"You're not serious, are you?"

[heavenisaplaceinperth]

Can someone help me verbalise why I found this and other, similar things he says, offensive? It's just disdainful, no? Aimed at showing me up as stupid and small? That's what it feels like, anyway.

He claims he was genuinely asking whether or not I was serious (about some utterly minor point about numbers) but it's the tone of voice, isn't it?

Things were going so well. I think he spoiled it by using this negative, unhelpful, slightly contemptuous phrase - he thinks I spoiled things by calling him out on it

Kr1stina he would see it as me being unreasonable to have those feelings because they are not in proportion to what he's said (in his view).

Percy, I'd have been fine with that ... I'd even have been fine if DP had used the exact same words he did, but with a smile and/or a laugh. Affectionately calling me out for saying something silly. It was the tone of voice he said it in. Tone is everything ...

Hellsbells we had joint counselling in the past, which seemed to improve things a bit for a while. He is now having individual counselling, which he chose to do off his own bat after swearing blind he'd never do it. I'm grateful and proud of him for that. And it makes me feel like bad cop for pulling him up on something like this. But it's as though he's trying to sabotage the whole thing - he knows how much I hate it when he's flippant and dismissive. But maybe it's just a reflex reaction, and he can't help himself ... (what he would say anyway, I think).

Well then he could raise the issue at counselling, they will help him explore why he does it and ways to avoid doing it.

I would probably react in a similar way if I thought the 100k comment was coming from the person who didn't want the extension and was over inflating it deliberately.
Otherwise, I agree, it's a shitty way to speak to someone if it's a simple mistake.

Genuine question OP...

You say he thinks you're over sensitive. Is it possible he also feels he is walking on eggshells around you?

I don't mean that to sound like you should minimise your feelings, but I do think it's worth trying to see another perspective because it could help you move together and meet in the middle rather than one person making all the changes. Could you consider individual counselling too?

The problem isn't really that he says something you find hurtful (although that does suck). It's that he doesn't care when you tell him you are hurt, and instead tries to cast the blame onto you.

That is not the action of a loving partner. It's what an entitled dickhead who cares more about his own superiority than his partner's feelings does.

I think RiceCrispie has nailed it in the first sentence. Not caring that it hurt you, and blaming you for being hurt, is the problem.

I also tend to think that if you say something like 'back on track', or 'things were going really well' about a relationship, you are probably stuck in a cycle which will never improve (sorry)

Thanks all, this is really helpful.
Baconyum, I can suggest that he brings it up in counselling, but considering he feels he's done nothing wrong I think he'd find it patronising. I will try, though.

Milk, I think we both feel we're walking on eggshells. From my point of view, I feel it's so easy to make me happy and not piss me off, simply by being kind and respectful, and not dismissive ... but I guess he sees it differently. He seems hard-wired to snap back at me flippantly sometimes.

I think everyone's the same OP! It would be a very happy world where we could all keep each other happy by being kind and respectful all the time. Of course that makes you happy. But life's not like that, and it would take an absolute Saint not to snap sometimes.

If you were trying to say that an extension is prohibitively expensive without looking in to it getting accurate(ish) figures you yourself could have come across as equally dismissive of him as you feel he has been of you. So you could've pissed each other off albeit unintentionally.

2 sides to every conversation I suppose.

Depends hownyou put it

'I'd be really interested to know what your counsellor would think of that conversation where you said x and I said y'?

That's good. Thank you, Bacon. He's pretty closed off about what happens in counselling, which doesn't bother me - he has a right to privacy and says that it's helping just to talk - but I think I will certainly put it out there. Can't hurt.

Milk, it was really just an initial conversation about what kind of extension would be nice to do. And I was talking about a big two-storey one, in fact (not that it really matters; I'm nitpicking here ). The conversation was perfectly good-natured and normal (kids contributing, from the back of the car) ... then suddenly, that burst of what felt like contempt for no reason.