My husband [34M] keeps track of how much I [27F] make and uses it against me in arguments because he makes more. How do I respond?

TL;DR: my husband is upset I didn’t drop everything I was doing to see him on a Friday I had to work. Creates a spreadsheet detailing his larger financial contribution to prove his point that I care more about my job than I do him. Looking for any advice on how to react or a listening ear.

My husband and I had a very unique courtship that involved me coming from another country and for most of our relationship and marriage I did not work or made very little while I went to school. This year will be 5 years we have been married and these types of money issues stemming from the very large pay difference between us have been present since the beginning.

I’ve been at my current job for about 2 years now, and I love the work I do. I make okay money, but I am not a salary employee, I make around $17/hour as a teacher aid in a SPED classroom. my husband makes around $200k/year in the tech industry, so the gap between us is huge. We don’t live an extravagant lifestyle, but we have nice things and live in a big house and we don’t want for much. I feel very fortunate to not have to worry about scrapping by. My husband travels some for work, and he gets really stressed out from his job, in my opinion he becomes obsessive about it, to the point that he is burned out and drained from his job. He is in a sales position. That’s a whole other conversation about me trying to get him to relax and find things he enjoys doing besides working himself silly.

Well this past week was a very bad week away for him that involved some travel delays for him. There was some very bad weather in our city that delayed his flight and I unfortunately had to drive in which made this week stressful for me too, on top of what was an upsetting “lady-doctor” appointment on Monday. All around it was just a shitty week

His flight was cancelled so he had to come in Friday. I had to work Friday, but I offered to go pick him up if he needed it. He said no, that’s okay. So I went to work like normal. On Friday’s we have couples therapy that we have been going to for about a year, but every other week we see her individually for our own single sessions, so it happened to where we each have a single session that Friday, with his first up and mine right after.

Well, I get done in my appointment, and I head back to work like I’ve always done, but all of the sudden he’s upset that I didn’t go get lunch with him after my appointment. He didn’t ask me to go. But just said “I was waiting for you to eat but I guess you’re going back to work. Talk to you later”. This was weird but I didn’t really think a lot of it. I assumed He was just stressed and tired from work. He can get very negative until he gets time to relax from the week. Then, after work I went to happy hour with some girls, again, like I’ve done for weeks at this point. This had become my normal routine After this he is stonewalling and very quiet. He says he’s frustrated because I said I was only going to “stop by” but ended up staying longer. I apologize, and at that point leave right away. He doesn’t have much to say to me until he sends in a nice long email in the middle of the night that details how little I seem to care for him and how much I prioritize my job over him.

At this point I’m really confused. He didn’t want me to go pick him up from the airport. He didn’t ask me to go to lunch but just assumed I’d have time for it which I don’t on Friday’s. The only thing I could make sense of was that I didn’t go home after work and instead went to happy hour with the coworkers to talk about our week and also get some support about my appointment earlier that week. My husband knew about the appointment and knew I was upset by it,. I’ve done it for enough time that I didn’t think anything of it and he didn’t say one way or the other. I’ve dealt with his silent treatments for 10 years at this point, so I do my best to appear unbothered by him lashing out but I do apologize and I run an errand for him on my way home that he wanted me to go do.

After this the next day, he makes an excel spreadsheet to detail how much money I contribute to our household, and lists off all of the expenses I cost us (food, a house cleaner “to help me”, since I guess cleaning the house is my job now..) and he even went so far as to separate out car insurance and what each of our cars cost in gas, and how much money I spend during the week.

So I’m really stuck in how to respond. On one hand I’m totally furious that he took the time to do this to hold against me. He didn’t come right out and say it, but it insinuates to me that I don’t contribute as much money as him and my “expenses” are high, so the expectation is that my job is less important, and my dedication to it less valuable than his. He said I don’t care about him as much as my job, and this whole spreadsheet kind of seems to say that he’s the breadwinner and he should take priority in my life, and just in general.

So, I would love some advice for when we finally talk about this (I’m currently still receiving the silent treatment because talking to me is “pointless”). How do I defend my financial contribution? He is right it’s monetarily less. But I work my ass off at work and at our home to keep it nice and to keep it functioning. That man washed dishes, cooked his own dinner, or cleaned a toilet or done his own laundry in months. The only reason he did his laundry today was so he could pick all of my items out of it and do only his laundry, to stick it to me. Petty stuff like this makes this issue so hard for me to broach because if I show the smallest hint of anger or misspeak once, he will hold this against me. I know I’m not perfect, and I apologized sincerely to him after he told me he was upset I was out for too long. I even went to the mall after to run an errand for him. Not so much as a thank you. He acts entitled to my time, and belittles what I do to contribute to our home. If there’s anyone who has dealt with anything similar, how did you get your spouse off your back when it comes to your pay? In one breath he tells me he’s happy I’m working and praises my strong work ethic. In the next he’s borderline calling me a leech because I don’t get paid as much as him. Any advice or even just a listening ear is appreciated.

Submitted September 22, 2019 at 03:17PM by maritalproblems24 https://ift.tt/30FQwNP