My (29F) partner (28M) keeps assuming I do things to deliberately hurt him, and he expects an apology. It's destroying my happiness, but is he in the right?

My partner (28M) and I (29F) have been dating for about a year now, and we've recently run into a bit of an issue where he believes I don't apologise when I'm in the wrong, but I believe he asks for apologies for things that don't require an apology.

I'm hoping to get advice and some insight into this situation. So far, it feels impossible to navigate because I feel both of our feelings are always valid. However, something needs to be done and I just don't know how to frame this to him.

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tl;dr. I will occasionally do or say something, and "Brad" will decide I did it to hurt him. Either he says I'm mad at him when I'm not, or that I did/said something with the explicit intention of upsetting him or emotionally manipulating him. While we both believe in apologising when you accidentally hurt someone's feelings, he expects apologies even when I haven't done anything wrong; he's just projecting bad intentions onto my actions

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Brad has a habit of projecting his feelings onto my behaviour, and then wanting an apology for that. Here are some examples:

• I cooked him something experimental and thought he'd love it. I asked and he said he didn't like it. I then said I was feeling a little embarrassed. He then became worked up and eventually said he was upset because I was "mad at him". When I said I wasn't, he said I was invalidating his feelings. At no point did I place any blame. I literally just said, "Oh, I feel a bit embarrassed now," and he went on a rant about how he isn't allowed to express emotions
• One time we got takeout and he asked if I was paying. I sat back, looked confused and kind of offended, and then he said he felt I was using him for his money. I told him I wasn't, and had no idea what he was talking about because I expected to split the bill; he then got even more upset with me and repeated his original point and we argued. It was then that he told me I had forgotten that it was my turn to get the takeout. Over the course of the argument, it became clear that he thought I had remembered but was intentionally acting confused to get him to pay, so he was upset at me. In reality, I had just forgotten. Edit: we don't have an established "turn" system. Usually we split the bill or get our own share, but last time I didn't have cash and he got my half. It was about three weeks before this takeout, and in that time it just slipped my mind
• We had been discussing something in the evening but we had both been drinking, so we eventually realised we were too drunk to reasonably discuss things. In the morning, he brought it up again and I simply said "do you remember the conversation last night?". He then got extremely upset, and when I asked him why he kept saying that I was invalidating him. Eventually he said, "you're trying to stop me from discussing last night.". When I said I wasn't doing that, he became upset again because he felt I wasn't listening to him
• I came home early from work and he greeted me and told me all about his day, and then when I went to speak about my day he said he was in the middle of something and could only step away for a few minutes. I was disappointed, and when he asked what was wrong I said I was fine and didn't want to talk about it (it's true; I wanted to discuss it later. If he was too busy to chat then he was too busy for any other conversation). I can't even remember how this argument started, but he ended up saying that I was deliberately showing my disappointment in order to make him feel guilty. He wanted me to apologise for my reaction because it upset him. Edit: to add context, he was planning on watching a car race event on the TV. I arrived about 30 mins before the event, and he spent about 10-15 mins talking to me about my day. He then left to continue playing video games, so I feel it was only natural I was a bit disappointed. It's worth noting he didn't actually take much issue with me saying "I'm fine", he took most issue with my general feelings of disappointment
• We went to a new gym location together, and later I said I felt really uncomfortable at the gym and wasn't sure if I'd return (we go to different locations; same chain). He then began to rant about how he moved gyms "for me" and it was unfair to make him always travel to my gym; he didn't even ask why I was uncomfortable. I said that I wasn't even remotely suggesting that and that all I wanted to do was share that I was uncomfortable and find a compromise, and that I was hurt he jumped to that conclusion. He still wanted an apology for upsetting him, and when I said it wasn't fair that I needed to apologise for that, he essentially said, "So I have to apologise to you when I make a mistake but you don't need to apologise to me?"

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It's also creating another problem. I interrupt him a lot when we argue, and a big reason it due to stuff like this. It's really, really hard for me to sit there and listen to him express his feelings over how he's upset at me for deliberately doing something to hurt him, when I just made a mistake. I then interrupt to say, "hang on, I didn't purposefully hurt you," and then he will become angry that I interrupted and invalidated him

I am extremely anxious over this, because I don't want it to come across like I am saying he can't be upset. I especially don't want to sound like I am gaslighting him by saying, "I know you feel that, but it didn't happen that way.". I grew up being gaslit and manipulated by a parent, so I know how horrible the feeling is when you try and explain why you're upset and the other person tells you it didn't happen that way. However, I'm also beginning to feel like I need to monitor everything I say and do, and whenever he takes a long pause in the conversation, I get anxious and assume I've done something innocuous to cause a fight. Staying level-headed and calmly explaining my point of view doesn't work to diffuse arguments; he just says I'm invalidating him

Submitted May 03, 2023 at 12:13AM by Dizzy-Bridge-1117 https://ift.tt/Yxn3F6v