Husband resents teenager, complains to me instead of trying to fix it.

I’m looking for advice for a situation that I don’t know how to handle. My husband (56m) is autistic, I (57f) have adhd and our teenager(16f) is auDHD. The situation is my husband has on MANY occasions emotionally abused our child. He has outbursts - loud and scary, and will not de-escalate easily. The last outburst, in January, was the worst - he yelled in her face that she is a loser, and then detailed why she didn’t deserve nice things, as a loser. He must have used that word a dozen times or more. Devastating.

After these incidents my husband doesn’t make an effort to repair the damage. I believe he expects me to do that. I only became aware of the extent of these incidents after the January incident when my daughter told me about incidents reaching back ten years. My daughter is upset because she feels like she has always been the one expected to remain calm - even at 6 yo, while her father berates her. My husband notices the lack of connection with her, but instead of feeling sad, he resents her for being “ungrateful” and feels like he’s the victim in the situation.

I really feel bad that I have allowed these incidents to happen in my presence. My dad was emotionally abusive to me, and my husband has, too. Early in the marriage my husband would become dyresgulated by something, corner me and lecture me for hours about my transgressions. Suffocating. I would disassociate and gray rock to get through those times. These days when he comes to talk to me about our daughter, I feel like he blames me for his mess, or at least he wants me to agree with him that our child is a jerk. This makes me angry.

I don’t know what to do about any of it.

Posted May 26, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC

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