It's 8pm in Chicago (where I am), 4am in Romania where my SO supposedly sleeps. A few hours earlier we have talked on Skype and everything was fine. Now (a few minutes ago) I got a text on WhatsApp from her. She lost her MP3 player, tried to find it in the living room, got yelled at by her dad for waking him up, and now she's complaining about it to me on WhatsApp and goes on complaining about everything that goes wrong in her life. That happens, it's not the first time. But this time for every single answer that I make I get a nasty response. During her flow of about 30 messages I got the chance to send about 3 or 4. For each of them I got a hurtful comment back ("how did you lose it?" => "damn you ask the silliest questions sometimes", or later "I was just trying to find something positive to say to comfort you" => "don't, you're not good at it"). It's 4am for her, I think it's also the beginning of "that time of the month", so I take the hit and don't fight, but my evening is ruined now, I'm in such a crappy mood that I can't do anything anymore.
She reminds me of my mom, who often let it out verbally on me, my dad, or my brothers, when being upset at things unrelated to us. My SO being my first long-term relationship I have to ask: is that common practice for women (or maybe people in general) to let it out occasionally on the one they love? (sorry, I don't mean to generalize but I'd really like to have feedback from people on this site regarding whether they sometimes also let it out on their SO for no reason)
I'm also thinking of bringing it up to her tomorrow on Skype. I think she needs to understand my way of handling arguments more generally and my way of "taking hits". She comes from a relationship in which they were fighting all the time so it was pretty easy for her to know when she had hurt her boyfriend. With me, I don't see the point in fighting 99% of the time. Have I said something wrong? Fine, I'll apologize. Should I have done something differently? Fine, I'll do it differently the next time. But it doesn't mean I don't get hurt if she points out those things in a bad way (like yelling / accusing me). She started noticing it during my last visit, when she accused me of having forgotten something at home as we were on the road. I remained silent, it bugged her and an hour later she apologized for having accused me of it, said she was as guilty of forgetting as I was, and also said it was very disturbing for her that I didn't fought back.
Does anyone have experience of having different ways of fighting (or avoiding fight) and had such a discussion with their SO?
She reminds me of my mom, who often let it out verbally on me, my dad, or my brothers, when being upset at things unrelated to us. My SO being my first long-term relationship I have to ask: is that common practice for women (or maybe people in general) to let it out occasionally on the one they love? (sorry, I don't mean to generalize but I'd really like to have feedback from people on this site regarding whether they sometimes also let it out on their SO for no reason)
I'm also thinking of bringing it up to her tomorrow on Skype. I think she needs to understand my way of handling arguments more generally and my way of "taking hits". She comes from a relationship in which they were fighting all the time so it was pretty easy for her to know when she had hurt her boyfriend. With me, I don't see the point in fighting 99% of the time. Have I said something wrong? Fine, I'll apologize. Should I have done something differently? Fine, I'll do it differently the next time. But it doesn't mean I don't get hurt if she points out those things in a bad way (like yelling / accusing me). She started noticing it during my last visit, when she accused me of having forgotten something at home as we were on the road. I remained silent, it bugged her and an hour later she apologized for having accused me of it, said she was as guilty of forgetting as I was, and also said it was very disturbing for her that I didn't fought back.
Does anyone have experience of having different ways of fighting (or avoiding fight) and had such a discussion with their SO?
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