That’s true, Anita. Patience is something I’m not able to exercise once that point of escalation is reached. Although I often try to prevent the arguments from escalating, and recently managed it with some amount of success, often it just happens without either of us actually realizing that what we’re saying actually is fueling on the argument. And then comes the issue where the emotional brain takes over and tells me, “don’t back down… fight back with all you got, if you have the guts!” It considers even assertiveness a weakness in that case, perhaps. Though my rational side knows that its wrong but I was not able to stop myself.

Another thing is Jerry told me recently (for good reason) that I have been manipulative and treated her like a disposable tool and played with her emotions. Although I could never dream of treating her like that intentionally, plain fact is that in my anger and impatience, I did things that cannot leave any doubt about the truth of her words. Like after an argument which ended with me sending some especially awful message and storming off, she kept sending me sorry messages even if its not her fault and I kept ignoring them until the anger subsided. Sometimes I did it with genuine concern hoping to be normal first instead of causing more damage… but she felt “you don’t care for me enough to control your anger instead of giving priority to it and behaving like this”? I’ve also lost how many times I said stuff like “I’m just a useless piece of *censored*, I only hurt you all, I wish I just (insert painful method of death)”. And often I sent not just one message but often many long ones.’ Often it was in genuine frustration with myself… but the effect was the same. Its a mark of her love and care that each time she forgave me quietly, putting aside her own pain and tears, trying just to make me happy. It makes me loathe myself even more, love her even more, but I can imagine few things worse than what I did. I crossed all limits with this last argument… words like “may your tongue rot” cannot be excused under any circumstances and it will take extraordinary and permanent repentance from my side to be worthy of being with her again.