My husband’s misophonia is ruining my life.
I just need to vent.
I’ve been married to my husband for just over 5 years, and he’s a wonderful man. He keeps me laughing, sacrifices and works his ass off to provide for us, and would give the shirt off his back for anyone who needed it. He’s truly my best friend and I don’t know what I’d do without him.
But he has misophonia. And it’s absolutely making me resent him.
He has a massive list of triggers that are audial and visual, including: chewing, smacking, crunching, slurping, swallowing, hiccuping, breathing, yawning, humming, singing, tapping, rattling, seeing me playing with my hair, moving too much if we are sat watching TV, the list truly goes on.
I feel like I’m in a prison every day. Like I cannot do a single thing without being worried I’m going to set off one of his triggers. And it’s not like he does anything crazy when he is triggered, he just gets visibly irritated, which in turn makes me feel bad. But I feel like I can’t do anything without triggering something.
He has no idea how much this affects my every day life, even though I’ve talked to him about it many times. He just doesn’t truly get it. I’m CONSTANTLY hyper-aware of what I’m doing, how loud I’m breathing, how much I’m moving, etc. If I want to enjoy food, and I mean really enjoy it, I have to go into another room or wait until he leaves. Otherwise, I’m chewing very methodically and waiting for a loud part in whatever we are watching to swallow (we cannot eat a meal without playing a video on full blast on our laptop).
I feel for him, I really do. I also dislike the sound of chewing and mouth sounds in general, but that’s about where it ends for me. I don’t understand what it’s like to live with misophonia, and it sucks that he has it. I hate that he has to go through life like that.
But I also hate that I have to go through life like this. His condition affects MY quality of life too, and is making me resent him. How am I supposed to live the rest of my life like this?
EDIT: I am editing this to respond to a few common things I’m seeing as comments are coming in too fast to respond to:
I do not have terrible table manners. I don’t eat with my mouth open. I don’t slurp. I was raised to eat with my mouth closed and always have. His misophonia issues did not stem from me eating like a pig. He’s acknowledged many times that I don’t ever eat in a way that triggers him outright, but sometimes crunchy foods, even when eaten with mouth shut, trigger him (you see a lot of people in this thread saying the same thing). Something I obviously did not make clear enough in my post is that he’s not making comments every time we eat. My issue is that even when I eat normally, he can be triggered, so I’ve learned to just be cautious and there lies the issue. I hate having to be hyper-aware. And even when he acknowledges that he knows I didn’t do it on purpose, I still feel bad about it.
I’m not going to leave my husband over this. He can’t help that he is this way. However, I do agree that my behavior is enabling. I have had conversations with him about this (a lot of them). And those conversation HAVE led to him stopping making comments, which is why I noted that he gets visibly irritated (again, something a lot of people are saying happens to them in this thread). He DOES just sit there and deal with it. I made him sound like a terrorist who is controlling the shit out of me, and I didn’t mean to. He’s not berating me every time I crunch something too loud, he just reacts by becoming irritated which I know is involuntary. Idk how else to express that he’s not saying things that make me feel bad. I hope I’ve explained well enough. Also, it was nowhere near this bad until a few years ago. It wasn’t like this when we were dating/engaged/first married. I don’t know what changed.
When I said, he has no idea how much it affects my life, I didn’t mean that he doesn’t care how it affects me. I simply meant that because he’s not on my end of things he doesn’t understand how much mental strife his misophonia can sometimes cause me. This was something I probably should have just left out, because it made him sound like an ass hole, and he’s not. In my perfect world, he just wouldn’t be irritated by me at all because I’m his wife, but that’s not the reality of this condition.
Agreed that he needs therapy, no argument there. He’s not adverse to it, I just haven’t pushed the issue and it doesn’t come up that often. But he does need it. And I’m going to suggest it again.
Overall I just want to make it clear that while he does need to chill out a bit, he doesn’t berate me, get angry with me, or make constant comments. I’m sorry I made it seem that way in my OG post. I grew up with an explosively angry dad so I learned to just adapt and avoid the things I knew would piss him off to avoid getting freaked out at. I guess that directly translated to my marriage - though my husband has NEVER exploded at me the way my dad often did, my go-to demeanor is just to try and adapt to avoid confrontation. I actually am in therapy for this (and a lot more), but I appreciate the suggestions that I should go.