like to point out that inquiries and answers can be published anonymously on stern.de.

But also consciously switching off and recharging your batteries through positive activities (e.g. painting, playing an instrument, going for a walk) or reacting to aggression through sport (e.g. cycling, swimming, tennis) as well as reinterpreting situations (man this is called cognitive therapy in behavioral therapy) are part of it and are very effective. Then, just to give an example, you could rate the situation with the neighbor who didn't greet you on a scale of 1-10 and consciously consider how long you want to be annoyed by an everyday banality (scale 1 or 2). You could find alternative explanations (the neighbor is having problems right now) or find a way to deal with it (if he has problems with me, he should talk to me).

It's a big problem that your husband doesn't want to learn all these powerful tools and doesn't bother to become more resilient for you and the children. I suspect that it also has to do with the fact that his neuroticism gives him many advantages (it's called illness gain). If you do 80 percent of the household and he can spend the weekend alone without the children screaming, that's a clear advantage for him. And as a result, he has less interest in changing something about his problem. The bottom line is that the situation is advantageous for him!

Let's come to the second problem: the lack of respect between the two of you, which is also reflected in the way you communicate.

Apparently your husband lacks a healthy look from the outside. By that I mean, what would an emotionally intelligent woman and an emotionally intelligent man, looking at my situation from the outside, say about it? This emotionally intelligent couple's likely perception would be, "The husband doesn't take responsibility for his family. He only takes care of himself and leaves his wife to do the care work. To this he blames his bad mood and spoils her festivals."

Your partner is not ready to see that and to accommodate you. Instead, he invalidates your feelings by ridiculing the situation and threatens separation. Threats are also called "horsemen of the apocalypse," and these are harbingers of a breakup.

He is not willing to work constructively on the problems within the framework of couples counseling, just as he is not willing to work on his problems alone.

They bite on granite with him, and he makes them helpless and powerless with his walls, denials and threats. This is a very difficult and deadlocked situation.

How about getting some therapeutic support yourself and clarifying whether you want to continue this relationship? They write that he is loving and wonderful. It's not clear from your description, but it would certainly be helpful to weigh the positives against the negatives. It would also be important for there to be clear rules of the game for your coexistence so that the vicious circle caused by the gain from illness (the more difficult I am, the more freedom I get) is broken.

I wish you clear insights and the courage to look at everything carefully and with an open mind.