We have been together for 6 years married for just over a year. My wife has been growing increasingly snappy and angry at me over the last 12-18 months. It literally takes nothing for her to snap at me anymore, and if I don't immediately fall to my knees and apologise unequivocally..it ends up in me being humiliated, commentary about me as a person, my behaviours holding us back etc. etc.
I have been called a POS, been called lazy and selfish, berated for the smallest of things, got told to f**k off last night. She has demonised me to the extreme – for eg. I used to love saying hello and give her a kiss after coming home from work while she WFH. One day without warning she lashes out at me calling me effing selfish for getting what I want (kiss and a hello) and disturbing her work routine towards the end of the day. This is just one example of how I do everything wrong apparently. She has said and admitted to saying some incredibly horrible stuff to me in the past, but apologised (after me asking for it) so we could move forward.
Leading up to the wedding I was berated every week for not meeting her standards for getting tasks done. Unfortunately they didn't stop there, frequently i would end up hearing a 30 min rant about my flaws, how I've ruined things for her, just deeply hurtful stuff…
She's become hypersensitive to everything and its getting worse every week. Last night she went off again, and blamed me for a lot of things from the past which I was blind sided by. There seems to be a lot of hatred and contempt building up and its coming out in explosive episodes…
We are both studying alongside fulltime jobs, planning to move overseas next year, looking to buy an investment house soon….there's a fair bit of an admin burden and pressure on our lives as we try to adult right now.
I want to bring up her unacceptable behaviour and ask for it to stop, but I can 100% guarantee it will backfire, come back to me and derail our week. How do I stand up for myself, get my message across and still minimise damage to our day-to-day life?