Hello.
tldr- My boyfriend smashed his plate of food he just cooked on the ground after a petty argument about the meal prep escalated. I don't know how to de-escalate in the future. Nothing seems to help.
I hate to make this post, but I don't want my friends and family to dislike my boyfriend because of this incident so I don't know who else to ask. I've been with my boyfriend for almost 3 years. It's a good relationship. We have opposite personalities but it's worked for us for the most part. He's very ambitious, smart, loyal, and he has a lot of similar hobbies and tastes as I do. I don't really know where to start so I'll start with the incident that led me to make this post which happened last night. I apologize for how poorly this is written.
I had just got off a 13 hour shift. He got off a 9. We had planned to have chicken fried rice after we were both got home from work. I offered to stop and get a few ingredients in the way home and he declines and told me he was stopping at Kroger. We both got home and started cooking. He's the cook out of the 2 of us and likes to do things his way and I tend to let him as I'm not picky at all and not a great cook. He asked me to get the chicken ready and I agreed. I went to grab it and he starts unpacking it. I told him I would do it, just to tell me what he wants. He continues to unwrap and put the chicken in the bowl. He says to get the soy sauce out and then grabs the soy sauce as he's closest to it. I said I can take over if you want me to do the chicken. He begins to explain to use soy sauce and brown sugar for teriyaki. I was like ok got it. Then he starts pouring the soy sauce in. I get irritated and ask if he wants me to do the chicken or if he wants to do it. He slams the soy sauce on the counter and says I'm just showing you how to do it. I say I don't need help pouring soy sauce. So at this point I take over and put brown sugar and a bit of water in as that's all that needed to be done to the chicken. Then he asks if I can crack and beat 2 eggs and I agreed. As I was about to crack the 2nd egg he says wait, let me check and make sure it's 2 eggs. I cracked the egg anyways because I read a recipe that said 2 and the sheer amount of rice we made, it needed at least 2. He screams "WHAT THE FUCK? Why did you ignore me? I said WAIT." I told him I had read the recipe and 2 would be fine. He never said anything else about how many eggs so I beat the eggs and went to sit on the couch since I no longer felt wanted or needed in the kitchen.
He brought me my food all smiley like nothing had happened. Maybe I should have let it go. But I am tired of just pretending he doesn't overreact to everything that doesn't go his way. So I ask why he had to scream 'what the fuck' and over react about the extra egg. Then began the back and forth. He asks how he was supposed to react when he's being ignored. I said if I was wrong we could have thrown out one of the eggs. It's not like we're pressed for money. Then he started raising his voice about how I never help cook dinner and he was just trying to get me involved. Here is where things go to shit. I tell him we can continue talking if he stops yelling and he says that he is not going to stop yelling. I say ok I am not going to continue the convo then. I go downstairs awkwardly to the kitchen where the 2 housemates are, probably just having heard this argument over eggs. I put my food in Tupperware and into the fridge and start doing dishes. He comes down and says "let's talk." I say no. He says "this is a really awkward. Let's talk." I say " yes this is awkward. We should have talked when I told you to stop yelling at me. I'm doing dishes now." he goes outside and smashes his full glass plate of food on the concrete and drives off in his car.
He comes back maybe 20 minutes later and cleans up the glass plate and food from the drive way then comes in and starts talking. Saying sorry and such. I ask him what he expects me to do at this point, explaining that if we had kids I would never want to subject them to being treated like that when they do something wrong. Sorry isnt cutting it this time and that there needs to be some sort of boundary. Then he goes into "well am I allowed to set boundaries on you? If you're allowed to set boundaries on me?" this really gets me fired up and I raise my voice at this point "what boundaries do you want to set? What do I do that you want to put boundaries on?" he says he needs to know if he's allowed to do it since I'm allowed to do it. He stated he's an engineer and needs to know both sides. He says he's good at his job because he acts this way, so just to tell him if he's allowed (Idk?). I just give up and say yes whatever set boundaries on me. I then go back to what we can do to de-escalate the situation next time. Problem being that I ask this every time we argue and we never come up with anything that works. He says me asking or telling him to stop yelling sets him off and that any time someone tells him to do something different it sets him off and he rages and wants to do the opposite. And he says this is in his blood. I tell him that he may need to seek help about this cause it sounds extreme. He says he refuses to take meds and I told him he didn't need to take meds there are other options. At this point he he crying a lot and hitting himself on the head with his fist. Not totally violently but... I don't know just something he does that we agreed he would not do anymore cause it's very bothersome to me. I say I have to go to sleep because I have work early.
So having been through several similar situations minus smashing the plate, we can't seem to be able to work through issues calmly. I am just not comfortable with disagreements getting this out of hand. Maybe it's pretty normal to explode sometimes but I definitely don't feel comfortable with it happening over what I see as something that should have just been mildly annoying.
Is there any helping us? I guess I could always be the one to shut up and end the argument before it gets out of hand but I feel like that is being taken advantage of in a way because he will know he can say whatever he wants and I won't get mad. We're both petty so maybe I should just try to be the bigger person when we start to argue. Reddit, please help. Any insight to how we can end this cycle is appreciated.
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