To scream loudly and repeatedly at my boyfriend for not killing a spider?

[Beeyump]

Let me begin by stating that I am very scared of spiders, to the point of getting hysterical and wanting to run as far away as I can. If possible, I kill them because I can't bear to be near them. Anyway, my boyfriend - who knows all this - was staying last night, when a horribly large brown spider was spotted. I lost it, yelling at him to GET RID OF IT AND KILL IT, or at least put it outside. He did not, instead picking it up and transferring it to another room. When he informed me of this I got really angry, because I felt as though he had completely ignored my feelings/fear. Before this he had been finding it funny , but when I properly screamed at him he told me that if I 'carried on' he would leave. This episode rather dampened the rest of the evening...

Afterwards I felt guilty, stupid, but also pretty angry at him. Think I'm probably being unreasonable, but I don't feel it

I think a lot of people don't understand about phobias, because the word is bandied about so much. It's like depression. Once you have been depressed or seen somebody you love with depression you will never use the word in casual conversation ever again.

A real phobia is completely overwhelming. But also very rare. People who could put a glass over a spider, or catch one in a spider catcher are not phobic. They just don't like spiders.

That's a terrible story :(. I didn't know we had poisonous Australian spiders in Britain and Ireland. I would have no compunction about killing one of those.

By the same token, neither is someone who can get close enough to kill one Hakluyt.....

Absolutely Hakluyt.

I will put my hand up, I have killed a spider. I was sitting on the floor perusing some vinyl when a spider ran over my hand.

I threw up and drowned it (and my hand).

That is the only time I have knowingly killed a spider. I can't even do the hoover suck up, the hoover nozzle is so very obviously a spider super highway to my face. Spider catchers are, as I said upthread, the pathetically patronising invention of a non phobic pillock, and I am never going to unfreeze long enough to leave the room (during which time the spider will have relocated requiring the house to be burned to the ground) to find a glass to pop over even a category 2 spider. 'Just popping' the glass over a spider involves getting close, never going to happen, or lobbing the glass hopefully. I can't do that as a near miss will make the spider run - and I really don't want it to move at all.

For anyone who wishes to ridicule me or consider my actions inhuman, go ahead, knock your socks off. You can't make me feel even 1 tenth the fear and humiliation my phobia does. But I thank you for your humanity.

That sounds horrible.

I'd say I have a fear of (large) spiders. I can hoover them but I am frightened that the spider will become angry and take a run at me. I have to pluck up the courage and my heart will beat very fast. For a while after, spotting things out of the corner of my eyes will make me jumpy as I assume they're more spiders. Any one 'dealing' with the spider will have to listen to me asking them not to run after me with it for a joke as I think my heart rate would go up to heart attack speed if they did.

I feel pathetic and silly and don't have any other fears (except walking down inclines if it's wet or snowy - then I have to force myself to keep walking, by consciously relaxing my shoulders and back and forcing myself to take normal-sized steps and not to just stop dead. It's very stressful and embarrassing.) If I don't have to go out on icy days I don't because of this fear.

Oh this is so sad.

I do, do, do understand that spider phobia is real. Sufferers, I sympathise. I hope you can get help.

But - even if you can't bear to get close to a spider - why kill any living creature without reason? I am not a vegan, by the way. Can't you just close the door, or throw a towel over it (it's not strong enough to escape), and get someone trustworthy to help you? (Any man who "teases" a frightened woman with a spider is unspeakably awful, IMHO.)

Even for phobics, a UK spider will be FAR more frightened of you than you are of it. It's definitely not out to get you. It can't help the way it runs. If it moves when you are near, it's just trying to run away.

I know this sounds daft, and may be too much information for some. If so, I apologise. But I lost my (admittedly only moderate) dislike of spiders when, a few years ago, while routinely working very late (2-3 am), I noticed that a couple of spiders used to come out and tidy up crumbs of cat food left on the lino by the moggies. I had no idea that they were so intelligent, and could tell the time. They were being helpful, and reducing grot that might have attracted flies. I thought it rather sweet. Since then, somehow I've been less worried by them