My (31m) fiancé seems to have a pattern of screaming at me when he is upset and his excuse is to blame me semi indirectly (24f)

We’ve been together for 4 years. For a long time I’ve worked on myself to not be a person that yells, curses, name calls, or manipulates. It’s been really hard but I’ve gotten to a point where I’m able to compose myself and speak to my partner respectfully when communicating about an issue of any kind. Unfortunately my fiancé has not made that kind of progress, he says he is trying but he almost always screams, curses, name calls, and I’m starting to feel he acts manipulative to get arguments to go how he wants them to go, which is in his favor. I get a sense he often plays the victim. And says that if I would just “understand and believe him” he wouldn’t react this way. That because I don’t believe him, I am making him feel crazy. He likes to use the buzzword “gaslit” to describe this. He never used that word before until I used it once to describe him.. he always adopts words I use towards him, and ends up using them against me in arguments. It blows my mind. I’m afraid to call him out for his bad behavior because I know he’ll just absorb what I say and project it onto me next time. Here’s an example of how our arguments go and want leads to them. I woke up at 6 am the other day and thought it would be fun for me and my fiancé to go to a local beach that has nature trails and restaurants. He had said the day before that he wanted to do something fun with me, so I thought this would be perfect. I sat at my computer upstairs around 6 am while he was asleep on the couch downstairs, I did not want to wake him yet because he’s quite grumpy in the mornings. He awakes and comes upstairs about 30 minutes after 6am and asks what I’m doing, I told him I found a great beach we can go to today and that we should leave soon to enjoy the morning weather. He did not want to leave this early so I figured I’d spend a bit more time on the computer and then go shower and by that time another hour had passed. I came down stairs quietly as to not wake him and I did have to turn on a light maybe made a little noise to find my keys and some cleaning supplies. (since he was still sleeping, I wanted to kill time cleaning my car.) I cleaned my car for about an hour and he met me outside, I said hey if you don’t want to go I can just go by myself if you’re not up for it, he signaled at his shoes and said “why would I put these on if I didn’t want to go.” That made me happy and I was excited to hit the road! We enjoyed the first hour out and walked around the nature reserve and then decided to get some food and drinks at a restaurant, it was a okay time…he made a comment about how he didn’t want to be there and that this isn’t how he wanted to spend his day he wanted to go walk around otherwise he was going to have an anxiety fit. (we were only at the food place for about 15-20 minutes! I just needed a drink and to sit for a minute) but of course I can’t make him stay there and I finished my drink and told him we could go back to the beach. We did. But as soon as we got out of the car to walk down the the beach he sat down and put his head in his hands and said “ugh. I’m so tired” so I asked him “why have we came back to the beach then?” He didn’t really have an answer. I told him if he’s feeling bad we should head back home. I did not want to spend the day feeling like I was the only one wanting to enjoy myself, and if he was indeed feeling bad I didn’t want to make him be somewhere he didn’t want to be. So I took us to the car and said let’s head home. We were in the car for 2 minutes before he started saying “I just didn’t get any sleep because you woke me up this morning” that really irritated me because I went out of my way to try not to wake him up and let him sleep in 2 hours more. I even told him he didn’t have to go if he changed his mind about having plans for the day, he could just stay home and lounge, but he insisted on coming. I responded saying “Wait, what do you mean I woke you up? You came upstairs on your own accord and asked me what I was doing, I told you we should go to the beach today, you wanted to sleep more so you went back to sleep and I carried on upstairs for another hour on the computer, showered, and then I eventually went outside to clean my car, I never woke you up” I said that calmly, and respectfully, although the sound of my confusion was clear. He started screaming at me. Full on, out of nowhere. Making claims that I never believe him. He said “YOU WOKE ME UP THIS MORNING, DO NOT MAKE ME FEEL CRAZY, DO NOT GASLIGHT ME, ITS MY BODY I KNOW WHAT I EXPERIENCED, I HEARD NOISES UPSTAIRS AND THATS WHY I CAME UPSTAIRS TO SEE WHAT YOU WERE DOING” I’m just sitting there thinking like what the actual frick just happened. I didn’t even think it was an argument at first I was just trying to tell him I never went up to him and said “HEY wake up!” So I tried to tell him that’s what I meant. I told him I was being super quiet this morning and I don’t see how it’s possible that I’m responsible for waking him up. And that I don’t understand what he’s so upset about and that this shouldn’t be an argument. He goes on to scream more. Claiming that it was me that was arguing… because I didn’t accept his statement that I “woke him up”….That I can’t just listen and believe him… and that I’m gaslighting him in not doing so. To me, I was just disagreeing that I woke him up. I just stated that I was upstairs keeping to myself quietly. I don’t see that as being argumentative. If someone accuses me of something that I couldn’t have done or don’t believe I could have done, I’m going to just say I disagree respectfully. Especially since I went out of my way to be quiet this morning. I kept assuring him I am not trying to make him feel crazy I’m just trying to be honest, that I don’t understand how I could be responsible for him getting no sleep or waking him up. He was still screaming at me that if I don’t start believing him right now that I woke him up, that he was “f-cking done” with me. He repeated similar things while still yelling, that he’s done with my BS and that he doesn’t want this anymore, that I am causing too many problems, etc.

Honestly, I am so frightfully confused. A lot of arguments go like this, I’m being calm and respectful, trying to understand his point of view, often times I disagree with him, but IMO I am allowed to. He sees it as “not believing” him. He claims there’s a difference between me disagreeing with something and me not believing him about something only he could know, like what woke him up. And he’ll scream and yell and call names, purposely say hurtful things, and almost always threaten to be done with me. I’ll tell him he’s being verbally abusive and he says things like “here you go playing the victim like always” just because I’m asking him to stop screaming and being intentionally hurtful. I mean just last week he told me while screaming at me “I’m purposely mean to you to piss you off” I mean who says THAT and then claims that I’M playing the victim. When he’s done yelling at me he isolates me by going to his room upstairs and seemingly making a show of what a good time he’s having without me, like playing guitar and singing loudly or playing with friends on video games like nothing just happened. This almost always happens after. All while I’m sitting downstairs alone sulking wondering what the hell I’ve done to deserve this. He’ll come back and apologize for it after sometimes but he’ll usually say “we both need to change” or “I wouldn’t get so angry if you would just listen and believe me” and “I just want to be understood” This feels manipulative to me. You can be angry with me, but don’t verbally abuse me. Anger is a feeling not an action, he is responsible for his actions. I’ll tell him that and he’ll say “you’re right” but there’s still some underlying blame towards me. He likes to say he was never like this with past girlfriends and that it must have something to do with me. He’s also dealing with depression lately and he seems to use that as a reason for his emotional turbulence, he will make me feel like I’m not supporting him with his depression a lot of times too, even though I try to be there for him, I’ve even read articles for how to support depressed partners. But I’m so freaking calm and respectful when we’re “discussing” issues. What the hell do I need to change in this specific situation? I’ve worked on myself for years to become an effective healthy communicator. I’m not a perfect person but in that area I believe I’m very well rounded. My question is, is he well meaning? Does he genuinely feel I am gaslighting him when I disagree? Or am I being manipulated? I feel he’s such a blind spot for me. I want to believe the best in him. He has qualities that make him a good person. But this is such a pattern and I’m always left feeling broken and confused. And I wonder if I’m doing something wrong, maybe I’m selfish and I’m not as caring and understanding as I think I am.. or if I should go with my gut that he’s manipulating and abusing me. I hope this wasn’t too horrible of a cluster of thoughts written out. I tried to give background info and proper flow. Sorry if it’s hard to follow.

TL;DR fiancé has a pattern of explosive anger and I’m not sure if it’s me or him that is causing the problems.

Submitted June 22, 2021 at 04:19AM by Gokittys11 https://ift.tt/3vHGzyZ