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?

It was his idea. I overthink quite a lot and don’t know how to stop it.

if he becomes quiet let’s say because he’s tired, I over think and think that he’s upset at me over something.

even when he tells me he’s not upset at me, the feeling that I have that he is, doesn’t leave immediately and I need help from him to get rid of these thoughts. I’m working with my therapist to solve this issue alone now because I know it’s tiring for him

because when he’s tired, he doesn’t touch me, hug me or kiss me. And I want to be close to him this way.

You're not recognising any issues, you're being belligerent and throwing blame. Take some accountability.

You were completely in the wrong during this argument. If this is a normal pattern for you both, I'd say your boyfriend is being emotionally bullied by you.

I guess the good thing is that you're having therapy and you've asked if YABU + are engaging with the responses. Great that you're not staying in an echo chamber.

Not so great that you don't seem able to say "yes, I was in the wrong". Your answers are all "yes, but... list of reasons why you think you're justified".

Look, if someone is living with a person who misinterprets their tone regularly, assumes a negative intent often, and then needs you to validate their feelings on these misinterpretations...they will become defensive and short tempered. Because it is TOO MUCH. The man is not a full time therapist or saint, he's just a normal person trying to take a shower, talking to HIMSELF, and even that is something he now has to reassure you about. Stop trying to find reasons he's in the wrong, the issue doesn't start there. He reacts to you and as everyone on this thread has said..most of us would react in exactly the same way as him. You are about to drive your relationship over a cliff and frankly i think he should be running in the pther direction. But lets assume your intent is in fact to see your issues. Forget what he's doing. Forget it. That's not your problem. The more you try to apportion some blame at him the more you are missing the point. Your problem is you. You learn to be ok with your feelings. Have therapy, not to see whether some of it is his fault, have a therapist, not to see whether you can co-opt them into agreeing with you, do it bevause the way you are living is insanity and unsustainable. If it's not him, it will be someone else, and nobody can live like this long term.

You do pick fights. You went in the bathroom while he was in the shower and picked a fight about something that was nothing to do with you, telling him repeatedly that he sounded negative when he was practising debate.

Now you have pushed him to have two evenings a week talking about your feelings and you're complaining he doesn't hug and kiss you when he's tired.

Poor bloke. I hope he comes to his senses.

This.

You started the fight.

Leave the poor bloke alone in the shower. Not everything is about you. And he is entitled to peace and privacy.

You need to learn to let things go and deal with things yourself instead of expecting him to ‘validate your feelings’ every 2 minutes. This is not normal behaviour.

You are obviously struggling and when we are in a negative pattern it’s easy to be destructive.
if he’s rehearsing something and you don’t like it don’t listen. The topic of his podcast is his choice if it’s a negative one or not is nothing to do with you. He shouldn’t have to restrict his words to please you.
i would find it difficult to live with someone who created arguments for the sake of it and had such a one sided view point.
Ypur behaviour could be considered abusive if there’s a pattern to you starting arguments like this.

You sound hard work. Like you are looking for a fight or an issue. Christ he was talking to himself in the bathroom.

You put your ear to the door to listen to him?

And you quite often think he’s talking about you?

You are in no shape to be in a relationship. You should end things with your h and work on yourself before you even think about getting into another relationship.

What more did you have to say that he didn’t hear out? It sounds like you just kept repeating the same thing, that he sounded negative and it made you feel bad.

Sorry I echo what all the others have said. You picked a fight. Break up with him.

What if he was in there being negative to trigger you? What if he deliberately wanted to upset you? What if you are right? - you should break up for that reason alone.

How ever you read the situation couples therapy won't help. End it for the sanity of all involved.

If you can't see how batshit it is to record an argument in the first place.
Then to send it to someone else......doesn't matter who that person is.

This relationship has no future.

Your therapist is wrong. You're 100% at fault.

My advice to you is do not get married under any circumstances. You need to split up with this poor guy. Frankly I have no idea why, or how, he can even be bothered to entertain your behaviour. It's suffocating, intense, horrible and very, very wrong. I actually felt sick reading your posts.

Concentrate on sorting yourself out with a decent therapist, stop inflicting your nonsense on this man and let him go free from the prison of craziness you've created.

I wanted to tell him how his tone makes me feel and I couldn’t say a word. This happens every single time I want to talk about my feelings.

im afraid at this point to goto him and tell him how I feel about anything because he always sighs and gets defensive now.

if this was the other way around, my priority would be to hear him out and get him feeling normal first before I do anything

Do you suspect that he wasn’t actually practising for a podcast, but having a dialogue with himself about how he really feels about you and what’s going on in the relationship?
I would normally agree with everyone saying that you need to leave him to his own devices in his own private space, but I can imagine that if things weren’t particularly good in our relationship and I heard dh animatedly whispering to himself in the shower, maybe sounding angry, I’d be slightly spooked.
If that is the case, it speaks volumes that the only way he can process his thoughts and feelings is by having a conversation with himself in the shower. Will these talks you’re going to have twice a week be all about validating your feelings, op? If you don’t allow him to have/express his feelings, for fear of pressuring/triggering you in some way, then no wonder he talks to himself in the shower.

Even if you don't feel you challenged your partner, you engaged in conversation whilst he was having a shower. Why couldn't it wait until he got out?

You then do challenge him whilst he is naked and vulnerable.

I'd be absolutely furious if I were him and would have been far less polite in my words than he was.

So what did you want him to say? He seems to have explained that he was rehearsing and that it wasn’t about you. I’m not sure what else he could do? Did you want him to apologise because that’s unreasonable. Why can’t he speak in certain tones when he thinks he’s alone?

You might believe you are telling the truth with your last sentence, but you are lying to yourself. Your actions are doing anything getting "feeling normal first" (or second or last).

He suggested that I record conversations so he can “show me” how things go.

like last time, when the water filter man had to come and I felt super anxious about letting him in.

he knows that I suffer from anxiety with strangers . And that day I felt super anxious maybe because I drank more coffee than usual.

then wouldn’t it be his priority to reschedule the water filter man so he can come when he’s available so i won’t be anxious?

evne before I can even explain this he cut me off by completely disregarding my emotions. He said what’s the big deal just let the man in and do his job.

but if I don’t feel good that day, shouldn’t he reschedule?

Op you are being staggeringly intrusive. He is allowed to talk in the shower, run through his speech and do whatever he likes. You are massively overstepping boundaries even by listening to him. He has a right to privacy in his own home.

There seems to be a lack of trust on your part. What has he done in the past to lead you to suspect he is talking about you? Or even thinking about you as he prepares in the shower?

but she did say that he was wrong to completely shut me down. She feels that he should have heard me out.

He was in the fucking shower, half washed, naked and trapped, so of course he was closing the conversation. I'm very surprised he had any conversation with you at that time. Did your therapist not realise this? If she did then she isn't a real therapist.

OP I remember your last thread and I remember nearly everyone calling you insane and batshit then too. These negative feelings of yours are not for others to validate they are for YOU to deal with by yourself (with therapist). You should split with your DF whilst you are having treatment - are you only any medication for these intrusive thoughts?

You sound pretty abusive and totally self absorbed. I feel sympathy and pity for your boyfriend. I hope he gets out of this toxic relationship.

Your therapist is doing you a disservice here. You very clearly need help to deal with your own anxiety because you absolutely are picking fights. The man was talking to himself, about nothing to do with you, in the shower and you feel “pressure” as a result? That is not an emotionally balanced response and is, very clearly, a you problem. Expecting your bf to “validate” feelings which are so irrational will do no good, for either of you. You don’t need validation, you need techniques to calm your anxiety and manage your emotional responses.

I wanted him to not cut me off and just reassure me a few times that it wasn’t about me and that he loves me and nothing is wrong.

i know I have issues which I’m currently working on but I just needed his love and if he just hugged and kissed me it would have been fine.

OP for the sake of yourself and your relationship go and see someone about getting medicated for your anxiety. The therapy alone is not working and you don't seem to recognise how anxious and unreasonable you are.