Dear Prudence,
My husband will say horrible things I know he doesn’t mean—for instance, if our daughter keeps getting up at night he says he will tie her to a chair and put duct tape over her mouth (he said this to me, not to her). When I say, “You don’t mean that,” he will say he does. Then when I tell him that’s truly horrible, he says, “Of course I wouldn’t do it.” I find this disturbing and get in fights with him over this. Am I overreacting? He says really uncharitable things about others as well that I know he can’t actually mean in his heart—like if someone didn’t vaccinate their child and their child died, he would go out of his way to tell them it was their fault.