when i (f/20) have panic attacks and can’t stop crying, my boyfriend (m/21) either tells me to shut up or threatens to break up with me so i’ll stop.
he’s so kind to me all the time, but he hates that i cry. he says, “why cant you just stop crying? are you going to cry everytime i get mad at you?”
and i told him i don’t know.
i don’t know why i cry, i cant help it. my mom has always hated it about me, too. when i cry, she says i’m regressing back to “middle school [my name]”, as if it’s something awful and i should be ashamed to resemble my middle school self.
i cry because i get choked up, and it feels impossible to push it down. tonight, we were having such a good night and he suddenly raised his voice a little with me, sounding irritated, and it was abrupt and i wasn’t sure why. it hurt me, and i thought i did something wrong, so i started crying because i was so happy we were having so much fun and i felt confused and overwhelmed at the change. i was trying to stop crying when he already sounded overwhelmed that i started. when he sounds frustrated with me for crying, i cry even harder because i don’t know how to react. i cant control it. he tells me to suppress it and push it down sometimes, because i blow things out of proportion by crying…but i was trying to stop…i told him before already that i was feeling extra emotional tonight. 🙁 if he hadn’t made me feel so pressured to stop, and like i’d already done something wrong, i believe it would’ve been much easier to stop.
i started a nightly tradition where every night we say something we are grateful for and our top 3 moments of the day:( and we hardly did that tonight because of me, but i know he must love me because he stayed until i said mine through desperate tears.
at one point he said to me, “it’s just so sad when you cry.” for some reason it made me cry harder to know he wasn’t just pissed off, but he actually cared. i know how much he loves me. he’s always kind to me, and he was playing a movie for me even though he was tired tonight. he is so kind and i hate upsetting him. i know he isn’t like this. i wish i were better, and he didn’t have to threaten me for me to calm down.
after he told me to shut up tonight, i said to him, “i wish you hadn’t told me to shut up,” to which he responded, “okay.” and i asked him if he was sorry, and he said “it was either that or telling you i wanted to break up with you to get you to stop crying.”
i love him. we had so much fun. i don’t know what’s wrong with me. i just want to be loved. but i am too much sometimes…i’m afraid he sees this side of me and hates me.
tl;dr
boyfriend tells me to shut up or threatens to leave to get me to stop crying during an argument and i think he thinks it is justified 🙁 i love him though and i know it’s my fault
4 comments
[deleted]
Theres nothing wrong with you. Your boyfriend is an ass.
Crying is a perfectly normal and healthy reaction. Threatening to break up with someone for having a normal reaction is toxic, unkind and borderline abusive.
He isn’t kind to you when he treats you like shit when you’re hurting and vulnerable instead of comforting you. It’s not your fault he is an arsehole, don’t blame yourself.
We get emotional at night because a stress hormone “Cortisol” accumulates in the Hypothalamus, a region of homeostasis, incentive reward and autonomic functions as part of our sleep cycles. People with panic disorders have irregular patterns in this Limbic Area and are sensitive to Cortisol. Because the fear of the situation was present in your callous and uncaring boyfriend, your body retreated to a regressed stress response which children use to signal to Adults for help. It was so strong that you couldn’t have stopped it even if you resisted. Your body cannot process stress efficiently like per say Solders and Public Servants.
Your boyfriend is wrong and doesn’t care about you.