My husband has a pattern of being very hard on me throughout our marriage although it has improved. But something happened again today and I feel so confused and defeated.
I took my husband’s new car to the dealership for an oil change yesterday. He knew this and was totally fine with it. Afterwards I drove it home and the oil light came on. I told my husband about it and he said we’d check it in the morning as it was probably a sensor that hadn’t reset yet. Well, we checked the dipstick this morning and there’s no oil in the car, the check engine light is now on, and there’s car is making a lot of noise. So the dealership didn’t add any oil into the car during the oil change and we’re assuming the engine is toast. The dealership is towing the car back to the dealership and giving us a loaner in the meantime.
At first, my husband said this wasn’t my fault and he wasn’t upset at me. Then less than 30 minutes later, he’s telling me that I have responsibility here and I should have checked the dipstick. I told him that he specifically told me not to worry about it when I told him about the oil light. He said that doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is that the car was “my responsibility” since I was taking it to get the oil change. This happened on my watch so it’s my “fault” even if I didn’t mess up the oil change. I should have done something to catch it sooner even though I did do exactly as he told me to at the time this all went down.
When he told me this, I’ll admit that I started to cry and defend myself. He says that my reaction is extremely concerning and it’s as big of a deal as the car being possibly totaled and that I can’t take accountability for anything. That he’s now been without a car twice this year and he’s had to deal with it completely himself.
That’s entirely not true. When his old car broke down earlier this year, he wouldn’t let me do anything because he was so angry I hadn’t answered my phone when his car died because I was cleaning. I called him back in less than two minutes of his call but there was no going back. He wouldn’t let me go to the dealership to look for a new car and he wouldn’t let me be on any of the paperwork for the new car either. Although he did make me handle the process of selling his old car from start to finish.
He now won’t let me do anything with this process either and is extremely upset with me. He says that this shows him my priority is always me vs him and proving that I didn’t do anything wrong. To me, he’s the one who makes things into him vs me, I’m not the one doing that. He tries to make things my fault so that he has someone to be angry with because that’s easier than being angry at a situation.
He won’t hear any of it and completely shuts me down when I try to talk. He says that he’s not yelling or screaming and he won’t listen to what I have to say because it’s wrong and that I’m manipulating his past kindness when I remind him that he originally told me that this wasn’t my fault. He tells me that it’s VILE for me to attempt to not accept complete responsibility for this.
I feel like I’m going crazy here but I’m open to feedback. Am I in the wrong here? Is there responsibility here that I should be accepting? Am I being too defensive?