My Husband Doesn’t Scream at Me and I Hate It

I grew up with yellers. In my house, when someone made you angry, you yelled at them and they yelled back.

I was the worst of us all. I didn’t know what to do with my anger and would shout at anyone in my vicinity who said even the slightest thing that set me off.

I’m not a yeller in general. I only seem to yell at my family and my partner. Apparently I scream at the people who love me the most. I wonder what that says about me

Screaming Became the Norm

When I was 21 I entered into a serious relationship with a beautiful, charming, alcoholic narcissist who was verbally and emotionally abusive. I was prepared to marry him.

In the beginning, he was sweet to me. He made me feel loved and safe. He used to tell me how lucky I was to be with him. Yes, you read that correctly. He never told me how lucky he was to be with me, for the record.

As time went on, our relationship became a bit more volatile. He started to be mean, especially when he was drunk, which was often. He called me ugly names and pointed out that no one else would ever love me because I was crazy. But he loved me, so again, I was “lucky.”

Further into our relationship is when he became truly manipulative and cruel. One night, while I was still in college, he got upset with me for some small thing I said or did. It was so insignificant that I can’t even remember what it was. He yelled at me for a while and then, somewhere around midnight, stripped the bed and threw the sheets and blankets into the hallway. He told me to make a list of everything I had done wrong and wouldn’t let me go to bed until I had read it aloud to him.

What does this have to do with your husband not screaming at you, Allie? Everything.

My ex wasn’t quiet about his displeasure with me. He is six foot four and I am five foot one if I stand up really straight. He used to back me into corners, hover over me and scream in my face. Sometimes we got in shouting matches that caused our roommates concern. Sometimes he yelled at me in public. My friends didn’t like him, but I was so head over heels and blinded by love that they didn’t say anything.

Sometimes he would yell and throw things. And sometimes he would just yell. And I did the only thing I knew to do. I yelled back.

Life After a Screamfest

It took me a long time to be ok after that relationship ended. I spent years hiding from men. I believed all the ugly things he used to scream at me and figured I was broken, crazy and incapable of being loved.

And then I met my husband. He is kind, gentle, sweet, loving, loyal, and very much in love with me. Essentially, he’s the exact opposite of my ex.

He tells me he loves me many times a day, every day. He leaves me little notes and post-its around the house telling me how lucky he is to be with me. He plans date nights and buys me “just because” gifts when he finds something he knows I’ll like. It took me a long time to know what to do with that.

One thing that really frustrates me about him is that he doesn’t yell at me. I think I can count on one hand the number of times he’s raised his voice in six years. And he only has ever done it in response to my consistent yelling about something.

Sometimes I get heightened, agitated, or angry without knowing why. When that happens, I release that energy by screaming at him. I’ve gotten a lot better about it over the years, but in the beginning, I didn’t understand why he wasn’t screaming back.

One night, I screamed in his face for minutes, and he didn’t say a word. When I didn’t get the rise out of him that I wanted, I ran down the stairs and out into the snow. I heard him say “If you want me to yell at you you’re with the wrong person.” I was so ashamed of myself. I knew I was wrong, and I knew he hadn’t done anything to deserve it, but I didn’t know how to walk back in the house and apologize. In my experience, I would have been in trouble. Instead, my husband held me while I cried and said I was sorry and told me how much he loves me.

This all sounds great, but sometimes it’s infuriating.

I don’t know what to do when the screaming match is one-sided. After over six years together, I’m still learning how to deal with my emotions in a more constructive way.

Because I don’t just scream when I’m angry. I scream when I’m anxious, upset, or scared. Sometimes I get heightened and have a lot of anxious energy that needs to be released and if I haven’t engaged in healthy ways of expressing these emotions, I turn on my husband and yell at him.

I wish I could say I’ve never yelled at him in public, but that’s not entirely true. There have been a few occasions when we’re outside on a walk and I get mad, storm off, and then when he doesn’t follow me (which also infuriates me) I go back to where I left him and yell at him.

As I said, these instances are becoming fewer and farther between, but once in a while they still happen. And sometimes I wish he would just come after me and scream in my face. I think that’s the old patterns of behavior from my past that rear their ugly heads. I got so used to yelling, both at home growing up and in a very formative relationship, that I’m still wired to pick fights and expect to be screamed at. And I don’t know what to do when that doesn’t happen.

Reconciling the Past

I think the yelling thing is a combination of how heightened my emotions can get with nowhere to go and my core belief that I don’t deserve to be treated well. This stems from romantic relationships, especially the one I mentioned earlier.

But it’s also a learned behavior from childhood. I yelled, someone else yelled back. I wasn’t treated poorly and no one in my family is abusive, but we are yellers.

And now I have the opportunity to create a family of non-yellers. I don’t want to scream at my husband. I don’t want to get so upset that the only way to release it is to stomp around and scream.

Every once in awhile, though, I just wish he would scream back.

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This post was previously published on Hello, Love and is republished here with permission from the author.
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