Partner just put pets in danger

[TheFoundation]

How would you feel? We have a child-gate to separate our cat and dog. The dog is a terrier, and chases cats. We had a pet each when we met, and have used this solution for a long time with no issues. The cat is 21, and so, stays in mostly, but is taken for tours around the garden when the sun's out, and the dog is contained. We are all 4 usually very happy.

I just came back from walking the dog, fully expecting that the cat would be safely enclosed. My partner was expecting me at around that time. The dog went hurtling in through the door, as always... and the cat is wandering about, loose, in the hallway. I had to do a goalkeeper-like dive to stop the terrier getting at the cat, which would have been a very dangerous situation, given the fragility of the 21 year old cat. My partner said 'Oh, I left the gate open, I didn't realise the cat had even walked out', and did apologise, but...

I'm upset. The risk was enormous. My partner was so careless. An apology makes no difference, when my concern is the lack of awareness of risk.

I have a family member like this who is so dramatic every sentence ends in “so… they/I nearly died!” Then later on is completely fine, everyone has to move on from the giant dramatic meltdown episode

The cat didn’t nearly die everyone was fine, a mishap happened and DP got well and truly bollocked

I have an elderly cat and a child gate would not stop him. He would simply squeeze through the bars.

I also have chickens, they are my chickens and I am responsible for every single thing concerning them. Twice I have accidentally left the gate open and the chickens got out. It was a right pain finding them and herding them back into their pen. Better give myself a good telling off, oh wait, I didn’t do it on purpose so perhaps I will forgive myself.

Everyone makes mistakes, we are human.

Nobody got bollocked. The cat could have got hurt. You're being dramatic yourself.

RTFT. We sorted it out. Thread's still going on, partner and I have been snuggled up watching TV.

It’s a ridiculous living situation. I would never have taken my elderly cat to live with a dog. How irresponsible.

Why, because Op was shocked that their 21 yo cat could’ve been killed?

Doesn’t sound like he’s too bothered since op has talked to him & it’s all sorted! Most relationships encounter things like this at times so I’m sure he’s ok🤣

I always wonder what need people are fulfilling in themselves when they write posts like this, casting their 'better judgement' unkindly at people who didn't ask them to. I wonder if they think people will give a crap about their 'judgement', and whether they think it will actually make a difference or help in any way at all, and if they do think people will care, or change.... why they think that.

I know. I even got an 'ltb'! It's ridiculous. I think most people on the thread have never had a 'Why the hell did you do that?!!' moment, and felt really angry with their partner for doing something daft. Either that, or it's a bunch of judgemental people who don't practise what they preach.

I did ask this poster 'Why?', myself, but there was no answer. Must've just felt the need to say something nasty and passive aggressive, I suppose.

Oh for fuck's sake OP, don't be so rigid. He made a mistake, move on already. No need to keep posting about his mistake. You sound exhausting. Nobody is perfect.

I'm wondering what you all do when your partner doesn't do something that's been agreed on to maintain a safe situation in your house, like closing the door so that the toddler doesn't run into the road? Am I doing it wrong? Is it a case of yanking the toddler from the middle of the road, away from the approaching, car, and then making a sensible plan about how to both do things differently with doors, and swiftly onwards to 'Oh, well, he's only human'?

I can't imagine it, from reading MN for a long time. Blokes make stupid mistakes all the time, it seems, and women get upset/angry etc.

Rigid? We had a nice calm chat, sorted it out, my partner entirely understood my point of view, and we came up with a better idea about how to deal with the issue. Then we had a nice dinner, snuggled up watching a film. I did say this on the thread last night.

Have you got any advice on how I could do better, or did you just drop by to be unpleasant, and instruct someone to change? Imperatives don't go down well. I could do the same thing to you:

'Oh for fuck's sake, don't be so judgemental without reading the thread properly. You sound stupid.'

Unkind, isn't it? And does it help anybody?

I can understand why you were upset. Going forward, I'm wondering whether you could tweak your routine so that a failure to close the gate wouldn't be potentially catastrophic. For example is there anything in the hallway that you could loop the lead over while you take off your coat? That wouldn't be harder than dropping it and would be safer for everyone.

@MontyDonsBlueScarf

That's what we're going to do, yes. Thanks for your comment. I love Monty Don, by the way!

@TheFoundation he's human. We all are. Accept his apology and move on. I would be upset too in your shoes but it wasn't done on purpose. It's a shit situation, but all that posters here are trying to suggest is that both of you take that extra second to check that the cat is safely behind the gate before letting the dog offlead. That way the risk is mitigated.

Measure twice and cut once and all of that.

@Scalottia

RTFT

I don't think anyone here is really faulting what you've actually done, which is have a conversation with your husband and work out steps to make sure it doesn't happen again.

What I think people are taking issue with is the level of anger and blame you're showing in your OP and subsequent posts towards your partner.

People are fallible. Not just men, but everybody. We're talking about a one time mistake here, not a pattern of negligence. He's not always leaving the gate open, he did it once. You seem to have an expectation that he never cock up, but that's never going to happen. He's human, not a robot.

You ask in my quoted post what other people do in similar situations, so I'll give you four examples.

DD fell off a changing mat on a chest of drawers while DP was changing her. DP had turned away for a second to pick up a nappy.

I one made a bad decision about which route to take in the car in icy conditions. DD was in the car. We very narrowly avoided a bad accident.

DP once lost DD for 20 minutes in a busy shop

DD once got injured in a water park due to my inattention. Not badly, but enough to put her off the water for about a year, and put a dampener on the holiday. She still has a small scar on her back 7 years later.

Now putting all of the above into 4 sentences makes us sound like awful parents, but we're not negligent, I promise! Those 4 things stand out precisely because they're so rare, and most parents will easily be able to point to that many similar things that haunt them at night by the time their kids reach adulthood.

But what we did in those situations is resolve the immediate crisis, make sure DD is Ok, and then make sure the parent who cocked up is OK, isn't too shaken up, doesn't feel too guilty. And then finally putting steps in place to stop it happening again.

There's no assigning blame. Yes there's blame to be assigned, in every case above one of us either made a bad decision or was distracted, but what's the point really?

Where's the need to feel that much anger over it? It's a one off mistake, that the other person has acknowledged and apologised for. What more is there to do than say "Oh well, only human" and swiftly move on - as you put it?

Where's the need to feel that much anger over it

Dunno. When you feel anger, @Bobbotgegrinch , do you think there's a point, or do you feel it, think 'Am I being a bit much, here?' and then assess it and act accordingly?

It seems that people think I launched at my partner with fury. She knew nothing of my anger, except that I said 'I was really angry earlier', and she understood why.

Where's the need to feel that much anger over it

People don't always feel emotions according to a checklist of what's needed in a particular situation.

There really is a lack of understanding of how humans work on this thread. I'm sure everyone has felt inappropriately angry at some point in the past, dealt with it internally, and then approached the other person calmly to discuss it. Seems I'm a 'ltb' type partner though, although my partner doesn't think so. The judgement here isn't like anything in real life. My partner left a gate open unexpectedly, and endangered the safety of our animals. I was really angry, then we discussed it and sorted it out to a mutually satisfactory conclusion. I love that MN is still trying to criticise; it's nuts! Anger is allowed, if dealt with healthily, and I feel sorry for anybody who thinks it's a problem. Supress it at your peril.

I understand how you feel. I'm no psychologist but I remember reading something once about how anger is a secondary emotion that is actually based on a deeper, underlying emotion, quite often fear. You briefly saw a future where your cat was mauled and it scared you. It's the same thing as parents who shout at young DP who have temporarily gone missing/done something dangerous and then immediately follow it up with a hug.

Yes, DP was at fault for leaving the gate open but even for the most conscientious person this is almost an inevitability at some point given that we're all human. In a high stakes situation it pays to have several layers of safety to compensate for human error. Sounds like you've negotiated that solution for yourselves following this near miss, so no harm done and everyone can move on.

@Resilience

You briefly saw a future where your cat was mauled and it scared you

Definitely. The cat's head was off for a second in my head, and I think it's natural and beneficial to have that fear because that's what makes us leap in quickly, to prevent the outcome we fear.

People have responded as if I attacked my partner in response to the mistake.

Thanks for your understanding.

This then is where we differ I think. I don't feel anger in that immediate way, like a switch had been flicked. Anger for me is something that builds over time.

Personally, it's a feeling born out of helplessness, of lack of control, of not being able to fix something.

To give an example again, a long time ago I was punched in the face out of nowhere. Bloke came up to me, belted me one, and stood there hurling abuse at me while I lay on the floor. I felt fear, confusion, stressed and had a massive desire to end the situation (which in this case involved getting up, grabbing a rock, and being as intimidating as fuck and yelling as loud as I could until he ran off).

But I didn't feel angry about it, not at the time. That came later, at home in the dark, and the next day, being scared to leave my house. It was a feeling caused by the fact that this bad thing had happened, I had no control over it, and I was left to deal with the after effects of it.

In your situation, I just don't get where the anger comes in. In your place, I'd have felt fear, stress, and a need to control, the situation, which you did by rugby tackling the dog. But your husband apologised and admitted fault straight away, and the situation resolved, so for me there wouldn't have been the opportunity for anger to build.

If this was a repeating pattern of behaviour from your partner, I'd get it. If the cat had been hurt, I'd get it. In both cases there would be lingering fallout from the event, or a situation that you had no control over.

But in the sequence of events that happened, your anger is alien to me. And I'm not saying that to judge you, everyone works differently. I just wanted to explain why I and possibly others here had such a strong reaction to your OP

@Bobbotgegrinch

And I'm not saying that to judge you, everyone works differently. I just wanted to explain why I and possibly others here had such a strong reaction to your OP

Thanks for this, I appreciate the understanding you have that other's haven't, of us all being different. There has been a bit of a pattern of carelessness in my partner's behaviour recently, due to her suffering from burnout, but it hasn't taken us into 'risk' before. I didn't think it was necessary to mention that in my OP because I think it's ok to feel somewhat pissed off in the situation I was in, and I didn't want to get into a psychological analysis of her. But definitely, for both of us, there's a feeling of loss of control. She's doing things neglectfully sometimes, and is shocked, herself. What she did yesterday is so unlike her. The animals are so important to us both, we are both usually so careful.

But your husband apologised and admitted fault straight away, and the situation resolved, so for me there wouldn't have been the opportunity for anger to build

Does your anger wait, and have a think about whether it's reasonable, before it shows itself to you, then? I don't get how an immediate, internal anger response can be alien to anybody; we've all had an angry outburst at some point, and apologised/felt remorseful afterwards. That's not alien, is it? It's very normal human behaviour. Not great behaviour, but understandable to most, especially when there's been a risk of harm?

Honestly OP, l cannot believe the pile on you have received on this thread. I was actually astounded at the level of sanctimonious, judgemental comments directed at you by posters who obviously never, ever lose their temper with partners who have done something potentially dangerous...in this case overlooking previously agreed safety measures which were in place to protect your frail elderly cat.
Would they be saying' oh it's just an oversight' or 'he's only human' if it was a toddler instead of a cat and he'd left the door to the street open or let them run across a busy road?
I totally get your point and applaud you for your calm responses to the unempathetic crowd who chose not to understand why those were your feelings and that you had a right to feel that way! (Personally l would have gone ballistic and my partner would have received a thorough ear bashing) lts a natural response!

So glad you and your partner have discussed it, moved on from it and that your dear old cat is ok. Your partner won't forget to keep the gate closed in future that's for sure.

@Seaoftroubles

Thank you. I was pretty astounded myself, but just thought 'It's a forum, I shouldn't have bothered!'

I guess there's a lot of people out there who think they've never quietly lost their temper and had to have a word with themselves... perhaps they just silence their anger, and consider themselves good partners? Few of them seem willing to comment on what a person should do, and how closely they adhere to it themselves, though, which says a lot.

I particularly loved the 'OP's dog, cat, and partner, LTB' comment. It shows how hyperbolic people get. I'd said nothing to my partner about how I felt, at that point, and I'd said nothing about how the household is usually, or what our relationship is like. The speed at which all these perfect people leapt to the correct judgement is nothing short of miraculous.

Love the word 'sanctimonious' for the feeling of the responses, by the way @Seaoftroubles

@TheFoundation

OK, with the backstory, things are clearer. Your OP read to me like an isolated incident, and so the reaction seemed very intense. As part of a pattern of careless, it makes more sense to me.

With regards to your second point, I think that my anger generally does give me a chance to think about it. I've always been quite slow to anger, so if someone cuts me off in traffic, I'll just shrug at the time, but by the time the 5th person has done it in one 2hr trip I'm leaning on the horn and hurling abuse, because the cumulation has pissed me off.

Growing up, I used to have a problem with bottling things up, so something would happen, I'd not deal with it so it would then keep happening until I was properly angry and then I'd have an outburst over something inconsequential. However, even at 15 I was a very big, intimidating looking bloke with a very deep voice, so me properly annoyed is actually really quite scary, and leaves people upset in a way that just doesn't happen when other people shout.

As a result I've worked very hard to never get to a point where I'm that angry. I work to resolve conflict calmly and quickly, and when I can't do that I remove myself from the situation. Because I'm slow to anger this isn't too difficult, I imagine I'd be quite a lonely man if the opposite were true.

In the last 20 years, only DP and DD have heard me raise my voice, and both times were because DD was about to do something dangerous and I needed her to stop RIGHT NOW.

Luckily I've ended up in a relationship with someone equally placid, because I can imagine that ending up in a shouting match with someone when only one party is allowed to shout would get wearing quickly.