My husband did apologize this morning, but I’d still love some perspective from you lovely ladies.

For context: a year ago I was planning a trip to visit my sister in the PNW. Covid had other plans when I had to cancel the trip in April. I am working on rescheduling the trip. For Covid worries - we aren’t doing anything but hiking and I’m planning lots of time for quarantining before and after. We are also doing this later in the year so here’s to hoping I’ll be vaccinated beforehand!

After kids were in bed my husband and I had time to talk. I mentioned that I didn’t feel ready to do major hiking because we don’t have a lot of hills around here (we live in the Ohio Valley area). So I’m working on a plan to get ready - walking daily, hiking on the weekends (maybe do some trail running to increase endurance).

Here’s the argument. Every time I said something he had a comment. I saw it as snide comments he saw them as funny. For example he said “every time hiking comes up you have to *hit on our hiking trails”. When I tried to explain it he doubled down. So I tried just shifting it and talking about how I think I’ll purchase hiking boots with enough time to break them in. Once again he starts on, “oh here we go. More shoes. Anytime you start something new you have to buy shoes”. (For context I purchase new sneakers about every 6 months-year. He probably buys new shoes every couple of years).

I starting seeing red because at this point every single thing has been shot down (in probably a 15 minute “conversation.”). We weren’t having a conversation. It felt like me making a statement and him having to rudely comment on each statement. I can’t remember what I said last. He started laughing. So I said I was done talking. He said to lighten up. I said it felt like he was s*itting on everything I was saying (a callback to what he said earlier).

Later on when I’m in bed he comes to get a blanket to sleep on the couch. I tried explaining further - that I was frustrated that I was talking to him about something important to me and all he could do was - what he did. He then tried to claim that he didn’t do that at all. I called him out as trying to gaslight me there. So he kept defending himself over the whole thing. And essentially calling me too sensitive and controlling (as in trying the control the conversation).

I know it’s easy to portray things that put me in a better light and I also just can’t see what I did wrong. I think I went from 0-100 in the conversation because I was trying to redirect and de escalate until then he started laughing. Was there a better way to handle this?

We had a sort of similar argument over something else last week and he keeps coming back to me trying to control things (the way he says something or me asking for an apology). Essentially he ate the last of my snack - he didn’t realize he ate the last of it. I was frustrated but then he got mad at me for being frustrated. It was like he did something crappy, but gets mad at me when I don’t like it.

Anyway - any insight or perspective is appreciated.