Therapist feedback and want your opinion on her feedback

[togo1004]

my last thread got deleted, but some of the folks here know that I’m currently in therapy for having a rocky relationship with my fiancé.

i recorded a conversation that I had with my fiancé which turned into an argument and had it sent to my therapist and this was her feedback.

to preface this, the fight started when he was taking a shower and I heard him talking to himself as he normally does. I couldn’t hear the words but it sounded pretty negative. So I walked in and said “what are you on about?” He replied “I’m just practicing my speech. I’ll be doing a small podcast and debating on topics from money to relationships and I was just being a devils advocate for myself so that I can cover if there are any holes in my argument”

then I said “you sound negative” then he replied “I’m not being negative, debates can become passionate but nobody is insulting each other. Then I replied “but you sound negative”. Then he said “it’s not negative why are you keep sayin it’s negative when it’s not negative”. I told him that the way he was talking in the shower made me feel pressured. He then said “why would you feel pressured when I’m not talking about you? I’m just practicing my talking skills”. Then I replied “you sound negative and it’s giving me pressure and..” that’s when he cut me off and said “why do you always have a problem with me? Every few days you have some sort of an issue with me when I’m just minding my own business, I cannot understand at all, is there a problem?” I started crying and started to say “I just wanted to talk about how you made me feel when you do these things and..”. Then he cut me off again by saying “I don’t get it, I’m literally just talking to myself, I’m whispering which means you had to try to listen so hard to listen. If it bothers you so much, why are you listening?” That’s when I broke down and left the house for a walk.

my therapist said we are both wrong here. She said that “I need to learn to let go of these things especially when he mentions that it has nothing to do with me”. And she said he’s also wrong for “not validating my feelings and refusing to understand how it makes me feel when he talks to himself with such a tone and cuts me off”

We didn’t go into further detail than this we will go over Thursday.

what are your thoughts on this MN?

You are abusing him OP but expecting him to cater to your madness. Do him a favour and leave.

it is not normal in a relationship to need to tell partners your feelings every minute of the day. You don’t need to share every feeling all the time!

relax, enjoy the relationship, have fun, do things, talk about other things (not just about you and how you feel in that moment all the time!). Create hobbies, just do stuff! Live your life and don’t make everything about you!

seriously. Please work on this. Stop making everything thing about you and your feelings all the time! We all have feelings. Most of us know when it’s right to share them and when it’s right just to get on with things.

Get off tik tok, get away from girly romantic films and neurotic characters. Think about other people.

I also struggle to believe this isn’t another fake post but if it is genuine, sometimes it helps to put yourself in your partners shoes (or wet feet as it were) OP.

I mean if I’m in the shower, belting out a bit of Celine Dion as I do from time to time, and DH barges into the bathroom with “why are you singing that song so animatedly? It’s about me isn’t it? You’re going to leave me aren’t you? That song makes me uncomfortable, apologise!”

Not only am I not stepping out of the shower to give him a hug (stark b naked), but the only thing being validated is the divorce papers.

It sounds like everything is about 'validating your feelings' which I think you interpret as 'he has to agree with everything I feel'. It all sounds incredibly self-centered and exhausting.

Your fiancé is in a toxic controlling relationship. I hope he gets out as soon as possible.

OP, back to the discussion you recorded - do you understand what he meant by playing devil's advocate when talking to himself in the shower? You understand that he's trying to sound negative? That was reasonable as he was talking and rehearsing to himself.

As soon as he told you the conversation had nothing to do with you- you should have let it go. I could absolutely not live with you.

then I said “you sound negative” then he replied “I’m not being negative, debates can become passionate but nobody is insulting each other.

Then I replied “but you sound negative”.

Then I replied “you sound negative and it’s giving me pressure and..”

This is hounding and emotional abuse.

You’re not right for each other, time to end the reoationship.

just leave him alone if he's doing something minor and harm less that you don't like. you are allowed to have feelings without making them his responsibility. he exists independently of your feelings. you can't control people like that

Sorry but I don’t think he’s done anything wrong here. I don’t understand why you’ve even said anything. If you’re initiating this kind of conflict regularly, and don’t see it as an issue, then you really need to explore why. I don’t think many people would put up with this kind of behaviour towards them. It sounds like you desperately needed him to agree that he was being negative, despite his answers, and you weren’t going to drop it. That’s not healthy or typical.

I have OCD - have you ever considered you might have relationship OCD?
Signs of Relationship OCD and How To Cope

All I’ll add is this
I was with someone and they frequently told me I was in a bad mood when I wasn’t. I wasn’t doing anything at all to imply I was in a bad mood. I might be reading, or preparing a meal, or making the bed, or coming in from shopping or a million other things but I certainly wasn’t in a bad mood. They had a habit of constantly repeating that I was in a bad mood.
I would reply calmly, no I’m not in a bad mood. They would then rely yes you are. I would again say, no I’m not.
Rinse and repeat
The end result was always that I would end up being annoyed and yes, in a bad mood due entirely to this interaction!
Usually they would they say, oh well I’m going out to get away from you and your mood.
Yes he is an ex.

The difference he is not going on at you with negative things but you do. That isn’t hypocrisy.

If this is genuine, I stand by what I said. You haven’t once said you were wrong to police his tone and burst in while he was in the shower, or hold your ear to the door to listen in on him, or that you shouldn’t get ‘very very angry’ just because he wants to do something different of an evening, or that you acted like a banshee over him trying to help your cock up with the rice cooker. He isn’t responsible for your ridiculous emotional needs or your mental health. He just isn’t. You’re an adult, take some responsibility for yourself and stop making excuses for your abusive behaviour. Hope he leaves you, he doesn’t deserve this.

Both of you sound unstable at best, he is infinitely worse for having a podcast.

Poor bastard. Leave him - he doesn’t deserve to be harangued like this x

OP you are clearly incompatible. Your viewpoints about life (eg his ‘perception is a choice’ is a million miles away from your negative spiralling). blaming your eating disorder on him, and that you do not listen to him when he tells you how he is feeling- in this case ill and wanting to go home, these are all definitive reasons why you shouldn’t be in a relationship.

Maybe he isn’t a saint all the time but you do appear to be the toxic one in the relationship, and you do appear to be finding fault in him where there is none- this is no way to live.

if you are so unhappy then you really need to look at changing the situation, in a country you don’t feel so isolated and being somewhere you are happy and can work on your issues.

OP, it sounds like maybe you have a lot of trauma in your background, and maybe you have only experienced dysfunctional relationships.

But you are behaving like a toddler or very young child.

This man isn’t your parent, and it’s not appropriate or reasonable to demand he drops whatever he is doing and validates your feelings whenever they arise, like a parent would with a little baby.

You can’t make him responsible for your entire emotional well-being and try to control everything he says and does, adult relationships don’t work like that, they need to be mutual and equal, rather than the world revolving uncompromisingly round one party (ie you).

If you can’t respond to him as an adult partner, then you are both much better off splitting up.
You need to learn for yourself how to behave in an adult relationship.

You're seeing a therapist, if they can't help you find someone who is more to your taste. But it seems pretty pointless expecting mumsnet to therapise you more effectively from your comments than someone who has been in a room with you both and spent time listening to you both.

Do you ever wonder if you’re actually quite a nightmare to be around? You can’t keep friends (they don’t even have to live with you and still find you too much). I have sympathy for your childhood but as an adult you can’t be this unbearable unless you want to be totally alone. I think your bad behaviour makes your bf ill, doesn’t that make you feel ashamed? Don’t you want to be a better human so people genuinely want to be around you? In my unprofessional opinion you are abusive.

In the example where he was out of breath, explain to us how you felt in the moment when you blew up at him instead of being sympathetic. Now you admit you were completely in the wrong, talk us through your thought process in the moment objectively.

Did you think he was lying? Or did you genuinely just not care enough about his breathlessness to miss out on something you wanted to do?

Well firstly I am very surprised the therapist didn’t tell you that recording him is bang out of order. Also he was having a shower in peace you had no right to then tell him that the context of his (frankly bizarre conversation with himself) made you uncomfortable - he wasn’t talking to you.

poor bloke let him have his alone time in peace and stop recording him -
seriously odd behaviour on your behalf.

Your boyfriend is your hostage. Instead of living a life to the fullest - you are creating unnecessary drama. Read about drama triangles

@togo1004 you are not ready or fit to be in a relationship. You shouldn’t be in any relationship until you have worked on yourself and your many issues.

Have these issues magically appeared since being with your partner or are they existing ones you had prior to them?

It isn’t healthy to expect someone to pander to your emotional needs 24/7 and for everything to be allllllllll about you.

It is not his job to fix you. It’s your job to fix you. You really are the issue here I’m afraid.

You are utterly bonkers and hard work.