Absolute chaos.
My partner has been going through some financial difficulty (after 4 years of repeatedly lying about his finances) and has had the weighbof the world on his shoulders. Which I get. I’ve been there before, it’s awful.
The past two months have been awful for me. He’s been taking all his anger out on me, starting arguments for no reason at all, deliberately insulting me just to get a rouse out of me and it was last week I realised how he was using emotional manipulation to hurt me and that his personality and behaviour is pure passive aggressive. It’s affevted my mental health up to the point I have been having panic attacks, crying at work, not sleeping and considering leaving him.
The only reason ive approached him and told him how I felt is because he has been spinning everything back on me and playing victim on a nightly basis. He has played the ‘I’m going through a hard time you should be supportive not making it all about you’ card one too many times. So I have kept out of his way, listened to him when he needed to, not fought back when he tried to fight etc until I figured out what I wanted to do about it all.
Tonight he pushed the line. He had a really good day and got a loan through off credit union so he was in a good mood. Apart from one snidey PA comment off him that “he’s doing everything around the house today!” (His attempt at mocking my argument that he never helps out around the house) because he came home with a bag of shopping, he was actually pleasant to spent time with. We had sex and then afterwards he started to open up. He actually admitted that he knows he’s been an arsehole and treating me like shit and it’s unnacceptable and that he’s been feeling self conscious that I’ve been distant and that I don’t love him anymore because of it. He never asked if this was actually how I felt he just ranted on, and I just kept quiet. He had a good day I fully well knew if I said ‘actually I’m not happy and yes you are right’ that it would be my fault for ruining his day.
Anyway later in the night he had a talk about how I nag him to do the washing up, and I calmly explained to him why it was so important that it is done every night and not left overnight. It all blew out of proportion. He blamed me for arguing with him (I wasn’t, I was calm and just gave my explanation), then he tried to end the conversion a few times (typical avoidance that he does when he doesn’t want any to face up to something). Then the topic came on to me and how he knows I haven’t felt loved recently and I said that yes I haven’t felt loved and that him saying it and how he acts it is completely different, then he started to have a raging go at me for being so distant these past weeks whilst he was going through a hard time!!
He said things along the lines of
“If it was the other way around I’d be giving you cuddles every night”
“you should be making me feel loved and supportive not pulling away”
And then he got more angry and it got personal.
“When you go through your depressive phases I’m always there for you”
And a bit more graphic...
“When you come to me with bleeding cuts on your wrists...”
(I have bipolar disorder and have been through some bad phases during the course of our relationship. The last one was a year ago, it’s very controlled now)
I thought what on earth, how dare you use that against me just because you want to dig at me!
I lost it then. Baring in mind i have been holding my tongue all night up to this point, and the past few weeks for that matter. I said “how on earth do you expect me to cuddle you when you have been so nasty to me?!”
He did some heavy stress breathing turned around and sulked for 20 mins, then turned to me, no apology and went
“Can we just let this go now?”
I’m absolutely fuckingfed up to death of being his punch bag, him not apologising and then me getting the blame for pretty much everything and everything. The depression and the cutting thing shattered me. I have been gurybenough coming to terms with the notion that this is what he does, he used emotionally and PA tactics to get at me but being this personal was on another level.
I bet you in the morning there will be an apology, and then later when he gets home it will be ‘you ruined a good day for me yesterday’.