I remember that feeling very well, that sickness in the pit of my stomach when the phone rang and I knew it was going to be judgmental. I overcame that to some extent by just not answering anymore.
Now, that did make things 10x worse when I did get home and there would be a huge blowout argument.
Now, that did make things 10x worse when I did get home and there would be a huge blowout argument.
Indeed I've tried that tactic as well. Then I get a verbal assualt: "You're my wife, and you don't answer me (immediately) when I call! You are horrible! This isn't marriage!" And then he'll demand, "What if there was an emergency?" When I'm feeling cheeky, my response is, "What's the emergency?", which begets an out-of-control rant, because there is no emergency, unless you deem that not knowing the dinner menu or having to heat up a dinner plate in the microwave ALL BY YOURSELF constitutes an emergency. However, my usual response is, "If you're calling me just to yell at me, I'm hanging up." Then I'll hang up. Typically he'll call me me five minutes later to yell at me again, and I'll say the same thing and hang up again. When I arrive home, he typically yells some more, sulks and puts himself to bed early (like at 8:30PM instead of the usual 10 or 11PM), in protest. Anyway, he tries to "punish" me with a tantrum whenever I go out. Apparently he thinks I'm his full-time caretaker-maid. The injustice is, caretakers and maids get days off, but I apparently I don't deserve a few hours off here and there to do something fun for myself, let alone whole day or weekend, let alone any pay . . .
Anyway, I've resolved to try to have a social life, knowing that no matter what I do--provide a complete itinerary and listing of other people I'll be seeing, invite him to come along, leave food for him to reheat for dinner, etc.--he will have a tantrum a third to half the time and attempt to "ruin" it for me. Just getting his "permission" to leave the home is sometimes grueling--he wants to know locations, exact travel times, people's names, etc., a third-degree interrogation for getting a morning coffee, it's truly tiring. One time I had a morning coffee for an hour, and since the coffee shop was near my local drug store, I decided to stop in to pick up a prescription and some household items, to save time, right? Since that drug store errand took maybe 20 minutes extra, guess who called and chewed me out, for taking "too long" for a coffee meeting. He demanded that I come right back home. If I dare show him the receipts and prescription as "evidence," he'll toss them aside and insinuate that I'm doing something dishonest. Ugh.
Like you, there have been a couple of times that I've ignored his call, knowing full well that my spouse was calling only to yell at me, and I might as well delay the onslaught until I get home. Plus, when I'm driving and he's yelling at me, he makes me so nervous that I'm afraid I'm going to get into an accident.


