Your Husband is Immature

It sounds like your husband is furious with you and the way he expresses this fury is by behaving in ways that annoy you--just like a kid would do.

Your husband is engaged in a classic maneuver that 's called projection. Projection is a defense mechanism that enables one person to dump his/her unwanted feelings into another person. In your case, your husband doesn't want to own his anger, so he behaves in ways that infuriate you, thereby arranging to get you to carry his unwanted feelings.

If you stop taking the bait, he will be forced to own his own feelings. Owning his feelings is the first step toward breaking your conflict cycle. In order to break the cycle, you need to stop taking the bait and saying rude things to him. When you are rude to him, you allow him to continue disowning his own feelings, and you also make him more furious at you, which results in another round of paybacks, and an ever worsening level of conflict.

At this point it doesn't matter who started 'it,' what matters is who is going to stop the war. Since you seem to want to end this cycle, then the first thing you are going to need to do is to stop saying rude things. That will certainly diminish his fury toward you and should minimize his provocative behavior. I am not expecting that all of his acting out will stop as a result of the above change on your part, since he seems to be very indirect when it comes to communicating his anger.

So, from here on in when he misbehaves, your job is to ignore him, just like you would ignore a naughty child. Keep in mind that any attention, positive, negative, or otherwise reinforces his bad behavior. When he misbehaves ignore him completely. This will drive him crazy, and he will probably try to up the stakes by acting even worse--temporarily. Bite your tongue, walk away, etc.

If you can hold to this for six weeks or so, he will begin to change his ways. Then, in a calm moment, when he isn't trying to get your goat, tell him that you've noticed that he tries to provoke you to get angry when he is angry himself and that you want him to begin to work on recognizing when he's mad at you and telling you directly, rather than behaving provocatively.

If you can succeed in getting him to tell you directly, thank him for his honesty; don't be defensive or try to justify yourself or your actions. Take responsibility for whatever it is that you said or did that landed wrong with him. Remember that feelings aren't wrong or right and that he is entitled to feel whatever he feels. I have given you a lot to work on. My book would be a good adjunct for you. Let me know how you make out.