To illustrate with two examples:

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One evening a few weeks ago, as we went to bed, my partner asked if I planned to wake up early and if I had set my alarm. I said yes, it was set for 7:30. She said something like, “OK cool just wanted to check.” I took this to mean she wanted to get up early as well and would rely on my alarm—an assumption, I realize, and one I should have clarified, but I’ve never known any other reason for someone to ask their partner if they’d set an alarm so the interpretation was kind of made automatically. 7:30 rolls around, my partner is sleeping like a baby. I hesitated, wondering if she really had wanted me to wake her up at that time (she works from home and doesn’t clock onto work until nine or ten so there wasn’t an obvious reason for it). But I figured it would be worse to oversleep than to wake up momentarily and nod off again, so I gently nudged her awake.Her response was to groan / yell a drawn out “noooooooooooo!!!!!,” push me away and then bury her head in her pillows. I told her I was really sorry, but I guess she didn’t hear.

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When she eventually emerged from the bedroom that morning I was expecting her to apologize for reacting so strongly to what i saw as a good faith misunderstanding (with, to my mind, v low stakes consequences). To my surprise, she doubled down, saying that if she’d wanted me to wake her up she would have said that specifically. The reason she’d asked about my alarm was because i sometimes set it early for a run then just turn it off and sleep in. She’s a light sleeper and this annoys her so she wanted to make sure that, if i was setting my alarm, it was because i actually needed. (I was totally unaware of my alarm annoying her… if i knew that i’d just turn the volume down and only set it when i was 100% going to wake up early, i’d be happy to accommodate her there if she’d told me that). She found it absurd that I thought she was asking about my alarm because she wanted to wake up too.

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I remained calm but pushed back, basically just trying to get her to see that I’d acted in good faith, trying to be helpful using the information I had. Somehow this led to a familiar set of behaviors: she visibly shook with rage, started yelling things like “IT ALWAYS HAS TO BE ABOUT YOU,” and eventually slammed our bedroom door and started loudly sobbing on the other side.

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We disagree about how serious of a thing this is. She see this as simple anger, a normal and healthy emotion, and thinks I just can’t handle it because I grew up in a conflict-avoidant environment. It’s true my family and past serious relationship were conflict-avoidant. Still, I’ve had plenty of complex and emotionally charged conflicts throughout my life. I’ve fired people at work (including friends), had dramatic fallings out with friends/acquaintances, participated in a few grueling family counseling sessions, and have been through a divorce, to name just a few easy examples. In all those cases the substance of what we were working through was incredibly emotional and complex and people were very angry with each other, often for good reason. But we never reached anything near the kind of white-hot hostility that sometimes comes from very minor disagreements, or even simple misunderstandings, with my partner.

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To be fair, she always stays behind a certain limit. Never thrown anything / broken anything, or anything beyond that. It’s really down to yelling, slamming doors, and saying judgmental and (imo) intentionally hurtful things, acting in a way that could only escalate the argument and push us farther away from mutual understanding—I guess what you’d call “violent communication.” I admit that I have bad habits too. In the heat of the moment I can become sarcastic and condescending. But i regret it immediately and feel ashamed. My partner sees her anger as mostly natural and unproblematic, and frames my sensitivity to it as the main problem.

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A few days ago I reached an impasse with it that I’m still stuck on. She was away for a week attending a family funeral. I was at home struggling for my own reasons, a family crisis that left me feeling despondent / not wanting to get out of bed. I missed my partner and looked forward to being able to comfort each other. But on the day she was due home, i realized i actually dreaded her arrival, because given how emotionally raw we both were, it was likely some random disagreement would blow up and dominate our day/ night /week, something I wasn’t in an emotional state to handle properly. Unfortunately that’s exactly what happened. She asked my advice on something inconsequential, didn’t like my reply. She yelled, slammed a door, and made it clear she’d been disappointed by my efforts to care for her as she grieved (which, until that moment, she’d gone out of her way to praise, saying I’d been giving her exactly the combo of space and support she needed) .

To anticipate this happening, then watch it happen, felt like a turning point, and left me wondering how / if I can feel stable in a house where there is always the possibility of an ugly fight coming out of nowhere.

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My main question here: Is there a way to clearly delineate what kind of anger is normal/healthy, and what goes too far? Does anyone know of helpful online literature on this subject? And finally: am I just being too sensitive?thanks for reading xx

2 comments
  1. She’s verbally abusive. Can you imagine the reaction if you, the man, yelled, slammed doors and said intentionally mean things? She would be told to run. Life is too short to sign up for anger. It just is. Obviously she’s not a good candidate for motherhood and she has very little self awareness. The alarm thing. What other assumption could be have reasonably made? Then she’s angry because you aren’t psychic. I would run.

  2. > I’ve never known any other reason for someone to ask their partner if they’d set their alarm

    … to check to make sure they’re going to wake up on time for work? That’s clearly all she could’ve been doing. Checking to make sure your partner is going to wake up on time makes plenty of sense but of course her actual response was unpredictable since she didn’t communicate her alarm frustrations.

    Regarding your first example, she said “no” to you waking her up, that doesn’t warrant an apology. And then, you weren’t trying to get her to see you acted in good faith, you wanted her to apologize for something she wasn’t wrong in doing.

    Lastly, I do think she handles herself in an immature and unproductive manner and I think, as a 37 year old, you should not be dealing with that. I think you need to work on your communication but ultimately the way she handles communication and arguments is not healthy nor sustainable.

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