First of all: English is not my native language, so please excuse the spelling and grammar mistakes. This will be a longer text – on the one hand because I want to get it off my chest and currently have no one to share it with, on the other hand because it has relevance to what happened last night. I thank you in advance for your words.
We have cats and for safety reasons we put special cat nets on the window so we can open the windows. She put the nets in place. A week ago a cat got caught in the netting, threw the netting out of its socket and walked on the window ledge outside the apartment. I got a huge shock – when the cat saw me it immediately ran into the apartment. Nothing happened, but I had a huge shock. We put the nets again and now stabilized that it won’t happen again. Since my girlfriend is the handywoman of the two of us, she took over. In her opinion, it was now safe.
Last night a cat jumped at the window with protection as we ate dinner. She got a massive fright and grabbed my shoulder with both her hands – whereupon I got scared and found out “that nothing happened”. I was having a bad day and was annoyed at her reaction because I assumed the windows were now secure. This escalated into an argument.
She provoked me, I provoked her – in the end we decided to put the argument aside – or rather she did so on her own, because at some point she stopped talking to me.
So we went out of the way.
Later in the evening, I noticed that she broke a glass in the kitchen and I went to help her. She told me that there was a cat next to it, whereupon I went to the cat to see if it was hurt. I then heard her turn on the vacuum cleaner (she knows this scares the cat) and the cat scratched me and jumped off my arm in a panic. I raised my voice in fright and asked her what the hell she was doing NOW with the vacuum cleaner. She said she didn’t know I was going to the cat – and that the cat “absolutely has to be pet when she dropped a glass”.
I just got absolutely furious because I wanted to take care of the cat and I didn’t understand why she had to provoke me like that when I was already helping her pick up the glass.
Our kitchen is very narrow and I raised my voice against her. She told me to leave, but I wanted to discuss it now. The mood heated up and you “touched” her lightly on the shoulder (it wasn’t really pushing, she also said afterwards that it was more of a movement to get her attention) because she stopped talking to me. She then went wild on me, kicking me, hitting me and biting my forearm.
I was absolutely shocked at the extent of her reaction. She didn’t want to talk to me after that and ignored me.
Later in the evening, we talked again. At first she was not ready to admit guilt that her reaction was absolutely disproportionate and justified it by saying that she did not know what to do and wanted to escape from the situation. So she justified her behavior in a way. I told her afterwards that it pissed me off that she justified herself in such a way. If the story had gone the other way around, we would have had a completely different situation. She understood this and realized what she had just done. She apologized several times and asked me to forgive her. I told her that I didn’t know if I could continue the relationship with her.
I slept in the living room and when she came home from work today we talked about it again. She told me that she was incredibly sorry for what she had done, that she would like to undo it and that she was very afraid of me leaving her. As I was writing this text here she came to me again and repeated that.
It was not the first time she did something like that. This should have been the third time now (we have been together for almost three years). Also before it were situations in which she felt cornered. However, I also notice that she sometimes (but very rarely) “hits me” in other situations – for example, when I tease her and she tries to fight back. I always dismissed this as childish behavior, but since thinking about it today, I see it in a different light.
What should I do?
6 comments
You state this is not the first time she has done this. This will not be the last either. You already know what you need to do. She is an abuser point blank period.
I would leave her honestly if shes going to full on attack you like that no thank you just leave her. And the way she turned on the vaccuum as she was watching you go for the cat i think it was on purpose. You dont hit someone you love remember that always and if she has done this on multiple occasions then this more than likely will happen again. So i would suggest leaving her before its too late because from how i interpreted this is i think that she thinks that she wears the pants in the relationship and she doesnt respect you
Firstly there is nothing wrong with her wearing the pants in the relationship but it is wrong if she doesn’t respect you as a person and partner.
Moving on, it sounds like this kind of behavior isn’t all that common (once a year?) but it shouldn’t be ignored. You can leave her of course but if you want to stay and she’s so scared of losing you, tell her to go see a therapist to work on her anger issues. She doesn’t seem that hopeless, in comparison to some situations on this forum, rather a bit of an asshole who thinks she can get away with physical behavior as long as she has the slightest reason. That’s toxic, unacceptable and she needs to know you won’t tolerate it anymore. Also, you should bring up to her that you’re noticing that she has violent tendencies seeing as she’s “hitting” you even in childish situations. Tell her this makes you uncomfortable and is too immature to be tolerated when it’s feeding into her more violent outbursts. Either she works on changing this attitude and behavior of hers or you are done with her. However, notice that violence isn’t her first move, rather she stops fighting and ignores you. She is trying to distance herself from the situation before it gets too heated. Let her. Don’t keep pushing just because you want to get answers right then and there. Be patient, not demanding, and wait till she cools off and you can talk it over like adults when neither temper is flaring.
Something to keep in mind though: this was a stressful situation for you both and she went way overboard, but you seem like you need to work on keeping your head cool too. She’s the handy person but when her work is put to the test with a cat’s life at stake, it’s reasonable for her to get scared and panic. Especially when her nets didn’t work the first time. She obviously did her best and you freaking out at her uncertainty in the quality of her work started her feeling attacked. You’re with a woman that you know gets violent when she feels attacked. If you want to stay with her and work through this, you should try to stay as calm as possible too. You have the right to emotional outbursts too, just mentioning this since you seem more mature and therefore might be able to tweak your behaviors to make her improvement faster and easier.
Good luck and hope you both and your cats stay safe!
>Our kitchen is very narrow and I raised my voice against her. She told me to leave, but I wanted to discuss it now. **The mood heated up and you “touched” her lightly on the shoulder** (it wasn’t really pushing, she also said afterwards that it was more of a movement to get her attention) because she stopped talking to me. She then went wild on me, kicking me, hitting me and biting my forearm.
So you trapped her in a small space, yellined at her and forced her to continue to interact with you, going so far as to physically “get her attention”? And she’s the bad guy?
What type of “teasing” does she fight back on? Is it also physical?
I am not saying her response was justified, but you are not blameless.
Yea…. as very small girl… I absolutely would have blacked out and lashed out as well. You trapped her, yelled at her, and got physical with her… not a good look. Especially since it seems you kinda had to convince her it was just a tap. Let me tell you… I have received some pretty hard taps from men before who thought they were light ones.
I think you were both wrong in how you handled this situation, this situation should not have escalated to a full blown fight where you are getting physical with one another. While I think the level of violence she escalated to was not appropriate, I think you need to take some accountability for your actions here too because you put your hands on her, still don’t understand why you felt the need to touch her? and tried to aggressively force her to have a conversation she did not want to have in an already tense situation. I think you all need to end this relationship because this is very toxic.