Hi just trying to find out how to get out of this pattern. It’s the one problem in our relationship that he’d like to see stop, and may be a dealbreaker to him if I can’t figure out what to do differently.
Problem: he feels like when an issue happens, I consistently bring up the issue and let it go on and on instead of just letting it blow over. He also feels like i don’t listen or do things on my own deviating from a plan without talking about it first.
I feel like i try to let it blow over and it only comes back up again because he asks me about it. Then I feel like he blames me for it coming up again when I wasn’t going to bring it up again in the first place.
Example:
There was a miscommunication. I got confused and thought we were going to eat later in the day and not immediately after we were done an activity.
Him: ok now that we’re done, do you want to go eat?
Me: oh for some reason i thought we were eating later in the day. Yeah we can go eat.
Him: i told you 2 hours ago that we’d probably spend 2 more hrs here and then we could go get food. You agreed. See i feel like you don’t listen to me or you aren’t processing or you did listen and didn’t care.
Me: i’m sorry, i do listen. i must’ve gotten confused. We had talked before about spending the whole day out and getting food after doing a different activity. I guess my brain conflated the two. Yes we can get food now.
To me, that was the end of the conversation. Small argument, let it blow over. Everything was fine.
He proceeds to ask me what’s on my mind multiple times over the next 20 minutes. I know that if I say i’m fine, he knows i’m lying, so I’ve learned to just tell the truth. I said very calmly that I felt annoyed that he acts like i don’t listen to him all the time when I just had a brain blip, and i haven’t had one of those in weeks. I’m really trying etc and I’m sorry i got them confused again but lets just pick out what we want to do now.
We dropped it again. I’n trying to be done with this issue, move on etc. We talked about getting food or doing something else first. We said we’d do something else, then get food. We get into what we want for lunch for the next 15 minutes. Because we talked so much about food, for some reason I got it in my head we were going to do food first. Yes, I understand that’s on me. This usually doesn’t happen a lot, it was unfortunately twice my brain blipped. He got upset because suddenly we were going to get food instead. “I said you’re right, sorry, let’s go. i got it in my head we were doing food after talking about food”. He said we might as well just get food first now.
We went to lunch, this convo continued.
Him: this isn’t the first time we’ve had miscommunication issues. We’ve talked about this.
Me: yes, but I haven’t done this in months. I made a mistake and honestly I’m not perfect and feel like you are looking for perfection. I apologized and offered to go to the activity instead. I misremembered.
Him: it hasn’t been months since the last. i’m not expecting you to be perfect or anyone to be perfect. You don’t have to be a puppet and do what I say. But we agreed on what to do and then you just changed your mind or like completely forgot what we agreed on. Can you see why that’s frustrating?
Me: ok yes, but you’re mad, so i feel like you expect perfection. i’ve worked my ass off to listen and make sure I improve on this one issue you have with me. I haven’t brain blipped like that in forever. I just got confused because we were talking about food. I’m human and i’m trying. I thought we were doing food first because of the food convo where you were talking about what food you wanted.
Him: don’t gaslight me and blame this on me. You started the conversation about what we want for food, i was just responding.
Me: do you know what gaslighting is? It’s making people feel crazy. I didn’t say you were to blame, I said we were talking about food. So yes you were part of the conversation, but that’s what a conversation is -more than one person. We were both talking about food, which was my point. I know you are good at spotting manipulators, but not everyone is trying to gaslight you.
Him: i know. You keep bringing up this topic though it’s gone on and on. I don’t know why it can’t just blow over.
Me: i don’t want it to go on either! It should’ve been just “oh sorry i got it mixed up” and you say “no problem”. That’s all that we need to do. It doesn’t need to continue. If we were flipped, that’s what I would’ve done is just said it was no big deal. [I didn’t bring up that it wouldn’t’ve come up again if he hadn’t asked whats on my mind until i answered]
Him: well my brain doesn’t work like that. It gets angry and goes wtf why are you changing plans. You didn’t even tell me, you just did it, so i couldn’t remind you not to go to food first. You also didn’t apologize like in your example. It’s like you just did whatever you wanted and didn’t care that we had made a plan.
Me: okay, you’re right i didn’t apologize. i am sorry. I will next time try to catch my brain blip before it happens so you can remind me. I also am sorry if you felt gaslit, that wasn’t my intention.
Ok i know that’s not perfect communication skills on my part, but heat of the moment and I tried. I’ve been trying so hard to work on listening better because it’s our only issue. I’m also annoyed because he didn’t apologize.
Like i’m generally happy, but this part of my relationship stresses me out. But, i see i also stress him out when he feels like I bring up stuff and it keeps going on. I still think it wouldn’t keep going if he didn’t ask whats on my mind until I tell him. Do I lie and make up something that’s not after thoughts about the issue?
So how do I stop this cycle? I’ve tried to figure out what I can do differently and I just don’t know. Maybe write stuff down more? I recognize this unfortunately does look like I don’t listen. Any help is appreciated! I tried to give both sides so it is fair.
TL;DR: bf and I have been in bad communication cycle recently- they feel i go on and on and i feel like things only come up because they ask
1 comment
This is abuse. Point blank. Reacting to your forgetting something/mixing something up with “you aren’t listening to me” implies that you should be hanging on his every word and is an overreaction to a regular human foible. Then he behaves as if you’re not allowed to be annoyed and keeps poking at it so he can accuse you of gaslighting, which is absolutely something he’s doing to you in this interaction. I suggest keeping a journal and looking for patterns – that’s what it took for me to really see the abuse my ex was laying out. I blamed it on communication issues too, for literally years. Then I started to get really depressed and confused and didn’t know why it was happening. Took a journal for about twi months to see what was going on.