Dear Caroline:

“He has this habit of talking a lot and very long… He can talk for 40 minutes without taking a pause…  an hour or hour and a half… without taking any pause… He tells me everything, all the facts about him, his girlfriend, his mom, their health, everything, every detail… he again started talking about his bike, what repairs he did, exactly what, where, what day it happened, what he ate for breakfast that day, what he wore, that kind of details… that he talks a lot, very detailed, very fast and I sometimes don’t follow his stories, it’s too much, too long… It’s just overwhelming”.

–Wikipedia/ Pressured Speech: “Pressured speech is unrelenting, rapid, often loud talking without pauses. Those with pressured speech do not respond to verbal and nonverbal cues indicating that others wish to speak…  They are unable to listen to others, either talking nonstop until they run out of steam… The speech can be either intelligible or unintelligible.. People with schizophrenia, as well as anyone experiencing extreme anxiety, may also exhibit pressure of speech…  a feature of hypomanic and manic illness  Pressure of speech has commonly been observed in people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder…Psychostimulants such as cocaine or amphetamines may cause speech resembling pressured speech”.

health line. com/ pressured speech: “It’s often a part of experiencing a manic episode. The speech will come out rapidly, and it doesn’t stop at appropriate intervals. It’s difficult to understand what’s being said during pressured speech. It’s also not possible to carry on a conversation because the person with pressured speech will not stop long enough for another person to speak…  A pressured speech episode may continue for more than an hour.”

Back to what you shared: “he had anger issues when he was just being angry all the time and projected this on me… I spent all evening feeling guilty and thinking about this. But it made ME angry.. I was always very polite, listening patiently… Lately I got really tired with this and a bit angry…  I was tired of listening to this. He replied angrily: forgive me but I don’t think I told you this story specifically… He called me out again that I don’t listen to him… He felt very much hurt and sorry for himself because I called off our meeting in last minute,…He told me he would never do such thing to me.. He said he was disappointed with me because I was always listening to him very patiently and he thinks I am rude and impolite…I know I should say directly things like I don’t wanna hear this anymore, this is too much details, stop talking. but I was raised this way and just keep quiet, maybe I’m good target for being treated like this…. He also said I didn’t text him all week… He started scrolling through the texts and asking: did you get this text? you didn’t reply. how about this one? and this one, did you get it?… I feel terrible but I also feel a bit relieved. What do you think? I wrote this to vent a little but also not always sure how I should feel. I was abused growing up“-

-My comments: he’s been taking advantage of your passivity (listening to him quietly for hours), being unreasonably demanding of you, taking on the victim role and accusing you for victimizing him, aka blaming and guilt-tripping you. He did not take any responsibility for his problematic speech and for projecting his anger at you:  so, yes, he has been abusing you is my answer to your question (in the title of your thread).

The wrongdoing on your part was not that you didn’t always, 100% of the time, listen to him quietly and politely. It was not that you got angry at him. The wrongdoing on your part was not something you did to him, but something you did to yourself: expecting and demanding of yourself to be a quiet and passive recipient of his guilt-tripping and of his pressured speech (which is very distressing to be exposed to, I know because my mother talked that way).

Seems to me that you are inclined to feel guilty when accused of a wrongdoing (even though there is no wrongdoing on your part, in this case) and he is inclined to blame and guilt-trip other people. A combination of a person inclined to feel guilty and a person inclined to blame is a disastrous combination: it is simply bad for your mental health. Do you agree?

anita