How to not get triggered by DH

[Soootired23]

It's a very, very long story and overall I'm over it (or as over as I'll ever be).

I'm a fairly reactive/ shouty person. No amount of therapy and anger management has resolved it, so no I just try to keep a distance from situations that could trigger (i.e. telling the DC to clean their rooms, I still tell them, but maybe after the second time I just stop).

So over the weekend my DH annoyed me. (He went and started clearing our DSs room even though I said I would do it as most things are mine). For context I WFH and a little corner of my son's room is my dedicated space to work. As you can tell he then ignored me. Then I said again that I would do it, and then went to start clearing my corner and even dropped my laptop (an accident). I then lost it and started shouting at him. Up to that point I think it was salvageable, but then he told me I "shouldn't treat him that way" and that really triggered me as he treated me like absolute crap for years and years (continuously), so that brought back all of that baggage. Which obviously wasn't great.

Any way we could avoid this?.

He’s tidying up a room in his house, going in and shouting at someone for that is a massive overreaction and not healthy.

He was literally tidying up, he wasn’t pissing on her stuff or setting them on fire.

I never said I was entitled to it, I overreacted. I'm just dayin the context, because I told him not to do it at least 3 times. I know it wasn't ok like at all, but it also didn't come out of nowhere.

What you call distancing sounds like shutting down and dissociating.

Distancing is good if it helps you take a step back and see the situation more rationally.
If distancing means ignoring the issue, ignoring your anger (even if you have good reasons for it), then you are doing yourself a disfavour.

What I do is an analysis "of not being worthwhile" so will getting angry make any difference? No, not really.

Nope.
He ignored her repeated request ps - first huge issue. Why did he not respect her request? It wasn’t a complex one!

He ‘tidy up’ her WORK stuff - second huge red flag. My work stuff is always put in certain place. Someone coming to ‘tidy up’ for me would mean I couldnt find the info I need. How would feel if a cleaner was coming to tidy your desk up at work, putting things in files they dont belong etc…? Or when someone is simply ramaging through your stuff?

This isn’t “someone”, it’s the person who’s supposed to be her partner.

You’re on a very slippery slope when you’re trying to make the argument that if someone doesn’t do what you ask then it’s totally fine to shout at them. Would you say the same if she had lashed out physically rather than verbally? It’s okay to lash out if you personally feel someone deserves it?

But in that case, it was worthwhile to assert your need. Otherwise you wouldn’t have lashed out.

So it was worthwhile to say ‘it’s not ok for you to touch my work stuff’.
You wouldn’t have come upstairs to do it otherwise right?

Maybe read again if that what you understand from my post.

Im saying her dh was in the wrong fur carrying on after the OP asked him something simple. To let her stuff alone.

Its easy to have a go at the OP for shouting whilst ignoring the fact he behaved badly.

Does it mean it’s ok to lash out? Probably not.

Does it mean that’s enough to find excuses for her dh to ignore his dwife and do as he wants (which is what you’re saying when you explain he was just tidying up. It’s not as if he had set stuff one fire etc.l,), then that’s a huge NO too.

In most RL situations, both partners have a role and don’t show theur best sides. That’s one if them.

You said that when he said you shouldn't treat him that way" and that really triggered me as he treated me like absolute crap for years and years (continuously), so that brought back all of that baggage.

You do feel entitled to behave that way. The context is that he's been an asshole for years, and he's got a cheek to complain about getting it back.

To me it was the not listening at all. I told him before we got home, I told him once we got home. Once he started moving my stuff, I told him to just give me a second as I needed the toilet, and would come back to do it.

Then I came back and started clearing y stuff and I told him to please stop as I wanted to do it as it was my space.

It blew out of proportion because I had been feeling down about WFH ( I don't like it) but he doesn't like to talk about because there's nothing that can be done
.

No I don't, I genuinely don't. But when he tells me that, it feels really rich of him, and I just go ahead and tell him all the things he's done, and how he should ultimately be grateful that I forgave him.

That last bit (of rehashing the past) is what I really want to avoid.

We're actually ok, we really have a disagreement once or maybe twice a year for the past 3 years.

Yet you also say:

he told me I "shouldn't treat him that way" and that really triggered me as he treated me like absolute crap for years and years (continuously)

You can't really have it both ways. Either you've moved on and are okay now or you've not. It's not going to work if you constantly throw back to him treating you like crap for years and years like it's some justification of being able to treat him like this now. It's not okay to yell at people like you do and you didn't distance yourself when this was escalating, you got in the thick of it and exploded. Whatever he did to 'trigger' you (hate that word, really overused to diminish personal responsibility), you did more than overreact and it's not acceptable.

You're dismissive of anger management and therapy as if you're some special outlying case beyond all help, which sounds more like an excuse to not keep doing the work on yourself, which inevitably leads to situations like this. If you're determined to stay together, you need to do more than rely on this 'distancing'. You clearly still blame him for a ton of unprocessed stuff, which is why you're going nuts at him for you dropping your own laptop.

So clearly your abusive H is the problem?

I’d have been furious at him getting in my things and my space when told NOT to. I’ve got the right to do that.

Possibly the only thread in the world where a man is being classed as behaving badly for TIDYING UP in his own house.

It really doesn’t matter what he did, exploding like this is not okay, that’s the absolute end of the story.

The whole situation sounds toxic. Just because it's better than your last relationship doesn't mean it's good.

But you haven't forgiven him. You're a human being so it's not easy, but basically it seems to me you've shoved it under the carpet, but not actually been able to get over it.

And possibly you shouldn't anyway, depends what he's did.

• Done

I think 99% would not have forgiven him, the percent could be even higher

It doesn’t matter though. You chose to stay and forgive him, you cannot also then continuously throw that back in his face and justify your own horrible behaviour with “but he did worse”.

So how do you move forward without forgiving him? Because this is all contributing to the rage that's pent up and it isn't going to vanish by ignoring it.

But I don't justify it. I just don't like him to specifically mention it in certain ways. I know it's an odd thing, I don't know if it's part of my ND or not.

I think even a "calm down" would have worked more.

It was more the "I don't deserve to be treated that way" when he never touched his heart for years and years. It's genuinely a wording thing.

You are justifying it though, even in what you are saying there. You think he shouldn’t be able to express that he should not be treated like that based on his behaviour in the past.

Those things are linked in your mind otherwise you wouldn’t have brought them up here at all because they are actually irrelevant to this situation entirely.

I think you're splitting hairs here. It's not about what word he should or shouldn't say that would mean you don't have all these feelings. You have them and you feel they're justified, because he hurt you with how he treated you back then and you haven't/can't get past that. You're not helping by pretending to yourself that if he said x instead of y then you'd have been okay. You're not okay. You know it. It's not about not getting triggered. You've got a cellarful of gunpowder and there's always going to be some kind of spark, unless you clear it out properly.

It's also not going to work to put the onus on him to say the right thing. He's got feelings too and isn't always going to be calm and rational so's not to trigger you. There's all kinds of ways you're blaming him for everything from the past treatment to the current incident, and I'm not saying that he's not to blame, but if you want to keep the relationship going - and you seem to want to even though it sounds unhealthy to most on here - then you have to get past this blame game and work through it all properly together, probably in therapy, so you can reach some state of of forgiveness such that this well of rage isn't ready to blow.

I don't know! Last time we fought (in December) I didn't mention it at all, and kept my cool. I was disappointed in him though, not annoyed so I don't know if that would have made a difference.