To tell my boyfriend when he's hurting me?

His reaction is strange,if you accidentally hurt someone you ask if they're ok and apologise that it wasn't on purpose.

What a manipulative person. He was upset with you for him hurting you? And there’s no way he didn’t know he was sitting on your hand either.

These type of men can tend to go for partners with neurodivergence (happened with me). You may want to look into things like npd, see if he has any of the behaviours and get out of there if he does because he sounds emotionally abusive at the least

He is being very very weird indeed.

Yes, tell him if he's done something that hurt you physically.

Ask yourself if this happens a lot - and if it may be deliberate.

Tell him to stop.

And stop beating yourself up over HIS behaviour.

Yeah your partner is a manipulator. He’s training you to have low boundaries and realise if you speak up, you get silent treatment (abuse btw)..and it’s working 🙂

You need to leave him. He’s very odd and nasty

And I say that after years with a good man who repeatedly accidentally hurt me and was so upset he needed me to comfort him about it.

It would have been healthier to leave.

He’s unable to experience healthy guilt, instead being overwhelmed by destructive shame. He’s associating the source of that with your actions instead of his as it’s ‘safer’ for him.

He isn’t healthy enough or self aware enough to be in a relationship. He needs to work on himself, the way you are.

None of that is your responsibility. Your responsibility is to look after yourself.

You don’t need to blame him, to be angry with him or punish him. Just recognise the situation and do the sensible though perhaps sad thing.

Perhaps he is autistic.
Or has trauma from an abusive past.
It could be that’s he’s an arsehole.

None of these are your problem to solve. And they are certainly not your problem to solve be being in an abusive and unhappy relationship.

I’ve been married over 20 years. I don’t remember the last time my DH accidentally hurt me.

Leave.

Don't feel that you're in the wrong @ForJoyousAmberLurker , no way should he hurt you and then you say sorry, that's just wrong. Yes, he may be autistic but so are you and you don't mistreat him. The difference between you is you've been diagnosed and have insight into yourself, he's using autism as a get out card to never be wrong or say sorry.
You can do far better than this man Op

Reminds me of an ex of mine who used to do and say similar things. These things got more and more frequent until he ended up being violent (throwing things around the room). As it was a slow progression it took me a while to realise he was pretty mentally unwell. Very happily out of that relationship now.

Sounds like he's trying to isolate you and shrink your world down to just him.

He's gaslighting you and victimising. He's turning himself into the victim so he doesn't need to take blame, or be made to feel guilty for hurting you.

How could he not see or feel your hand?

How is he consistently hurting you in these subtle and increasingly emerging situations?

The question should be: "Why is he always hurting me and getting defensive when I bring it up?".

OP you havent answered the question - was your arm and hand under the quilt or was it visible and he sat on it anyway? I'm concerned about how often this man is hurting you and if he is doing it deliberately. On the spectrum or not he can still be an abuser and training you to tolerate more abuse.

Just how often has he hurt you and how? You may not just need to leave but to do so quickly and with someone present when you go to protect you.

OP I thought I’d just mention this. Cycles of violence repeat themselves. I had an abusive ex who did this. Essentially he reacted like this whenever he hurt me (especially during sex) and I stopped mentioning it to avoid the day (or days) of awkward hurt feelings where I had to grovel despite him being in the wrong.

Upshot: he got the kind of rough sex he wanted without me complaining. He TRAINED ME not to complain about it and I took forever to realise. Turns out his Dad knocked his mum around when he was younger and coercively controlled her. I took longer than I should to leave, because this treatment didn’t start until we were years in to the relationship. Which tells me he was self aware enough about it to avoid it during the honeymoon period before he had me tied in to a mortgage and I was madly in love with him.

You are worth more than this.

My DP is autistic, dyslexic, has dyscalculia like me, but has ADHD and Irlen's syndrome.
But in no way shape or form would he behave like this or hurt me. Never has. Ever. Horrendous childhood and I mean SA, all sorts.
But never has he hidden behind it to hurt or manipulate me.
In fact he cooks, cleans, organising date nights and wakes me up each morning with a coffee and a kiss, he's special, unique and I wouldn't be without him.
This is what you deserve, angel xxx

Jesus fucking christ.

"OWW MY HAND!"

" Aah shit! Sorry I didn't see where your arm was"

Optional hug or something. Continue with day.

Being too polite to tell someone they are causing you pain is just... I don't think there is a word for it. Having a sulk when someone tells you that you have hurt them? Lots of words for that, I'd go with "total arsehole".

If someone accidentally hurts you, all you have to say is something like “ouch, you’re hurting me because you’re sat on my arm”

And their immediate response should be to jump up and apologise.

If there is no apology then that’s completely unacceptable.

The fact that there is no apology and you’re having to explain yourself/apologise on top is actually really scary behaviour.

These are huge red flags and I would be ending it this weekend.
And I genuinely hope you’re one of the very few posters who do actually do this.

Your partner is meant to be the person you feel 100% comfortable around.
If you cannot tell someone as simple as that they are hurting you, then it’s the completely wrong relationship.

So he shuts down. Can he explain why he shuts down - does be panic and then flooded with self doubt for example

I recently found there is a thing called Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria which sounds might be what your bf is having. Its basically that any potentially negative thing said towards him he perceives as threat and its telling him he is absolutely useless.
Apparently it oftern runs with ADHD which does make sense, especially if you look at ADHD as Gabor Maté which is basically PTSD type of bahaviour/functioning. He explains this in his book called Scattered Minds.

Your bf's reaction is not normal. A normal thing when he accidentally sits on your arm and you say 'Ouch, you are sitting on my hand' whould be along the lines 'Oh, I am so sorry, I didnt mean that!'. Not getting into offended passive aggressive mode.

Do you think your partner could also have a form of autism?

I think you should leave him. It’s not going to get any better IMO.

His behaviour and his reaction is really wrong. It’s not possible to sit on someone’s hand and arm under a quilt without feeling it. You might not realise it’s there as you start to sit, because it’s under the quilt and you can’t see it, but as your bum lands you can feel the shape of the arm under you and a normal reaction would be to immediately stand up again so you don’t hurt the person by putting your full weight on them. And when he’s fully sat on you and you to try to remove your arm he can definitely feel that, and he’s pretending not to. Something is very wrong with how he behaves towards you, I’m sorry.

it never takes long for examples of abuse to be labelled as autism. autism or no autism, he is an abuser and op cannot change that.

It does sound like rejection sensitivity but there's a very weird element to it. As a PP said, how would he not notice he sat on your HAND?? I agree you need to leave. He can be neurodivergent AND abusive as well.

You are not his therapist. If he says that this is all linked to past situations then he needs therapy.

What would happen if you got up and went out for the day without speaking to him as firstly judging by his reaction he wasn’t going to speak to you anyway and secondly because in his words the day was ruined so you decided to go out and do what you want to do

Personally even after 8 years I would dump and run. Just because his reactions are so predictable.
You then having to apologise to him and calm him down is just doing the same thing over and over and it is clearly not working and so very very boring and I couldn’t be arsed to do it again