I'm sorry you are in such a miserable situation. It sounds like you entered this marriage reluctantly. Are you very financially dependent on your husband? How do you think divorce would impact your children? Consider how keeping this marriage going is affecting them. I doubt that a man like you're describing is all that positive toward his kids. Are they walking on eggshells too?

Your other option is to renegotiate your relationship with this man. I don't mean you sit down and you both sign a new contract - though that wouldn't be a bad idea. What I mean is: Stop walking on the eggshells. Let him blow up every now and then. He'll get over it.

You have made yourself small around him, in hopes of placating him. It's not working. Start taking up more space in that home. Have more respect for your own perceptions and feelings. Is it really true that you "don't know if [you're] being petty?" Nothing you've shared in your post is evidence of pettiness on your part. So are you holding back on us and not letting us see how unfair and nitpicking you can be? Or was your description of your marriage pretty accurate? If he really is constantly criticizing you, doesn't that mean that he is the petty one?

Maybe you could change how you respond to being criticized. Next time he starts, say: "Stop it. Stop berating me and picking on me." Then walk away from him, like, into another room. If he keeps it up, say: "No, I do not deserve you dumping on me. You are wrong to speak to me like that." By changing your behavior, he might have to rethink what he's doing.

No therapist is going to have any impact on your husband. I doubt if the pills he's taking are doing anything either. He takes them, so he can believe he is a sick, tortured soul and entitled to act badly because he can't help it. He's mad at life. He's unhappy, and he wants you to be unhappy too. Maybe you could try ignoring him, or, at least, make believe you are ignoring him. He'll get "pissed off." Let him.

I know it's easy for me to say all this. I'm not stuck under the same roof as him. It's hard to act different from how you are in the habit of acting. You can't change him. Try changing you. Refuse to let him control what you say. Make yourself less predictable. I know you fear him getting mad and taking it out on the kids. Decide that the kids and you can tolerate him being difficult. Take the kids and go get ice cream, while he goes into a major sulk without an audience to impress. You'll have to experiment.