Today I was in the car with my fiancé. He was driving and I was trying to read a map and give directions, in an area we are both a bit familiar with but has a confusing one way system.
There was a turning we had to take and I knew it was on a corner with a particular landmark pub on. What I didn't know is the actual entrance to the car park for the pub is round the back on a different turn off (I've never been to the pub, just seen it from the road). So I said, 'turn off at the junction with the pub', and he thought I meant the other one, and we went straight past where I thought we were turning whilst I was looking down at the map. Then I asked why we didn't turn where I thought, he said it was my fault and I said to go that way, and he started yelling at me about where he should go now, and I was trying to work it out from the map and panicking and we had to do this huge loop on the one way system and got the right turning.
And for a moment there was silence and I thought it would be ok. Then he started ranting and shouting at me about how I was terrible at communication, and why would I say turn off at the pub if I meant where the building was and not where you'd go in the car to go to the pub. And at that point I put the map down and said I couldn't map read anymore.
He pulled over, looked at the map, drove us to where we were going, and has basically been angry at me since. I tried to keep out of his way for a few hours, then tried to talk to him, saying I didn't think I deserved to be yelled at for a misunderstanding giving directions. He said he was sick of me blaming him when things went wrong (which I hadn't??) and he wasn't going to take it anymore.
This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened. Pretty much every week now, for months, something minor will happen and he will become frothingly mad at me, and then will stay angry at me for days, often telling me he's dumping me because he has had enough. At some point I crack and apologise to him because I feel so sad about being alone and him being so distant. He say's it stress, from his work etc, but its only getting worse. He refuses to see his anger is a problem, saying its just his personality, and I have to accept it to be with him. Sometimes he gets sad and says he's a terrible boyfriend to me, but nothing ever seems to change.
I think I already know what everyone replying to this will say. Dump him. Walk out. Stop letting him treat you like this. For god's sake don't marry him and have children with him. In fact many of you did say it, when I last posted on here about a tantrum he threw.
But, I'm 36. I have no family. I have no children. I've spent several happy years tentatively thinking that he may be the one before this cycle of misery started. The last man I dated before was lovely and sweet and, it turns out a commitmentphobe, who was always '3 years away' from marrying me and starting our family, things he would talk about in glowing terms, as if he regretted the circumstances weren't right to start already. After more than ten years I realised he would always keep manufacturing new circumstances to not be right. Before that there were a few boyfriends who just weren't that interested in me (cheating etc), or I was too young to realise we had nothing in common.
I always wanted a big family. To have children. It tears my heart out to think I have to walk away, and be alone again. To start dating again with desperation written all over me, my age and my chances of having the family I want slipping ever further away. I want to wail about how unfair it is, that I've always tried so hard to be a good and decent person, a loving partner, and that millions of people fall in love and have children everyday, and why wont it ever work out for me?
If it was just about leaving him, despite the heartbreak, I know I'd get over it. But if I leave him, and don't manage to have a family with anyone else, I feel I will always blame myself for not trying harder to make it work. That feeling is utterly crushing.