I've posted about problems in my relationship once before and got some great advice, would be interested to hear people's perspectives on our fight from this week, which is quite typical of our fights. I think he over reacted hugely, but I also think I didn't handle myself very well. Would be interested in some opinions.
I'd been out for the afternoon, DH was home looking after DS2. I came home and was idly browsing on fb while cooking dinner when I noticed he had a spam thingummy on his fb page - one of those where you click to watch a video but it comes on on friends pages as you have "liked" it even if you haven't liked it, if you see what I mean. It had a title something like "You'll never guess what this sexy 17 yr old did at school.." and it was just a girl's (rather lovely) bum. First reaction was "oh poor thing, that's a bit embarrassing for him", 2nd reaction was to feel a bit icky that he'd tried to perve on a 17 yr old.
Anyway, I showed him the page on my phone, (calmly and smiling) said "Oh no, looks like you got tricked.. do you want to try to delete it?" (I don't know if that kind of spam can be deleted (I'm not daft enough to click it! ) but he has a lot of work people on his fb and thought that might be embarrassing for him). He just tutted and kind of swore under his breath, I wandered off and made what I thought was quite a funny comment on that link on fb to make it a bit less embarrassing. When he saw that he was really angry, and was just blanking me. I asked him if he was ok, and he ripped into me that I had no right to "shove my phone under his nose and humiliate him like that, no right to comment on it as now everyone will see it and everyone will know and it's all your fault."
I was a bit stunned, as I can't see how him trying to watch a 17yr old girl on video had caused me to embarrass him..? Still can't figure that out. Now, where I think I went wrong was I tried to talk it through, I tried to apologise and explain that even though I didn't mind about the video, I thought he should be aware of it in case he hadn't realised, that I thought my comment on it was funny and would make light of the situation (maybe rather than his friends worrying "ooh his wife will be pissed off"/his work friends thinking he was sleazy) but I was sorry that it had hurt his feelings, I didn't realise it would affect him like that and I'm sorry if it's made things worse.
He replied by telling me he didn't want to talk to me, that he didn't for a second believe I'd done it to help him, that I'd done it because I was evil (!) and wanted to make him pay for trying to look at the video and humiliate him. That was never my intention AT ALL and I ended up crying, begging him to listen and that I was sorry, I hadn't intended that, and could he calm down and think for a moment about my feelings, and how I'd felt seeing that, and being reacted to like this. He just called me names and told me to shut up, that I'd done too much damage etc.
Then we got into this horrible downward spiral of him saying he wouldn't talk, walking away from me (pushing me out of the room with the door again), me refusing to let him walk away because I couldn't believe he couldn't calm down and stop blaming me. He was looking at me and talking to me like he hated me which always make me frantic really. I know, I know I should have just let him walk away and have his time to calm down, I am blaming myself for it getting that far. He says he gets angry because I keep talking (not shouting), crying, trying to make him see my point (ie that I wasn't being "evil"), when what he needs to do is be alone to process things. But he won't say "sorry, i can see that I've hurt you too, but I'm struggling with this and need a few minutes alone." No, it's shouting, blaming, insults, eyerolling then storming off and pushing me out of rooms if I follow, and it leaves me a mess. He then ignored from about 6pm till the next morning (didn't even come to bed), then apologised the next morning for being angry. I was stupid and told him I don't think he understood why I was angry (it wasn't the video, it was how he treated me after) but as I bought it up again, he got angry again, I got tearful and it just all went tits up again Amongst the things he said - I was trying to explain that in the past it had hurt me when he'd looked at porn and I'd found it hard as I struggled a lot when pg/bfing with crazy hormones and it did get to me. Now it doesn't bother me in the same way, he said Oh, that old excuse of blaming your hormones, you always used that as an excuse and I never believe it," He also said he might not want to talk to me for the rest of the week. Charming. Things I said - after crying, failed reasoning, shouting, losing my mind I told him I didn't want to be married to him anymore, and went out (to my 1st counselling session actually! Nice timing.)
I think he was totally unreasonable, but I also blame myself for not being able to give him space. I don't know why I can't just say "Don't treat me like this" and walk away. (probably because I don't think it will work?) I don't hound him though, or blame him, I try to apologise, explain why I've done/said something or why something he did hurt, and just get this wall of arse & disrespect, which turns me into a crazy, weeping needy mess.
Any advice on how you would have handled this? I don't mind honesty, I think I'd rather know if I was behaving like a harridan and hounding him when I should have left him alone. How do you do that when someone's that angry with you? I just feel so panicked when's he's like this that I feel physically ill. It's daft, but I don't know how to switch that off
Sorry, that was so long, hope someone is still awake at the end of it!
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Relationships
Daft fight escalated (as usual..) How should I deal with this?
SneezyPanda · 13/12/2012 22:11
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