TLDR: my boyfriend and I had a huge fight, and I need help making him understand that me criticizing something he did or even just sharing my feelings is not an attack on him.
Me (33F) and my boyfriend of 3 years (26M) are planning on moving in together in May -- he currently lives with his mom, and she will move out and live with her boyfriend and I will move into their house. It's a rental they are fixing up for the homeowner. My therapist advised me that given how thing are between us, however, moving in is not a good idea.
I'm seeking advice on how to communicate my concerns with him about a fight we had yesterday, and what to do moving forward. I love him, I want to live with him, but I also know how dysfunctional and unhealthy our relationship is and always has been. I know I'm in denial, but I also know I love the good moments so much, they feel very powerful, and we've grown a lot together despite everything.
The situation at hand is, we recently have had a series of fights that demonstrate a frequent pattern we have -- I share an emotion or insecurity and ask for reassurance, and he gets angry at me as a result. I can be quite blunt without meaning to be, and while I always try to communicate as clearly as possible, sometimes what I say comes off as judgemental. Or it even is judgemental, because I want to communicate a concern. But I always try and express it nicely, calmly, with lots of "I" statements. The issue is that he takes this as a personal attack and gets very deffensive and upset. I try to explain myself and how that actually isn't the case, and he will escalate things and accuse me of saying he's a horrible person, a monster, that he does nothing for me, etc., when I haven't said anything like that and am just trying to express a small and specific grievance. This came to a head yesterday with a fight we had.
We had a lovely day, separated when he went to work (I even visited him at work and brought him lunch) and reconvened that night. I got a message from a friend saying she needed a ride to the emergency vet. I left and drove her and her husband to the vet, watched their poor cat in awful pain from facial cancer they hadn't known he had which was causing horrific symptoms and lots of blood, and cried with them while they had him put down. After I took them home, my friends who knew what was going on called me to check in. They expressed support and made sure I was ok, as I'd just lost my own cat a few weeks ago.
I headed back to my boyfriend's house after all this. I didn't send a text that I was on my way, I just showed up. He was playing a video game and greeted me, said he'd finish up the game then shut it off, but didn't ask how the emergency vet went or anything. I went to the bathroom and then laid down in the bedroom, and he called from the other room asking how it went. I said I'd tell him when he was finished. He got an annoyed tone and said he was shutting the game down, acting as if I was scolding him. He joined me, asked some questions, I told him a bit about what happened, asked for a hug which he gave. We kept chatting about it but I felt really raw and traumatized after everything and like our energies weren't matching up somehow. Like I was feeling very serious, while he was cheerful and maybe didn't seem to understand the gravity of the situation for me. I felt like I should just go home and make sure my own cats were doing ok. I felt a bit disappointed and upset to be honest. I headed out, and then I sent a text message saying I was sorry I stopped by.
He asked me to explain why. Here is what I texted him: "Love, I just helped my friends through a really horrific experience. It was emotionally very hard, it was graphic, and I just lost my own pet not too long ago. I think I just wanted you to be present with me when I got there, ask what happened, be there for me, have compassion. I know you're going to respond that I am being unreasonable and that the way you responded to me was beyond reproach. I'm not mad at you, but I feel you were dismissive and not able to read the gravity of the situation and act accordingly. I apologized for stopping by because I did so without warning, expecting you to drop what you were doing and offer emotional support at a moments notice, and I dont think that was the right call on my part. I felt upset with you because my emotions are raw right now after a traumatic experience. I love you, this isn't me attacking you. I hope you can hear where I'm coming from and understand."
He responded saying he did offer me support and compassion and that I should have communicated my needs more clearly if I needed more (which I do agree with). He said I was taking my "unhinged disappointed anger" out on him and that I had an attitude as soon as I walked in. I tried to calmly explain my perception, how I wasn't angry, how I just wanted some love and support right now, and that I didn't have "attitude," it was just that people who have just gone through something heavy sometimes don't act perfectly. He said I was talking down to him about grief, lecturing him like a child, and he was sick of being treated like this and why do I always say he's this horrible, awful person when he is actually highly compassionate and empathetic.
We went on like this for a while before I eventually called him. He yelled at me and told me that in the 3 years we've been together, he has made many strides improving himself (this is true), and in this time I have not made any progress on the 2 things he needs from me -- more patience with him, and not assuming the worst of him. He was furious with me and told me this fight was my fault, that I'm constantly sharing my "feelings" and expecting him to respond in the exact way I want, and when he doesn't I torment him and accuse him of being a terrible person.The implication here is that I am in the process of being diagnosed with autism, and that disability is the reason for our problems. By the end of this call, I was crying and I believed him. I felt like the whole fight was my fault.
The following night, I helped my friend bury her cat and while doing so got a call from my mom's friend that my mom had fallen (she has Parkinsons), had been unable to get up, and had just been found and taken to the ER (in another state). I didn't know if she was ok or not. My boyfriend called to ask how she was doing, I told him I just needed love and support right now and didn't want to argue about the other stuff. He responded, "OK, but you need to realize that you --" and started in on me again. I told him I really just needed him to be supportive right now during all this and he told me that's not what a partnership is, I don't get to make one-sided demands. He couldn't even let it go long enough to just be there for me while I worried about my mom. I ended up hanging up on him.
I want to talk to him about this, but I don't know how to get through to him. I showed our text exchange to my therapist and she said that he escalated things, projected his feelings on what I was saying, because she didn't get anything like what he did from how I communicated. I wish I could make him see that his feelings aren't coming from anything I am doing.
Submitted February 07, 2023 at 12:19PM by dephress https://ift.tt/elZsuk2
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