please bear with me but I need a reality check and a bit of offloading.
the context - me, separated, two children, him, no children, mid 40's, serial long term relationships. We've been together (on and off) for just under a year.
we have had a pretty volatile relationship from the start - massive highs, massive lows, periods apart, periods together. We were friends before we started seeing each other but I was coming out of a relationship with my children's dad so it has been pretty stressful. he would say i don't communicate and find it hard to express emotion, i would say he is intense and prone to moodiness and anger - always entirely directed at me. when we get on its fantastic, when we don't its horrible.
his grandfather died today which he was pretty upset about so we were heading home to cook and spend an evening in (my DC are at their dads). waiting for the train to leave he kept asking me to 'stop it' and i genuinely didn't know what he was asking me to stop - stroking his leg, looking at him, thinking about something else rather than talking to him, but when I asked him what he wanted me to stop then he refused to tell me, saying it didn't matter. I asked him again and he told me that i was making a big deal out of nothing. so i left it.
he then asked me whether I liked the trousers the girls opposite were wearing, so I looked, trying to decide whether I did. He then said 'are you not talking to me now?' because i hadn't immediately responded (sorry if I am doing this verbatim but i really need to know whether I have done something wrong). I explained that i was looking at told him what I thought. (FYI - leather/pleather leggings - not the most flattering)
When we got off the train then I said to him that it was troubling me that I didn't know what I had done for him to ask me to stop, and I didn't understand why he couldn't tell me. At which point he started to tell me what I stupid insensitive person I was because he was only being playful and how could I not get that. And that I had made an issue out of nothing and ruined his evening and turned the whole evening into me and my feelings when all he wanted was some support because his grandad had died. We screamed and shouted at each other. He left. I walked home, left a message on his phone saying that i was sorry i had missed his joke and that i wanted to be there to support him on a sad evening and that he should come back so that we could be nice to each other. His response by text was 'i'm useless and insensitive…I had picked an unnecessary fight, I had let him down at his lowest point, I was a selfish woman, my lack of consideration has sunk him. I'll post your flat keys back in the morning'
reading that back it sounds like the angsty words of a nervous teenager, not a 40-something mother of 2 who runs her own business.
So, what I can't work out is
a) is it me? Am I all of the above? and if so what can I do about it?
b) how have I been reduced to a nervous, humourless, over analytical worrier
c) what do I do to pull myself out of it - because this has happened over and over and over again and I keep going back to him…
sorry to rant. I don't know who to talk to about it…..
Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody
Relationships
help! need a reality check on whether I am "useless, insensitive, selfish and inconsiderate"
typographicerrors · 29/11/2013 21:38
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