Hi comrades, I’m sorry to bother you all with this. This is probably a profoundly stupid thing to post, but I don’t really know what to do about it otherwise. I know I’m not the most active person here and this is kind of a stupid thing to ask a bunch of strangers online but I don’t really feel comfortable talking with any of my friends about this and I guess I want to hear totally impartial opinions. I kind of don’t know where to start or what I want to write, so forgive me if this is a bit long, meandering or unorganized. I’m also sorry if my retelling of these situations is a bit biased, I want to try to be as objective as possible but my feelings regarding some of these things are strong and I might not be entirely fair.

I’ve been dating this girl for three years and most of the time she is extremely sweet. She’s been very supportive in my struggles with my mental health, listening when I need to vent and providing active support in any way she knows how. She’s very romantic and loving and we are always trying to do little gestures for one another to show our love. I absolutely adore her, do my best to support her as best as I can in turn in all regards, and just want to see her happy. She is the most important person in the world to me and I really believe she feels the same way about me.

That said, she has a bit of a temper, and she will freely admit to it. It mostly tends to show itself when she’s stressed about something else; work (about to get her PhD, extremely stressful) and family tend to have her wound up a lot of the time. I guess the thing that has become a problem is that sometimes it feels like when she’s in these moods she takes it out on me, and when she does it feels like she can be kind of ruthless, refusing to stop yelling, insulting, berating, even if I’m desperately apologizing or sobbing. Sometimes it feels like crying makes her angrier, she will tell me I’m trying to make things about me, and admittedly I can understand where she is coming from, if I’ve done something wrong and upset her it’s not fair that she should have to manage my emotions or deal with me crying when she’s been the one wronged. That isn’t fair to her, but I have trouble not crying sometimes in the heat of these moments. I have to reiterate these moments are few and far between. Sometimes we will go weeks without these kinds of fights and I’ll try to do my best to make up for it, but eventually is does happen again. Sometimes she apologizes afterwards for getting angry at something small, sometimes she doesn’t.

I don’t know if this is appropriate to do but I will try to lay out our last fight as objectively as I can. I honestly can’t help this being kind of long for the sake of being as fair as I can, so if you don’t want to read the inane wall of text below, that’s perfectly fine.

For context, about a year and a half ago she introduced me to some of her friends. Within this group there was a guy she had warned me about who had previously made some creepy remarks to her. Other than him, the group and I got along pretty well and we kept hanging out and playing games together for some time. Eventually the guy started making very uncomfortable remarks to me (mentioning he’d like to cuddle me, singling me out when I’m alone and being overly familiar) and I had to talk with him and tell him he was being too familiar but (very stupidly, in my boundless passivity) told him we could still be friends. He then proceeded to spend the next year trying to DM me and get in contact with me through friends without me saying a word back. Eventually things came to a head, and when one of their friends who is more tolerant of the guys behavior threw a party, my girlfriend and a bunch of her friends decided to not come, citing his behavior towards me explicitly. She had mediated things between involved individuals prior and half of them agreed to not go in solidarity with her.

This leads into early this morning, where she was relaying all of this information to me. She told me about her messages between involved parties and their decision to not attend based on the guy’s previous behavior towards her and I. After she told me all this, she asked for my thoughts on the matter, and I told her that the whole situation had made me really uncomfortable. She immediately asked me why the situation made me uncomfortable, said I shouldn’t be uncomfortable because he has no access to me at this point and the situation isn’t even about me at this point. I reiterated that the situation just made me a bit uncomfortable because the entire situation stemmed from my introduction to the group and entanglement in the situation. At this point she got a bit frustrated and kept asking me why I should be upset about this, the problem is resolved, etc., a reiteration of her previous statements. At this point I’m confused and a bit frustrated myself because from my perspective the situation is an undeniably awkward and upsetting one and I didn’t think it was wrong for me to just state plainly how I felt. I told her the situation is a shitty one to be in for all involved, and that I was just a bit upset about how everything has turned out. At this point she starts raising her voice and asking me why I’m sulking (I’d gone a bit quiet by this point, unsure of what to say) and tells me I need to grow up. She tells me that she’s frustrated that I’m making the situation all about me when she’s the one who can’t go out with her friends because of all this (she previously told me she couldn’t have gone anyways because of a scheduling conflict) and that she’s just asking for some empathy for her position in all this as a mediator when she’s the victim in all of this. I apologize twice quickly, and then tell her that I’m really sorry this has turned out the way it has, and that I’m sorry things with her friends have become complicated because of my involvement, and said I felt really guilty about the whole thing. In retrospect this was probably a mistake, I shouldn’t have brought my own feelings into it again after what she had just said to me. She then continued to say it wasn’t my fault, that it was his, and that she was just tired of mediating things for the sake of other people, and she was just looking for some acknowledgement of her situation. I mistakenly thought I’d given it to her.

Then ensues 45 minutes of awkward silence as I think about what’s been said and try to work out what I should do, and she pages idly through the internet looking pissed but preoccupied. At some point I look over and catch her giving me an absolutely withering glare. I ask what’s wrong, glare intensifies, ask if I’ve said something, glare intensifies even more, she says I absolutely haven’t, and that was the problem. She then starts screaming about how she just told me what she wanted from me and all I’d done is sit there quietly. She tells me to stop acting like a baby, grow up, why do I have to think about myself all the time, why can’t I give her what she needs. At this point I admittedly start tearing up because I really didn’t understand what she wanted, that I thought I’d made it clear that it was a terrible situation and that I was sorry she had to deal with it, and she loses it. She continues to yell about how every time I fail to support her I end up crying, told me she shouldn’t have to sit here and watch me cry when I’ve fucked up and that it was pathetic to see. It then becomes a meta discussion about how I always do this, she can’t ever rely on me, that I always cry and shake when she yells even though I know she can’t do anything to me because I’m taller and bigger than she is, and that I need to get my shit together. At around this point I tried stupidly to defend myself and say that I was a victim in this too, that dealing with the aforementioned guy was a scary situation for me and that for a long time I felt like I couldn’t go into their friends’ server or accept their invites to events because I was scared to be around him. She scoffed this off, pointing out I hadn’t been in there or around him in ages, to which I replied “exactly” because the main reason I’d been avoiding it was him. At this point her frustration continues to mount because I’ve again made things about me. The rest of the argument is a reiteration of what she’s already said, pointing out that I’ve again made things about me, and me trying to apologize for everything through tears and give her the acknowledgement of her efforts and situation that she wanted.

Reading through this again there are bits and pieces I didn’t bring up but it’s kind of impossible to capture the whole thing in a dumb post. I really tried to paint an accurate picture of the situation and I’m sorry if it’s come out skewed, and I’m doubly sorry for burdening you all with this stupid post to begin with. I think this is my way of venting into the void a bit, but perhaps that’s better meant for a journal or something. Thank you so much if you actually read all this, I know it’s a bit embarrassing to read.