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Hi Helcat,

Thank you for replying.

The thing is… I cannot entirely reveal the dinner incident because it may hurt some people’s sentiments deeply. But I will give it a shot. He made some comments about some people as a joke, something he does often, and I did not really like it. So I asked him if he really thinks that way or he is just making a joke (I actually do not agree with making such jokes either). I said I needed to know his mentality so I can see if I need to make any decisions. I do agree with him that this is something I should have brought up in private and not in front of his sister. And I was deeply sorry I insulted him that way.

I’m not sure I agree with you that I threatened him by asking him if he wanted to break up. I was at a loss for what more I could do then. I had already apologized multiple times. I had even asked him to point it out when I was being insulting because he said I’d done it multiple times and I had not realized it, to which he said he wasn’t going to. So I asked out of frustration if he wants me to leave because there is nothing else I could do.

About my question triggering him, he was already very angry way before I mentioned breaking up. He had already brought up my dreams. He’d already been scolding me since over an hour.

About past arguments, he has brought up breaking up every time, but not in the way he did that night, telling me he will leave without any conversation and I won’t even know what happened. He’s said it out of exasperation, like “Fine let’s break up then” or “Tell me what you want from me. Do you want to break up?” I have never brought up breaking up at all before this.

But he does get mean when he is angry. And brings up personal stuff and false equivalences. Once, things hadn’t been going great between us. I had been feeling taken for granted and neglected because he would vanish mid-chat for hours on end and come back and say he didn’t hear the phone beep or some friend had come over or he’d gone to some friend’s or things like that. It annoyed me greatly that he wouldn’t have the decency to just let me know he’ll talk later. And I was always the one to initiate conversation or call. This went on for months and I got unhappy. And it showed. Along with this I was extremely busy with school too. He’d known something was up and felt insecure when I went to my dorm lobby to get my dinner and stopped to talk to some guys I ran into. I wasn’t flirting or anything. Just talking to dormmates about school. I’d left my phone in my room so I replied to my boyfriend when I got back. And he got angry that I had “never delayed eating dinner” for him. Which I felt was ridiculous. And so we fought. And he asked me to swear on my dad that I wasn’t losing feelings for him or something. I lost my dad when I was a teen. Naturally I was infuriated that he’d bring up my dad, a man he hasn’t even seen let alone known, into this. When I said he had no right to talk about my parents in vain, he said he swears on his mother all the time, why can’t I do it? I have never ever brought up his parents in our conversations. I pointed out that he cannot ask me that because I don’t tell him to swear on his parents and if he chooses to talk about his parents that way, that is his choice and not my doing. He was drunk and I was boiling so I said I will talk to him when he is sober. The next morning he apologized saying that he should not have brought up my dad and that was very low and he was ashamed.

I have seen him to this to other people too. He was angry with his roommate because she suddenly decided to move out, putting a big financial burden on the rest of the people. She was a bitch and did cause everyone a lot of inconvenience, and his anger was completely valid. But when he was venting to me about all this, he attacked her life choices and her being a woman too. I said all of that has nothing to do with what she has done to you and you have no right to talk about her life choices or how women act. Dont’ get me started on how men act. To which he agreed and apologized.

The thing is, in the last incident, the mistake was mine. So I am hesitant to talk about this with him because I feel I was in the wrong. I had insulted him, and his anger was warranted. What I feel was not warranted was the other crap he gave me. He has hurt my feelings a million times but never have I attacked him like that. I have not spoken about my dad with him after the dorm incident partly because I am mad and think he does not deserve to know about my dad and partly because I do not want it thrown at me later. Which is how I am feeling about other stuff. Will he use it against me?

He is still feeling pretty blue, so I am not talking to him about all that just yet. Tbh, I dont know how. I’m afraid of another fight too.

Dear Helcat,

Thank you so very much for your response. I found it very, very helpful. I am still articulating my response to you and will reply once I have done so.

Have a great day!

Hi Helcat,

How are you doing?

Thank you so much for your patience. I’ve had so much on my mind but I can finally articulate and put down some of it. This is a long post. Sorry.

Personally, I don’t find you standing up for someone that your partner was making fun of to be a bad thing, even in front of family. I guess it depends on various factors. Culture, relationship with the individual being made fun of, how they were insulted etc. I’m not going to ask you to provide any more information because you are doing your best to be respectful of others. Thank you for being clear about that!

I’m going to trust your judgment when you say that this incident hurt your partner and he was right to feel that way.

About standing up for people… I know, right? I don’t like being made fun of… So I don’t either… especially of marginalized groups. But he wasn’t offended that I questioned his intent and talked about whether I need to make decisions about us. He felt insulted that I said it in front of his sister. That part I get. I should have talked about that privately.

It sounds like in arguments you’re much more in control of yourself than your partner and generally behave better.

I’m sure that you know there are some problems with his behaviour during arguments as you’re training to be a therapist.

Oh I don’t know about that really… I tend to get really passive when I’m mad. I withhold affection. I am not at all proud of it. And I hate doing it to my bf and am actively working on it. So I don’t know if I’ll say I behave better. I can be pretty egotistic too. I have my own set of flaws. But there’s things I do a lot differently than my bf. And I am aware they are problematic behaviors. For eg, he is really sensitive and feels attacked very easily, even when it is completely unwarranted. So even when I am sharing something with him, he feels attacked and gets extremely defensive and starts a fight, and sometimes it’s completely uncalled for. It stresses me out. When I share something that has hurt me or made me angry, he gets defensive to the point that he deflects blame, making his action somehow a reaction to something I did or invalidating me or even bringing up false equivalences. When I point out the false equivalences, after the fight is done, he does agree that they were false equivalences. Sometimes when I share things with him, he acts like I’m overreacting or being too sensitive, and I’ve often felt invalidated. That has made me not want to share stuff with him because I dont want to be invalidated all the time and am also trying to avoid conflict. I feel he just lacks empathy some times. And all this is draining for me.

The good thing is… when I pointed out to him that he’s been invalidating, he told me that he doesn’t like to be that way and wants me to point it out to him when he’s being that way. When he’s calmed down and vented after a fight, he does sincerely apologize for whatever I felt bad about and admits it was not cool of him to do so. He even asked me to let him know if I think he’s being abusive any time.

To clarify what you said about leaving is not a threat, or was said in the same way as your partner. But I would imagine that he would still take it as a threat and a trigger. He sounds very sensitive during arguments. I’m not trying to blame you, as I said before you were triggered by his comments about your dreams first. Just pointing out that this could have inflamed things for him. I can understand why you mentioned it, since clearly he does a lot during arguments. Which is something that he needs to work on because it’s not right. Have you asked him not to say this during arguments?

Yeah I think you’re right… He could have taken it as a threat. He does say it every time we have a fight. I’ve never really been triggered by it because I know it’s coming from a place of frustration and anger. But it does annoy me sometimes that he jumps straight to a break-up when we’re having a fight and have asked him that. Why he has to jump to a break-up the moment things get a little heated. What if I just yes let’s break up? What was he gonna do then? He said he just says it out of frustration and doesn’t actually want to break up. I believe that.

In general, I’ve experienced similar problems with my own husband during arguments. The arguing for ages. And occasionally he’s talked about leaving.

I thought the perhaps the reason my husband has occasionally talked about leaving could be helpful to know. He experienced trauma with his father who would talk about leaving his family behind. During periods of depression, especially when we’re going through hard times this is a trigger. It helps me not to feel hurt when he mentions it because I know that’s just him struggling with things. I don’t know if you’ve talked to your partner about it before? He could have his own reasons why this phrase keeps reappearing during arguments.

I don’t think he’s had any trauma surrounding this. From what I know, he’s had a pretty happy childhood. He’s had a wonderful relationship with his family and grew up in a warm home. If there is any trauma, I am not aware of it. You think I should ask?

The reason I got so affected when he mentioned leaving this time was because he said he’d leave and I wouldn’t even know about it. He’d just leave. That was somewhat similar to how my ex dumped me. He just decided one day he didn’t love me anymore and did not want to be with me. And he just left. My bf saying he’d just leave brought up those painful memories. And I told him that he’s free to leave if he’s unhappy, but I did not deserve just being left like that without a discussion or anything. To which he said he did not mean it, it was just anger, again after asking me to compare the seriousness of what I had said in front of his sister and what he said in anger (see the defensiveness?).

I’m really sorry he mentioned your father while he was drunk during an argument. That’s really awful. He may have done it because he was drunk. It lowers inhibitions and boundaries. There’s a good chance he may never bring this up during arguments when he’s sober. I would definitely shut down any arguments quickly when he’s been drinking because he could potentially bring it up again then.

I don’t know if it was entirely alcohol or a part of him too. But I agree that alcohol does play some role. The night of the fight related to his sister, he wasn’t drunk but he’d had a couple of glasses of wine. And I wondered if that’s why he got so mad. There’s another instance where he got mad at me for nothing when he’d had a few drinks. I am going to shut down arguments when he’s had drinks. That’s what I’d done when he’d mentioned my daddy. I was a little appalled that he was drunk and said that to me, and I said I will talk to him when he’s sober and hung up.

Can I ask how often you both argue? And how your relationship is outside of arguments?

We don’t argue that often actually. The frequency has gone down massively. It’s once in a few months mostly. Usually after we fight, once we calm down, we are able to have an objective conversation about it, where we share what we felt. No judgments. No attacking. It’s an open space. And we sincerely apologize where needed. It’s always brought us closer. He is actually a generous and very kind person. And he loves me very much and hurting me is the last thing he wants to do. That I know. And do not doubt one bit.

You mentioned feeling neglected because he would hang up on you mid call without saying goodbye to go hang out with other people? Am I reading this correctly? Did he change his behaviour when you discussed this? Is this something you discussed?

Not mid-call. Mid-chat. We’d be texting and he’d vanish for a few hours. I understand sometimes he falls asleep or gets called into meetings or whatever. But a lot of times it has been because he went out to meet a friend or someone came over or things like that and he did not think to just let me know he’ll text later. I found it very disrespectful and rude and told him multiple times. He agreed and has put in effort to stop that. And yes it has gone down. He has put in effort and it has gone down.

It definitely seems like you’re carrying a lot of pain of past arguments with you. Which is difficult because it’s a general rule for “arguing” in a healthy way to not bring up the past.

It seems like your bf feels very free to say what is bothering him freely, but it sounds like you hold back? And then those feelings linger and you’re still hurt remembering things from previous arguments.

I think you should probably discuss that you hold a lot of hurt from past arguments in at some point. As you said, you don’t really want to argue right now. It doesn’t have to be now and you don’t want to put a lot of stress on yourselves with more arguments.

You should probably try to discuss issues that occur close to the time. Like you did when he said that about your father. He was apologetic afterwards.

I don’t exactly hold back on my feelings, but it does take me some thinking and mental preparation, because I think he’s gonna fight and get defensive and the works.

I agree. It feels like I am carrying hurt and resentment from past issues. And I think it seeps into current issues. Even though he’s apologized about it. Do you think I have a problem letting go? I tend to ruminate too. So there’s another problem. How would you suggest I work on this?

Your partner did ask you to explain what happened for the argument to get so bad and what he could have done differently. Perhaps now things are calmer you can answer this question? It’s important to establish boundaries with arguments so that people know what is hurtful and they shouldn’t say.

I did talk to him about it over the weekend. I’d mentioned to him after getting back from the holiday that I wanted to talk about the fight, but then I fell sick and he was too, so I said we’d do it later when both of us were feeling better. He brought it up this weekend and asked me if I wanted to talk about it, I wasn’t going to, but then he said me holding back was affecting our relationship and behaviour,  so I thought okay if he fights we fight, but I will talk to him about it. I told him it was not cool to bring up personal stuff like my past relationship and my aspirations… And it did get how I had predicted… Deflection (blaming me and saying he was only lashing out and that’s what people do when they lash out) and invalidation (that nothing about me wanting to be a therapist was personal and everyone knows about it; the private thing I’d said about my bf was only to make a point). I stood my ground of course and told him it was not cool period. He’s told me his darkest secrets. Would it be cool if I brought those up or brought up his ex gf in a fight? Again… after I argued all this… He apologized… Tbh the apology didn’t seem sincere to me initially. Then I asked him if he’d feel safe telling me stuff if I threw it in his face during fights. He said he sees what I mean and it was not cool and he won’t do it again.

Do you find that you have difficulty with standing up for yourself during arguments?

One thing exercise that I found helpful for managing arguments is taking 5 minutes to talk each. And the other person has to listen quietly. Then you get to switch. For us it calms things down and it’s more of an equal conversation as opposed to a ranting for an hour situation.

I really want to say what I feel and stand up for myself. But I am anxious about fights and conflicts, so it does take me mental preparation. Fights usually go the way I described them and it takes a lot of mental energy. So many times I do not want to get into it.

I like your suggestion of taking 5 mins to talk each. Maybe we will give it a shot next time.

Sorry this has been such a lengthy post. Thank you for reading through it.