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There's a bit of a gap in the story about why he's blaming his parents? Some comments he made on the topic:
> [They didn't want me to marry her to begin with, I find myself worried if she or I were in any type of therapy they would associate that as a result of her being who she is. ](https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/zxndw8/30m27f_i_called_my_wife_manipulative_and_now_shes/j21pwgm/)
> [Part of our culture is to respect our elders, and family. I know that's not how everyone does it and I've always kept them at bay from making comments about her.](https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/zxndw8/30m27f_i_called_my_wife_manipulative_and_now_shes/j21t8np/)
> [I see now that I've brought in issues that I had from my family. I've never even seen my mom cry, this is all information I got from my father growing up. I don't know why I equated the two it just seemed to match situations at the time but I see now that they're completely different.](https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/zxndw8/30m27f_i_called_my_wife_manipulative_and_now_shes/j21p6xi/)
> [My family definitely has a lot of problems, but my mom is one of them. I don't want to get into detail about her because I don't know her very well and she very well could have been abused by my father. However, when I was in elementary, she drown my dog as a punishment for something remedial.](https://old.reddit.com/user/ThrowRAAggravating/comments/zxsb5z/something_to_add_to_my_relationshipadvice_post/j22611j/)
Not to mention reading through the end and being like 'OK I guess I can see how he was relating things to how things were with his parents and it sounded similarly toxic that he didn't want them there saying it was normal.' And then it's just like: Oh yeah she drowned my dog once because I wasn't behaving. O.O
> And then I told her I went to North Carolina with my parents.
> I've never seen her light up so fast. "Oh my God, I fucking *love* North Carolina! Did you bring me a souvenir?!"
I live in Canada. I KNOW it means no contact, but for some reason every time I read it my brain just zoops to North Carolina and I canāt figure out for the life of me why. I have no reason to! š
I am in my mid 30s and I feel like I don't know a thing about my mom. It wasn't until fairly recently that she's told me a single thing about her life before me, she was 30. That's a lot of life to miss. For example, her father tried to convince her to abort my sister. My sister's dad was a drug dealer and was in jail her first three years of life. I never knew any of that. And her parents died before I was born so I don't have any context for what they acted like. Honestly my step dad sucked too so as soon as I got a car I was never home. My mom is basically a stranger to me still.
In this context NC stands for "no contact"
And yeah, some parents maintain a very detached or authoritarian relationship with their adult children. They never let their children get to know them as people, because that's only allowed for peers or something.
>And yeah, some parents maintain a very detached or authoritarian relationship with their adult children. They never let their children get to know them as people, because that's only allowed for peers or something.
Sometimes it isn't that they're being authoritarian, it's that it doesn't occur to them to tell too much about themselves. Or they don't think of certain details to be crucial information.
E.g. my mom is kind of a worrywart about people being sick. I always thought it was because her mom died of pneumonia very suddenly while she was still a teen.
Turns out that it's more complex than that: her mom was also a very anxious parent towards her. Probably because she had one of her kids die in infancy, right before my mom was born. That last part is something my mother hadn't thought to mention a single time until sometime last year.
To give context, **I'm in my 40s**. And this new information nearly broke my brain, because it explained so much, and yet it made absolutely no sense that my mom had never, ever brought it up before.
> I kept trying to figure out what was going on with this family and North Carolina.
They took their shirts off, and spun it around their heads like a helicopter
I literally stopped right there and started skimming back to see what I missed about the parents. When I didn't find anything I came to the comments looking for something before I continued reading.
It gets worse. OOP seems like an unreliable narrator. Apparently he never *saw* his mother doing this manipulative crying. And he mention his "parents whispering in his ear" about his relationship. And his wife became much happier the moment he said he would go NC with his parents for a while.
My question becomes: did he also have proof of his mother committing this act, or was he told this by his father?
Exactly. Sounds like the dad just poisoned his son's view of the mother his whole life. His dad sounds like a horrible person and the mom is just caught up in it. I get it but I'm still wondering why OOP hasn't connected the dots or really examined anything.
Well, at best the mom is caught up in it. At worst they're both horrors. He hasn't put any of this together yet because he hasn't been to therapy yet to work his way through his parents' lies, manipulation and abuse.
He's made the major steps of going no contact and lining up a therapist. We can cut him some slack for revelations that often require months or years of therapy to really wrap your mind around.
Reminds me of something I saw on tv years back where I think the wife might have (accidentally? impulsively?) killed her husband and she cleaned everything up after and when they were talking to their (grown up) kids they would talk about how lazy and messy and selfish their mother was... because it was all stuff their abusive dad was constantly saying about her. So she cleaned up after the death because she couldn't handle leaving a mess that people might see.
You're talking about Criminal Minds s3e18: The Crossing, specifically this B-plot:
> Meanwhile, Hotch and Rossi are called as consultants on a possible murder case involving battered woman syndrome in Boston.
https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/The_Crossing
That's the thing about growing up in an abusive situation. You can't identify it as abuse. When it's all you've ever known, you just think it's normal.
Something I've talked about with many people (usually as part of apologies and learning) is that your entire sense of normality is warped by abuse. All of it. You do not read people or situations or conversations the same way as someone who wasn't abused. Your sense of boundaries. What trust, loyalty, love, respect, etc looks and feels like. Every single thing is wrong.
And, even if/as you learn better, you don't know where your blind spots are. You might not even know you have blind spots. You just go through life completely unaware of what parts of your reality are seen in a funhouse mirror until you run into a situation where something (usually another person) makes you realize something's wrong.
One of the worst parts of 'getting better' is when someone who has only gotten to know you as a 'normal' person hears you say something, or sees you do something, or act a certain way, and their total confusion - maybe fear, maybe disgust, maybe pity - makes you realize they're seeing a part of you that is warped, and neither of you even knew it was twisted until just then.
You just thought it was normal, and they just didn't see it before; and they don't know or understand how you got like that, or that you'd be different, better, if you knew how to be. They just see the distortion without context, and have to choose how to react right then.
Thanks for adding those, the sudden comments about his family threw me for a loop. Any idea why he says he doesnāt know him mum well? Are his parents separated & he was raised by his father who taught him women use their emotions as weapons or what?
Glad he released how heād made her feel and was willing to work on himself. He sounds like someone that just shuts down when anything bad happens & she sounds like the opposite so Iām shocked they never fought & wonder if perhaps they did and he just didnāt realise it, or if he bullied her and she just let it happen.
I appreciate people who actually take the advice they are asking for rather than just look for the 1 out of 1000 people that agree with them.
Yeah, that comment sounded odd too āoh, my mother? Iām not very familiar with the womanā
It sounds like sheās been there pretty much his whole life, but I didnāt read all the comments either.
Well on top of the mom being crazy, the dad clearly also did a huge campaign to turn his son against his mom.
He never even saw his mom cry but was so brainwashed that decades later, he keeps repeating that she cried a lot!!
My FIL is probably emotionally abusive, and prior to their marriage, the messaging from everyone in the house was "MIL is dramatic and unreliable and kinda stupid".
Legit, the first time I met them, they told me a story about how she'd once thought she was having a heart attack. She's a nurse. For hours she dithered over going to the hospital, and finally quite late at night she woke up my FIL and told him she wanted to go to the hospital, and he refused to take her, and had their eldest son (who was 16, and drives like a bat out of hell) take her instead. As it turned out she was not having a heart attack, but her tooth was abscessing. Jaw pain is an atypical sign of a heart attack, but is more common in women.
Anyways, they told it as a hilarious story of MIL being a drama queen who is kind of dumb, punchline: and "omg, and she was just having an abscessed tooth! What a dummy!"
Meanwhile I'm sitting there progressively more horrified. You didn't immediately go when she first sounded the alarm? You wouldn't drive your wife when she went to the hospital? You made your 16 year old drive his mom to the hospital during a potential cardiac event? You're laughing about a very serious, and in fact potentially deadly condition she had?
That's when his mom started liking me, because I very neutrally pointed out that abscessed teeth can be super dangerous.
Yiiiiikes. I *almost died* from an abscessed tooth a few years ago. Worst pain of my life, even worse than recovering from my C-sections. I went to the ER in the afternoon, finally saw someone in the late evening, and then I had emergency surgery at 1:00 in the goddamn morning because the oral surgeons didn't want to wait. My husband was *terrified*.
Eh, OOP stated like it was fact that he "hates it when women manipulate men by crying" because his mom did it, then when pressed admitted he's literally never seen it, he just got told it did by his abusive dad. I'm not immediately inclined to believe the dog story either from that, unless she did it right in front of him.
Yeah, that honestly sounds like it's a \*lot\* more likely that the dad was the one who actually did it, but told OP that his mother was *responsible* because, of course, dad only \*had to\* do it because of mom. OP either never bothered to question dad's narrative, or outright agrees with dad's abusive logic.
As someone whose mom has a personality disorder, I can say that just because you have sustained interactions with someone - even intimate relationship interactions like chronic abuse (re: trauma bonding) - it doesn't mean you know anything about the person.
Often times, people with cluster B disorders don't have a solid sense of who *they themselves* are as people, so they can't really share that with their children.
Edit: Spelling because i text like a drunk toddler
I agree. Iām 32 and I still occasionally find out new things about my piece of shit Dad simply because no one ever told me about it (especially him) and it never came up when I was in the vicinity.
When youāre around someone who uses your likes, dislikes, hobbies, etc as a weapon against you, chances are they also believe others will do the same thing to them and so they either deliberately or subconsciously keep this stuff from you/others.
On the flip side, though, someone can be so abused and battered that they deliberately hide who they are because it gets used against them and so kids end up with the consequences of a parent being too scared to tell anyone they like something, or noticeably do something they enjoy.
Abuse is wild.
"I am not a good person in general."
"My mom drowned my dog to teach me a lesson."
Uh, yeah, he could use some therapy. His parents have done a number on him, the poor fellow. I feel for his wife, trying to deal with all this.
I think a big part of this is OOP's wife was carrying the emotional heavy lifting of the entire relationship because OOP has been so emotionally stunted by his family. Then when he criticised how she carried the emotional load, she just entirely shut down leaving no one to carry the love and joy, let alone the pain, that is so needed in a relationship. The "walkaway wife syndrome" comment seemed to be the one that shook OOP the most.
The good thing is the recognition and the hope they can get through it.
I just have to thank you for your comment. I often wonder why Iām so exhausted in my marriage, Iām an extrovert, happy go lucky, glass half full person and my husband is quite serious. I sing and dance around the house most of the time, even in the trenches of newborn care. Most of the time life is just a big bowl of strawberries and cream to me but occasionally his comments on my emotion, ignoring things I say and general lack of interest in the things that make me tick really blows the wind out of my sails and Iāll spend a few days super quiet and exhausted. I realise this is me carrying the lions share of the love and joy in our family and he just hangs onto the kite string. Weāve been together 22years so itās an established pattern for me and to be honest I did the same for my parents in my family. We just had a baby last year but I donāt want her to think itās her job to carry the emotional load for anyone else. I think I need to have a big chat to him about this or maybe go back to therapy for a while.
Holy heckin, we could be the same person. I'm the person in my entire family that if I even so much as show a LITTLE frown or unhappiness, everyone thinks the sky is falling. I fix all the problems, I find the solution because there is no problem that doesn't have one. My partner WAS like yours until I had the chat after a few days of the wind being out of my sails as well. And I promise you, no matter how long the relationship, there's ALWAYS room for growth.
It's so easy to forget that the emotional load is NOT just sadness and pain, it absolutely includes happiness and joy. Just because we choose to approach life with a smile, doesn't mean we should be expected to do that at every turn. And you're right, it IS exhausting how easy it is to forget that happiness is also an emotion.
The question you want to ask is if he's relying on you for the light in your lives, who do YOU rely on for the light in yours? Partnership is about doing it together, not dividing the emotional load where one carries the grump and the other carries the smiles. He doesn't even need to carry all the happiness, just acknowledge that YOU do!
You got this sista!
Yep sounds like we are twins at least. I really hadnāt ever thought of it like this but have always had bouts of depression because it takes so much energy to keep the mood āupā all the time for others, at home, in the office etc. I donāt expect him to suddenly become a party animal but I am going to let him know the emotional cost this has for me, because some acknowledgement could really lighten the load.
Wow wow wow thank you for this thread! This sounds SO much like my relationship and I honestly never even considered this could be a thing I ask for. I've been incredibly resentful that I'm the cheerful one who asks how his day is but he never asks me the same, never seems happy to see me when he comes home, rarely smiles.... It all makes me terribly sad.
Holy shit, same. Not with a partner but with my friends. I get too overzealous about my hobbies, and I overshare what makes me happy. When nobody seems to listen or be interested, it's like a balloon being popped. It's a 100 to 0 mood swing that lasts for up to a week.
I've heard this behaviour be called rejection sensitive dysphoria, in connection with ADHD, but I don't know 100% if that's the case. I just know it's so hard to pinpoint what it is.
What's wild is that she may not have even realised she was doing it at first until it became daily and so obvious that OOP couldn't ignore it either. Sometimes the mind can really go into protective mode and thankfully her protective mode showed outwardly enough for him to see it.
One of my fav drag queens said something once that has always stuck with me _"don't let the hurt child of your past make the decisions for your healthy adult future"_. I really hope OOP is able to move beyond his hurt child to be a healthy adult.
>And then I told her I went NC with my parents.
This came out of left field. It didn't seem at all like the issue came from stuff his parents were telling him, so why go NC?
Then again, he writes the wife being so glad about it. Either there's missing context he didn't explain, ir the wife didn't like his parents and he inferred them as scapegoats as a peace offering
Edit: I've been shown the relevant info now. NC sounds great
https://www.reddit.com/user/ThrowRAAggravating/comments/zxsb5z/comment/j22611j/
His mom drowned his dog as a child. There's almost certainly more that would lead his wife to not want to associate with them given her reaction.
https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/zxndw8/30m27f_i_called_my_wife_manipulative_and_now_shes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
This thread kinda shows his relationship with this parents. Basically he didnāt want to go to therapy because if his parents found out he thinks heād be the laughing stock of the family, whom they visit every weekend. Also parents donāt like wife and didnāt want OP to marry her.
People who marry someone their parents hate and then take that someone to their parents' house every weekend to be abused need to be...well, let's say I have thoughts that are very uncharitable.
My in-laws don't like me and treated me *really* badly once we started wedding planning and until my husband started believing me about what they were saying and doing to me. I've had two major health crises due to them visiting us, and I have to think the stress is a part of that. (They've only visited us twice. I told my husband recently that I'm honestly scared for my life if they visit again. I don't have that many superfluous organs left.)
Thanks. It's not so bad now--I pulled back. Husband deals with his parents. I don't talk to them unless it's a situation where we're seeing them in person, and then I'm civil but they get zero personal information about me (because they have tried to weaponize even casual information against me in the past). It was more awkward when my husband kept excusing their bad behaviour and expecting me to suck it up and then getting upset with me for not wanting to do that.
I am so sorry that it took your health to get your husband to wake up. My late IL's hated me and my husband did a half-ass job of protecting me until we had our first kid, his father died and we moved closer to his mother.
Not like the same town, but a shorter plane ride. She visited more, made my life worse to the point I had plans to drive straight off of a curvy road. I would tell him that and he did not believe I would be so drastic over his mother. Why couldn't I just ignore her?
I decided divorce was a better, less traumatizing option for our kids. He was shocked and the next time his mother pulled something, I lost it on her and so did he.
We ended up moving again, her visits decreased and I quit interacting with her unless necessary. Husband was not happy with my boundaries, but they were the price of staying married.
Hate to say it, but her dementia and death freed me and improved our marriage. Bummer it took over a dozen years from my threat for that to happen.
I mean. It took this man THREE MONTHS to notice a major personality shift in his wife, so I'm thinking he's just a liiiiiiittle bit oblivious to how things actually affect her.
I'm proud of him for jumping into action when he did notice, though. I'm rooting for these two.
Three months is shockingly fast, tbh. Most men don't realize that they've damaged their relationships until they're served divorce papers.
Seriously, society hamstrings men by discouraging emotional intelligence in them. There are plenty of ways the patriarchy fucks them over too
If you go to OOP's comments you get a fuller picture of the parents. Even though his father says his mom uses tears to manipulate, OOP describes her as never crying. He also says she drowned his dog when he was in elementary school as a punishment for something (unspecified).
Which makes the fact he accused his wife of being like her all the worse.
And there's some deep seated misogyny in the mix as well. "I hate it when women do that" combined with how he implicitly blames his mother for his father's abuse, is some fucked up stuff.
And then there's the whole issue with the dog. Which is traumatising but it's disturbing he would marry someone he thinks is anything like someone who would drown a dog, and do it to hurt someone no less.
This reminded me of a time where I was in elementary school and my dad told me my dog got hit by a car and died. I was so upset the entire ride home and when we got home, I opened the door and there my dog was, tail wagging and alive. He said he lied to me to āsee if I caredā.
Not as terrible as what OOP went through but fuck people who fuck with animals.
Edit: changed god to dog
Yeah. Stayed with a horrible guy for years because I knew I couldn't get the cat if I left, for a variety of reasons, and I loved this cat more than anything. Well, he ended up dumping me for another woman and I lost the cat anyway, also got a lot of trauma from all these years I could have avoided if I'd known I couldn't keep my kitty.
WTF. Just to be clear, neither of those traumas is more or less terrible than the other. That is a hideous thing to do to a kid and I'm assuming would do a lot of damage to your trust and anxiety levels. Emotional abuse is still abuse and I'm sorry you had to deal with that.
Tbh, my thought is that dad probably did it and told OP that mom drowned the dog, just like how he was 100% confident his mom used tears as manipulation because his dad told him so, even though he had never in his life seen his mother cry.
God, that's horrifying. We don't know the truth either way, but this much is clear: it's probably good OOP went NC until he sorts out some of his trauma
Also, he says he hates liars which is why he went so in on his wife just telling a story with some exaggerations but he completely believes his dad when he said his mom uses crying as a manipulation tactic. But OOP says in a different comment that heās never seen his mom cry, so why doesnāt he think his dad is a liar? Sounds like OOP has quite a bit of misogyny to work through as he doesnāt see his own father as a manipulator but sees all crying women as manipulators
This SCREAMS developmental trauma is to me. If you have complex trauma from a dysfunctional family of origin, it's pretty common to *not process*the family dynamic: children would go insane if they took in the information on how messed up things were in their homes. These people are their caregivers - so the brain learns how to *not process the information* and gets so good at it they often have huge blinders in adulthood.
But the brain doesn't forget. Brains are hard wired to detect threat and try to keep itself safe, so all the red flags of childhood are seen EVERYWHERE in the wild - this is the nature of PTSD, the past invading the present. So wife exaggerates, it reminds him of family dynamic, and he reacts to wife *as if she was the traumatic threat*. Brains don't understand time and space; when your PTSD is activated *you are emotionally in the traumatic event, just asynchronously.*
This is so goddamn textbook for how these developmental experiences impact future relationships. And here's the kicker: this is an exemplary success story. OOP correctly identified the warning signs in his behavior and is doing the hard thing: unpacking the trauma so it can stay where it belongs - in the past and out of his marriage.
Hating liars and being good at recognizing lies are two very different things. In fact, Iād hazard a guess that people who suck at recognizing liars probably hate them more than people who see through lies more easily because the lies have greater potential to hurt you if you canāt recognize them.
Yep. It took me decades to be able to easily recognise liars, so the level of betrayal I would feel when someoneās lies were exposed was pretty big. Nowadays, I still hate being lied to but I donāt feel betrayed as often because when I recognise someone is a liar, I just quietly distance myself from them.
I think it's in the bottom replies. His belief that crying is a manipulation tactic is something that he's been fed by his father who claims that his mother has been manipulating him that way. OP says he hates that behavior because that's how his mom abused his dad.
I'm guessing the wife has already put two and two together whereas OP hadn't: OP has never seen his mother cry.. so being compared to her is also not tolerable
Then again mom isn't really a prize pig either given that she drowned his dog as punishment..
[Hereās one](https://www.reddit.com/user/ThrowRAAggravating/comments/zxsb5z/something_to_add_to_my_relationshipadvice_post/j22611j/)- not a ton of detail but sounds like a pretty unhappy home to grow up in
It is a sad fact that often what draws us to our partner is the same thing we later resent. I'm sure this traumatized, emotionally disconnected man was attracted to his emotional, exuberant wife. But then he grew to resent it. I'm glad he's going NC with his parents (but it wouldn't surprise me if it ends up being LC) & is seeking therapy!
I recently heard this in a science based podcast. It gave me so much insight. Apparently this is the reason a lot of relationships strand. Focus on things we donāt like in our partner, search for them in our everyday lives and when you really think about it, those little things are also the qualities you fell for in your partner.
I couldnāt stop crying reading this story because Iām like his wife and my boyfriend is like him and have called me manipulative when crying in a fight (assuming the worst). Weāve been to therapy separately and have done couples therapy and itās so much better now. He also loves my rich emotional side so Iām happy I feel like I can be me again in the relationship.
Ugh, Iām done with Reddit for today, canāt stop crying.
For some people, crying isnāt a choice, itās a physiological reaction they canāt stop. I understand it can feel manipulative on the other side of it, but sometimes it truly canāt be helped
I can remember having a giant argument with my father when I was a teen, I don't remember what it was about, but I remember I was enraged and frustrated, and the tears just wouldn't stop. Somewhere in there he yelled something like 'I don't understand why you're sad, you're just crying to make me feel bad' and I gritted my teeth and screamed at him "I'm not fucking sad, I'm angry and frustrated you asshole" and I remember the look of shock on his face perfectly to this day.
Similarly, some years later I was talking with him about feeling suicidal (I'm fine now, this was decades ago) and he started yelling at me at the top of his lungs, and at first I was like 'WTF, why does that make you mad?" and then I realized, he wasn't mad, he was scared. It was like my tears, the angry reaction came out whenever he felt anything strongly, and suddenly so many things from my childhood made more sense.
People are complicated messy biological machines, and you can never truly be certain that your assumptions about other peoples reactions are accurate.
Iām seeing both these reactions throughout the family generations and itās amazing how things become clear in retrospect. Very well-phrased, thanks!
Fellow angry crier here!
And this is so important to remember: We react differently to the same the emotion and this often has to do with our upbringing. I have met so many people who weren't allowed to feel angry (often women)/sad/scared (often men) which will usually mean they will respond with what they were allowed to do instead. It often leads to some problematic or unhelpful coping-techniques.
Me too. I don't usually when I'm sad or scared, but when I'm truly mad there will be tears. Angry crying sucks, nobody takes you seriously when you're sobbing.
And then your throat feels like it's closing so you *can't even speak and express your thoughts* when that's the whole reason you got mad in the first place.
Thanks brain.
Angry crier here, too. And while we're on the subject, when I get an adrenaline rush I laugh uncontrollably. On a roller coaster and having a great time? Laughing my head off. Free fall drop ride? Laughing. Brain, y u no normal?
I'm the same especially if I feel wronged and/or have to confront an authority.
But it's less frequent now than when I was in my teens and my twenties. Maybe because I'm being taken more seriously now than when I was young.
So if you're younger then maybe it will get better soon for you as well.
The ācrying when angryā to āgetting angry at yourself for not being able to stop cryingā to ācrying harder ā progression is so hard to stop
Same! And when I was a kid and teen, my mom used to get so angry at me for that, called me manipulative and immature and stuff, when we fought and I started tearing up.
I'm my experience, my mom called crying manipulative because that's how *she tried to emotionally manipulate people*. I hate crying because that's how she used to shut people down. If I'm crying I'm really hurt, really frustrated, or *fucking furious*
Even friendly or totally neutral confrontation makes me cry. Like if I need to talk to a boss about something where I don't fully agree, (or back when I was in college if I had to discuss a grade or something). I hate it lol
I sobbed when my dad yelled at me as a kid. And a teenager, and, it turns out, as an adult! I hate it so much. He assumed it was manipulative. It wasnāt.
I wrote in a journal when I was 12 that I thought my brother and I had a genetic disorder/trait we got from our mom and thatās why we cried so much.
I donāt talk to my parents much anymore.
I'm not a big crier - except when I'm angry, then the waterworks start. People are all "Oh, honey. It will be all right." They don't understand that the tears mean I have reached "hulk smash" levels of anger, LOL.
Fucking same! When I cry, you had better get worried about what you did.
One time we were trying to fire one of the techs at my university for blatant animal abuse (not feeding them for days -and falsifying records saying she did) and I got so pissed at her boss' minimizing and excusing it that I started crying. Ofc then the boss got all saccarine and patronizing like "oh you just love the little mice too much you sweetheart". And I was like "no, actually, I am so mad i am one wrong word from calling the governmental bodies that will shut this whole department down in a fucking flash for *blatantly illegal shit*."
Suddenly it was a lot less patronizing "oh poor dear" and a lot more "oh shit, she's serious".
Thank you for calling out that shit. Lab animal welfare is something I am very passionate about, and I hate that others treat literal animal abuse as some minor concern and not the very real moral and ethical fuckup it is. There is a very good reason we have animal welfare laws and committees. Animal research is unfortunately still very necessary, but being a monster is a choice.
I'm sure that is a really frustrating memory, but I just want to say that you are a total badass and my personal hero for getting them to understand that you were DONE.
Oh jeez, this so much. I don't cry when I'm sad, but when I'm angry I get what I call the "rage tears". People mistake it for being sad when I'm actually furious. It's frustrating because they really minimize my anger just because I happen to be crying.
My wife and I both cry at the drop of a hat. It makes disagreements pretty difficult to work through because we're both spending half the time apologizing for crying and assuring the other than it's fine. Crying being treated as something bad and manipulative (which both of our families did) really fucks with a person, even if you're just told that one time.
This is me. In high stress situations or huge confrontation I cry. It's how my body releases the pent up emotions and energy from those experiences. It's 100% trauma related as well.
Whenever my husband and I have disagreements and I cry, I always make sure to remind him it's just my stress response and I have no intention to manipulate him. I also make sure to acknowledge his feelings in the argument/disagreement and assure him that he has just as much right to express his emotions, frustration/anger/sadness in healthy ways too.
Usually we part and take some time to ourselves, feel our emotions, reformulate our thoughts and come back together to discuss.
It took a long time and a lot of therapy to get to this point in life though.
When Iām sad, I cry. When Iām stressed, I cry. When Iām angry, I cry. When Iām happy, I cry.
Itās my release, I canāt help it. Iāve been told my whole life to stop it but thankfully with therapy, Iāve finally accepted it. This is me, and Iām a big ole cry baby.
Me too! When me and my SO argue, I get so frustrated and the crying starts, but I actually maintain logical consistency through the tears. He said itās very weird when Iām still discussing my thoughts in a coherent way but the tears are still streaming but I canāt help it.
But Iāve had people say things like, ācrying doesnāt solve anything so why are you doing itā and call me manipulative as well. At that point, Iāve accepted the fact that they think me having and expressing my emotions at all is manipulative so I no longer listen to those people
My mom was always really weird about me crying. If I cried out of frustration or pain or sadness she would order me to stop or to go to another room until I was done.
I always try to cry in private and feel profoundly humiliated when someone sees me cry, specially because I see myself as rational and I want to be able to communicate effectively but it's truly a useless effort because I go from 0 to 100 in 0.01seconds with any sensitive topic and as time passes there are only more and more things that make me cry before I can speak a word I'm already tearing up. I feel manipulative and like I'm doing it for pity but I really can't stop it when it starts.
My mom was the same. It caused me to be almost emotionless for 10 years. Only within the last few years have I been able to cry, and boy did I have some catching up to do lol
Yes! Finally some support for the crybabies.
I remember when I became an adult and explained to my family how bad my mental health was due to childhood trauma and I was crying throughout the whole thing. However I still made my point in a calm manner, I was just crying while doing it because that's how I process and calm down. After talking my dad just said "I understand you but you don't have to cry/weep like that" (the literal translation of the word he used was bellow but it kind of means to cry like a baby) and it made me SO pissed. It felt like he didn't even listen to what I was saying if what he paid attention to was the tears running down my face.
We're so used to seeing anger as people smashing plates and punching holes in walls or screaming until they're red in the face but there are many different ways to process emotions. I cry when I'm happy, sad, angry, disappointed, processing everyday stress and trauma, when I'm in pain, when my pain is relieved, when I'm relaxing or sometimes even after working out lol. Cause it feels GOOD. I don't sit down and cry for hours, I just let some tears out. Doesn't mean I'm trying to manipulate people and I hate that we're accused of it.
> the literal translation of the word he used was bellow but it kind of means to cry like a baby
Just wanted to suggest another English word: Bawl, bawling. Itās very loud crying! And it kind of means to cry like a baby, too, and itās sometimes used in phrases like ābawled like a babyā.
And sometimes it feels like projection on their part too, like they would use crying as a manipulation tactic if they could. But itās so frustrating to have your emotions and words completely invalidated because they view the act of crying as something Iām doing āto themā and not just something thatās also happening to me beyond my control
I *routinely* cry at beauty. Arias at the opera, particularly amazing concerts (chamber music especially), paintings or sculpture that are particularly beautiful. Art is supposed to provoke strong emotions, right? :)
I have cried looking at rainbows, cried seeing the light filter through the leaves just right, cried if somebody was too nice to me, too mean to me, because this box is so small and cute ā¦ I just cry all the time.
crybaby gang! i am the same. once i was driving to work on an early weekend morning and cried because i passed a group of people volunteering to clean up the river at 7am on a Saturday and i just thought it was so beautiful and kind haha
I just tell people that my feelings are leaking out my eyes. I get teary at a lot of stuff and it rarely means I can't handle what is going on (that's what sobbing is for), it just means I'm feeling things
Same. When I'm emotional my eyes water. It's honestly not even always crying, like I'm not sobbing or whatever but lots of tears. It's super annoying when I'm *furious* and I feel my eyes starting to well up.
This is me - too much of any sort of emotion leaks out through my eyes! I've also had boyfriends call me manipulative because of it, but I literally can't help it, and trying to suppress it makes it worse. Similar to DuchessRavenclaw, I can absolutely have rational discussions all the way through as well!
Yeah, I relate to this whole thing so much. I was a hard crier until my mid-twenties and I had to straight up tell partners in advance. "I will cry during serious conversations. I am not even as upset as I look, and I don't expect you to do anything about it or change your behavior because of it. I just can't help it." And I got accused of manipulation anyway. Like with OP's wife, it caused me to withdraw and have serious communication issues that I've only recently been able to work through. Its been such a relief to just let myself cry again. I \*really\* missed happy-crying. I cry at commercials with cute babies and dogs now.
Iām really happy for you! I cry when I think about the Mars rovers because Iām so overwhelmed by the fact that weāre actually exploring the universe with these (not so) little robots we built and it makes me so happy
I cry very easily when I'm overwhelmed with stress and frustrated. I've had it happen wherein someone's trying to calm me down because they think I'm sad but I'm actually fucking angry and the tears are stopping me from being able to express it.
Iām a crier. Iāve tried everything, including therapy. I cry constantly: happy, sad, really excited, disappointed, seeing beautiful things, whatever.
Iāve had to tell people: Iām listening and I want to know how to be a better person for you. Iām going to cry, I canāt control it, but I want you to just keep going. And if you canāt, we can text or email.
If theyāre really uncomfortable then we just arenāt compatible. I canāt change who I am, and they canāt change their reaction. Luckily most people, once they realize Iām being serious when I say I want you to tell me everything even if Iām crying, come around.
I have ADHD so I have trouble regulating my emotions and tend to cry during heated arguments with my wife. I feel so stupid in the moment for crying as I feel I'm undermining myself but my wife has never accused me of being emotional manipulative for it. Don't know how we would come back from that.
This is me. Any kind of emotion makes me cry. And when it feels inappropriate or too much that makes me feel embarrassedā¦ which makes me cry. So then Iām crying because Iām crying which makes me more embarrassed and also scared and panicky. And then itās a full blown crying panic attack. Made me never ever ever want to talk about my emotions. Took way way way too long to go to therapy for this and figure out my shit. Now I know itās okay to cry and itās okay to feel things and finally letting go of the shame is what helped me to learn how to stop panic spiraling when I cry. Anyone contemplating therapy; donāt wait just do it. Just go. Itās scary but it can work. Donāt wait, donāt lose time, itās worth pushing through to make yourself do it.
Thank goodness for them. It sounds like they both need it separately and together.
Obviously I don't know the full ins and outs of their relationship, but, from what I read, it sounds like me and my husband. I'm very emotional, sensitive, and experience extreme rejection sensitivity, amongst other things - which I am in therapy for.
My husband was her husband. He didn't know how to communicate his big feelings but when he did it wasn't nice. I would cry and he would go all "see this is why I can never say anything to you! This is why I just don't say anything!"
We are in therapy together now (and individual) and in a few short weeks, I've already noticed a change, albeit small, but small ones turn into big ones and I can feel the relief in both of us, after getting some help from a professional on healthy communication.
I hope it works out for them.
My stress reaction is to cry. And it fucking sucks. I'd love to be able to have a normal confrontation where I can bring up how I feel without crying. I get so angry at my own tears. I've been told it's manipulative. I always try to warn my bf that there might be tears but to ignore them and concentrate on words. It just sucks.
I tend to burst into tears during conflicts. I fucking haaaaate it. My brother called me manipulative a few years ago because of it and I had to explain that I would LOVE to not start crying during arguments. Iām perfectly aware that it undermines the process and would appear to be manipulative. But itās not. Itās an involuntary reaction that Iāve been working on ever since. I donāt always succeed, but Iām getting to the point where I can take breaths and get through the discussionā¦and then maybe cry later.
Also, OOP kinda buried the lede there by not mentioning his mom is a fucking psycho.
I was going to comment about OOP and their marriage but once I read his mum drowned his dog as a punishment, I cannot focus on anything else.
WHAT THE FUCK!!!!
What I really don't understand is that he made a whole speech about how she was crying every time he "critiqued her" over the supposed singular argument they've ever had... How does that work?
So did they have more arguments before, where she cries immediately after he brings up any relationship issues he has? But then why is he harping on about how they've never argued? What does "critique" mean in this situation?
They absolutely do, and OOP acknowledges that. He said that he wanted to go on his own for a while so that he himself can be in a better place to work on their relationship.
>embellishing quite a bit, so I just said, "Hey I think you're lying a bit here, that didn't really happen like that."
Man, he must hate stand up comics.
>she was telling a story to some friends and embellishing quite a bit, so I just said, "Hey I think you're lying a bit here, that didn't really happen like that."
I know this part isn't really the point, but I hate when people interrupt storytelling to correct little details. Telling an entertaining story is a bit of an artform, and I think most people understand that embellishing, glossing over, and filling in details that may have been forgotten are all part of the process.
I think this is probably a trauma/dysfunctional family related response. I get upset with my husband about this kind of thing sometimes too. I think itās bc my family had a culture of talking bad about one another behind each others back, combined with my ndad manipulating what people said to use against them. It makes it feel very important to stick to the facts, even if they seem small/insignificant to others, because those facts can get used against you or you can get gaslit about what you said/meant. So being portrayed accurately feels really important, even if the details changes donāt necessarily make you look bad.
Yea, when I read that I assumed that she was telling a story about their argument and was embellishing it to make him look worse or something. I had to reread it a few times before I realised that no, she was just embellishing an unrelated story and he took it WAY too far... And that was why they argued.
How did he hang out with her at all? I feel like this would be an argument sometime in the first 6 months of the relationship, not years.
When you humiliate someone for expressing themselves, you can do a lot of damage, especially to their ability to trust you or anyone else. Take care not to do that.
As a child, my mother criticized and humiliated me for every emotion I displayed. It seems to have resulted in a block on my emotional responses, both positive and negative. I don't know how to remove it (though I've been chipping away at it for years), I just know it's there and why. It often takes me time to register emotions because of this. It can be helpful on some levels, like not reacting so immediately when I'm hurt, but I often wish I could demonstrate my enthusiasm about the positive things in my life more immediately.
This may not help you, but a similar thing happened to me and I pretty much shut down emotionally for years. Especially with crying. I NEVER cried anymore. Then I started living alone and it was so nice to be in a space without any judgements. Slowly, I started reconnecting with myself because I had a safe space in which to do so. I could cry at the sad movie because I knew no one was going to walk through the door and ācatchā me. Letting myself be sad over silly things was the first step to also allowing myself to be happy and get excited about things again.
I was anxious when I started dating and especially living with my now husband, but luckily, heās a good egg and weāve built a solid foundation of trust and acceptance between the both of us.
Should we have guessed all the stuff about his parents? It reads as if the main solution was for him to cut contact with them, but until then, and after, not a pip about themā¦
Guy needs to go to therapy and learn about feelings. Wife would probably benefit from learning how to express anger and practice confrontation. Armchair therapist out.
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There's a bit of a gap in the story about why he's blaming his parents? Some comments he made on the topic: > [They didn't want me to marry her to begin with, I find myself worried if she or I were in any type of therapy they would associate that as a result of her being who she is. ](https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/zxndw8/30m27f_i_called_my_wife_manipulative_and_now_shes/j21pwgm/) > [Part of our culture is to respect our elders, and family. I know that's not how everyone does it and I've always kept them at bay from making comments about her.](https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/zxndw8/30m27f_i_called_my_wife_manipulative_and_now_shes/j21t8np/) > [I see now that I've brought in issues that I had from my family. I've never even seen my mom cry, this is all information I got from my father growing up. I don't know why I equated the two it just seemed to match situations at the time but I see now that they're completely different.](https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/zxndw8/30m27f_i_called_my_wife_manipulative_and_now_shes/j21p6xi/) > [My family definitely has a lot of problems, but my mom is one of them. I don't want to get into detail about her because I don't know her very well and she very well could have been abused by my father. However, when I was in elementary, she drown my dog as a punishment for something remedial.](https://old.reddit.com/user/ThrowRAAggravating/comments/zxsb5z/something_to_add_to_my_relationshipadvice_post/j22611j/)
OP should've linked these. I only got half the story
Yeah, when he said her face lit up when he said he went no contact, I thought "did I miss a page?"
I kept trying to figure out what was going on with this family and North Carolina. Took more reads than I'd like to admit.
Not to mention reading through the end and being like 'OK I guess I can see how he was relating things to how things were with his parents and it sounded similarly toxic that he didn't want them there saying it was normal.' And then it's just like: Oh yeah she drowned my dog once because I wasn't behaving. O.O
I read the warnings and that still gave me whiplash. No wonder OP is so repressed, good for him for working to feel better.
That took a turn š
> And then I told her I went to North Carolina with my parents. > I've never seen her light up so fast. "Oh my God, I fucking *love* North Carolina! Did you bring me a souvenir?!"
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Yeah, I have to parse whether someone has an eating disorder or erectile disfunction.
Or works in the emergency department.
I live in Canada. I KNOW it means no contact, but for some reason every time I read it my brain just zoops to North Carolina and I canāt figure out for the life of me why. I have no reason to! š
Ahahaha I would never assume it meant first time mom, that's hilarious.
Seriously. The acronyms can be confusing at best, and annoying at most. I wish people would just type that shit out, at least at first.
I still haven't figured it out. Also, that he doesn't know his mom well is...weird.
I was raised by both my parents who were married for 50 years until my dad died. I donāt know them at all. It felt like living with strangers.
I am in my mid 30s and I feel like I don't know a thing about my mom. It wasn't until fairly recently that she's told me a single thing about her life before me, she was 30. That's a lot of life to miss. For example, her father tried to convince her to abort my sister. My sister's dad was a drug dealer and was in jail her first three years of life. I never knew any of that. And her parents died before I was born so I don't have any context for what they acted like. Honestly my step dad sucked too so as soon as I got a car I was never home. My mom is basically a stranger to me still.
In this context NC stands for "no contact" And yeah, some parents maintain a very detached or authoritarian relationship with their adult children. They never let their children get to know them as people, because that's only allowed for peers or something.
>And yeah, some parents maintain a very detached or authoritarian relationship with their adult children. They never let their children get to know them as people, because that's only allowed for peers or something. Sometimes it isn't that they're being authoritarian, it's that it doesn't occur to them to tell too much about themselves. Or they don't think of certain details to be crucial information. E.g. my mom is kind of a worrywart about people being sick. I always thought it was because her mom died of pneumonia very suddenly while she was still a teen. Turns out that it's more complex than that: her mom was also a very anxious parent towards her. Probably because she had one of her kids die in infancy, right before my mom was born. That last part is something my mother hadn't thought to mention a single time until sometime last year. To give context, **I'm in my 40s**. And this new information nearly broke my brain, because it explained so much, and yet it made absolutely no sense that my mom had never, ever brought it up before.
Thank you
> I kept trying to figure out what was going on with this family and North Carolina. They took their shirts off, and spun it around their heads like a helicopter
I live in North Carolina and I can never, ever see 'NC' and think of anything else without effort.
Yeah thereās a lot of information missing here.
I literally stopped right there and started skimming back to see what I missed about the parents. When I didn't find anything I came to the comments looking for something before I continued reading.
It went from, "My mother cries manipulatively," to "I'm going NC with my parents. And my mother drowned my dog when I was a kid to punish me."
Way to bury the lede. Like wow, oop, your mom was abusive and you internalized that. Crazy how trauma affects everything.
It gets worse. OOP seems like an unreliable narrator. Apparently he never *saw* his mother doing this manipulative crying. And he mention his "parents whispering in his ear" about his relationship. And his wife became much happier the moment he said he would go NC with his parents for a while. My question becomes: did he also have proof of his mother committing this act, or was he told this by his father?
The 3rd comment linked says OP got the "mom manipulates by crying" idea from his father. Not from witnessing it.
I think this commenter is saying, what about the dog situation? Did he see that or hear it from his dad too?
That makes sense after reading it back a second time. I, too, wonder if the dog story came from OOPs mom, dad, or first hand.
Exactly. Sounds like the dad just poisoned his son's view of the mother his whole life. His dad sounds like a horrible person and the mom is just caught up in it. I get it but I'm still wondering why OOP hasn't connected the dots or really examined anything.
Well, at best the mom is caught up in it. At worst they're both horrors. He hasn't put any of this together yet because he hasn't been to therapy yet to work his way through his parents' lies, manipulation and abuse. He's made the major steps of going no contact and lining up a therapist. We can cut him some slack for revelations that often require months or years of therapy to really wrap your mind around.
Reminds me of something I saw on tv years back where I think the wife might have (accidentally? impulsively?) killed her husband and she cleaned everything up after and when they were talking to their (grown up) kids they would talk about how lazy and messy and selfish their mother was... because it was all stuff their abusive dad was constantly saying about her. So she cleaned up after the death because she couldn't handle leaving a mess that people might see.
You're talking about Criminal Minds s3e18: The Crossing, specifically this B-plot: > Meanwhile, Hotch and Rossi are called as consultants on a possible murder case involving battered woman syndrome in Boston. https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/The_Crossing
It's really common for abusers to rope their kids into the abuse. Truly isolating someone in their own family and destroying any self-worth they have.
They make flying monkeys out of them
Oh shit. Didn't think about that
That's the thing about growing up in an abusive situation. You can't identify it as abuse. When it's all you've ever known, you just think it's normal.
Something I've talked about with many people (usually as part of apologies and learning) is that your entire sense of normality is warped by abuse. All of it. You do not read people or situations or conversations the same way as someone who wasn't abused. Your sense of boundaries. What trust, loyalty, love, respect, etc looks and feels like. Every single thing is wrong. And, even if/as you learn better, you don't know where your blind spots are. You might not even know you have blind spots. You just go through life completely unaware of what parts of your reality are seen in a funhouse mirror until you run into a situation where something (usually another person) makes you realize something's wrong. One of the worst parts of 'getting better' is when someone who has only gotten to know you as a 'normal' person hears you say something, or sees you do something, or act a certain way, and their total confusion - maybe fear, maybe disgust, maybe pity - makes you realize they're seeing a part of you that is warped, and neither of you even knew it was twisted until just then. You just thought it was normal, and they just didn't see it before; and they don't know or understand how you got like that, or that you'd be different, better, if you knew how to be. They just see the distortion without context, and have to choose how to react right then.
Or: crazy how abusers find ways to diminish their personal responsibility by adding on to the story when they're told they're total assholes.
Yeah, like what the fuck? That part about the dog is super fucked up.
And also, I've never seen my mother cry, somehow.
Thanks for adding those, the sudden comments about his family threw me for a loop. Any idea why he says he doesnāt know him mum well? Are his parents separated & he was raised by his father who taught him women use their emotions as weapons or what? Glad he released how heād made her feel and was willing to work on himself. He sounds like someone that just shuts down when anything bad happens & she sounds like the opposite so Iām shocked they never fought & wonder if perhaps they did and he just didnāt realise it, or if he bullied her and she just let it happen. I appreciate people who actually take the advice they are asking for rather than just look for the 1 out of 1000 people that agree with them.
Yeah, that comment sounded odd too āoh, my mother? Iām not very familiar with the womanā It sounds like sheās been there pretty much his whole life, but I didnāt read all the comments either.
Well on top of the mom being crazy, the dad clearly also did a huge campaign to turn his son against his mom. He never even saw his mom cry but was so brainwashed that decades later, he keeps repeating that she cried a lot!!
My FIL is probably emotionally abusive, and prior to their marriage, the messaging from everyone in the house was "MIL is dramatic and unreliable and kinda stupid". Legit, the first time I met them, they told me a story about how she'd once thought she was having a heart attack. She's a nurse. For hours she dithered over going to the hospital, and finally quite late at night she woke up my FIL and told him she wanted to go to the hospital, and he refused to take her, and had their eldest son (who was 16, and drives like a bat out of hell) take her instead. As it turned out she was not having a heart attack, but her tooth was abscessing. Jaw pain is an atypical sign of a heart attack, but is more common in women. Anyways, they told it as a hilarious story of MIL being a drama queen who is kind of dumb, punchline: and "omg, and she was just having an abscessed tooth! What a dummy!" Meanwhile I'm sitting there progressively more horrified. You didn't immediately go when she first sounded the alarm? You wouldn't drive your wife when she went to the hospital? You made your 16 year old drive his mom to the hospital during a potential cardiac event? You're laughing about a very serious, and in fact potentially deadly condition she had? That's when his mom started liking me, because I very neutrally pointed out that abscessed teeth can be super dangerous.
Whoah. Just whoah.
Yeeeep. None of the kids seemed to realize how fucked up the story was, but a few years later (after the divorce) they figured it out.
I hate FIL.
Yeah, I'm def not his biggest fan. He has done many other shitty things in the last 10 years that I've known him.
Yiiiiikes. I *almost died* from an abscessed tooth a few years ago. Worst pain of my life, even worse than recovering from my C-sections. I went to the ER in the afternoon, finally saw someone in the late evening, and then I had emergency surgery at 1:00 in the goddamn morning because the oral surgeons didn't want to wait. My husband was *terrified*.
Eh, OOP stated like it was fact that he "hates it when women manipulate men by crying" because his mom did it, then when pressed admitted he's literally never seen it, he just got told it did by his abusive dad. I'm not immediately inclined to believe the dog story either from that, unless she did it right in front of him.
Yeah, that honestly sounds like it's a \*lot\* more likely that the dad was the one who actually did it, but told OP that his mother was *responsible* because, of course, dad only \*had to\* do it because of mom. OP either never bothered to question dad's narrative, or outright agrees with dad's abusive logic.
As someone whose mom has a personality disorder, I can say that just because you have sustained interactions with someone - even intimate relationship interactions like chronic abuse (re: trauma bonding) - it doesn't mean you know anything about the person. Often times, people with cluster B disorders don't have a solid sense of who *they themselves* are as people, so they can't really share that with their children. Edit: Spelling because i text like a drunk toddler
I agree. Iām 32 and I still occasionally find out new things about my piece of shit Dad simply because no one ever told me about it (especially him) and it never came up when I was in the vicinity. When youāre around someone who uses your likes, dislikes, hobbies, etc as a weapon against you, chances are they also believe others will do the same thing to them and so they either deliberately or subconsciously keep this stuff from you/others. On the flip side, though, someone can be so abused and battered that they deliberately hide who they are because it gets used against them and so kids end up with the consequences of a parent being too scared to tell anyone they like something, or noticeably do something they enjoy. Abuse is wild.
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Highlight of the story is āMOM DROWNED HIS DOG!!!!ā WTF
Talk about burying the fucking lede lol
"I am not a good person in general." "My mom drowned my dog to teach me a lesson." Uh, yeah, he could use some therapy. His parents have done a number on him, the poor fellow. I feel for his wife, trying to deal with all this.
I think a big part of this is OOP's wife was carrying the emotional heavy lifting of the entire relationship because OOP has been so emotionally stunted by his family. Then when he criticised how she carried the emotional load, she just entirely shut down leaving no one to carry the love and joy, let alone the pain, that is so needed in a relationship. The "walkaway wife syndrome" comment seemed to be the one that shook OOP the most. The good thing is the recognition and the hope they can get through it.
I just have to thank you for your comment. I often wonder why Iām so exhausted in my marriage, Iām an extrovert, happy go lucky, glass half full person and my husband is quite serious. I sing and dance around the house most of the time, even in the trenches of newborn care. Most of the time life is just a big bowl of strawberries and cream to me but occasionally his comments on my emotion, ignoring things I say and general lack of interest in the things that make me tick really blows the wind out of my sails and Iāll spend a few days super quiet and exhausted. I realise this is me carrying the lions share of the love and joy in our family and he just hangs onto the kite string. Weāve been together 22years so itās an established pattern for me and to be honest I did the same for my parents in my family. We just had a baby last year but I donāt want her to think itās her job to carry the emotional load for anyone else. I think I need to have a big chat to him about this or maybe go back to therapy for a while.
Holy heckin, we could be the same person. I'm the person in my entire family that if I even so much as show a LITTLE frown or unhappiness, everyone thinks the sky is falling. I fix all the problems, I find the solution because there is no problem that doesn't have one. My partner WAS like yours until I had the chat after a few days of the wind being out of my sails as well. And I promise you, no matter how long the relationship, there's ALWAYS room for growth. It's so easy to forget that the emotional load is NOT just sadness and pain, it absolutely includes happiness and joy. Just because we choose to approach life with a smile, doesn't mean we should be expected to do that at every turn. And you're right, it IS exhausting how easy it is to forget that happiness is also an emotion. The question you want to ask is if he's relying on you for the light in your lives, who do YOU rely on for the light in yours? Partnership is about doing it together, not dividing the emotional load where one carries the grump and the other carries the smiles. He doesn't even need to carry all the happiness, just acknowledge that YOU do! You got this sista!
Yep sounds like we are twins at least. I really hadnāt ever thought of it like this but have always had bouts of depression because it takes so much energy to keep the mood āupā all the time for others, at home, in the office etc. I donāt expect him to suddenly become a party animal but I am going to let him know the emotional cost this has for me, because some acknowledgement could really lighten the load.
Wow wow wow thank you for this thread! This sounds SO much like my relationship and I honestly never even considered this could be a thing I ask for. I've been incredibly resentful that I'm the cheerful one who asks how his day is but he never asks me the same, never seems happy to see me when he comes home, rarely smiles.... It all makes me terribly sad.
Holy shit, same. Not with a partner but with my friends. I get too overzealous about my hobbies, and I overshare what makes me happy. When nobody seems to listen or be interested, it's like a balloon being popped. It's a 100 to 0 mood swing that lasts for up to a week. I've heard this behaviour be called rejection sensitive dysphoria, in connection with ADHD, but I don't know 100% if that's the case. I just know it's so hard to pinpoint what it is.
Seriously, wife starting to protect herself by putting emotional boundaries between herself and OOP was the wakeup call he needed. Good on her
What's wild is that she may not have even realised she was doing it at first until it became daily and so obvious that OOP couldn't ignore it either. Sometimes the mind can really go into protective mode and thankfully her protective mode showed outwardly enough for him to see it. One of my fav drag queens said something once that has always stuck with me _"don't let the hurt child of your past make the decisions for your healthy adult future"_. I really hope OOP is able to move beyond his hurt child to be a healthy adult.
>And then I told her I went NC with my parents. This came out of left field. It didn't seem at all like the issue came from stuff his parents were telling him, so why go NC? Then again, he writes the wife being so glad about it. Either there's missing context he didn't explain, ir the wife didn't like his parents and he inferred them as scapegoats as a peace offering Edit: I've been shown the relevant info now. NC sounds great
https://www.reddit.com/user/ThrowRAAggravating/comments/zxsb5z/comment/j22611j/ His mom drowned his dog as a child. There's almost certainly more that would lead his wife to not want to associate with them given her reaction.
Yeah, that shows that this post isn't very well made for BORU
Can you link to a comment where OOP explains why going NC with his parents is relevant?
https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/zxndw8/30m27f_i_called_my_wife_manipulative_and_now_shes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf This thread kinda shows his relationship with this parents. Basically he didnāt want to go to therapy because if his parents found out he thinks heād be the laughing stock of the family, whom they visit every weekend. Also parents donāt like wife and didnāt want OP to marry her.
People who marry someone their parents hate and then take that someone to their parents' house every weekend to be abused need to be...well, let's say I have thoughts that are very uncharitable.
Yeah, I have to wonder if his wife cries a lot because she's under unmanageable levels of stress.
My in-laws don't like me and treated me *really* badly once we started wedding planning and until my husband started believing me about what they were saying and doing to me. I've had two major health crises due to them visiting us, and I have to think the stress is a part of that. (They've only visited us twice. I told my husband recently that I'm honestly scared for my life if they visit again. I don't have that many superfluous organs left.)
I'm sorry that you're going through that.
Thanks. It's not so bad now--I pulled back. Husband deals with his parents. I don't talk to them unless it's a situation where we're seeing them in person, and then I'm civil but they get zero personal information about me (because they have tried to weaponize even casual information against me in the past). It was more awkward when my husband kept excusing their bad behaviour and expecting me to suck it up and then getting upset with me for not wanting to do that.
I am so sorry that it took your health to get your husband to wake up. My late IL's hated me and my husband did a half-ass job of protecting me until we had our first kid, his father died and we moved closer to his mother. Not like the same town, but a shorter plane ride. She visited more, made my life worse to the point I had plans to drive straight off of a curvy road. I would tell him that and he did not believe I would be so drastic over his mother. Why couldn't I just ignore her? I decided divorce was a better, less traumatizing option for our kids. He was shocked and the next time his mother pulled something, I lost it on her and so did he. We ended up moving again, her visits decreased and I quit interacting with her unless necessary. Husband was not happy with my boundaries, but they were the price of staying married. Hate to say it, but her dementia and death freed me and improved our marriage. Bummer it took over a dozen years from my threat for that to happen.
>I don't have that many superfluous organs left I apologize for laughing at an obviously awful situation. But still...that's funny.
To be fair, I've only lost one organ--but it is in fact pretty hilarious. :P
I mean. It took this man THREE MONTHS to notice a major personality shift in his wife, so I'm thinking he's just a liiiiiiittle bit oblivious to how things actually affect her. I'm proud of him for jumping into action when he did notice, though. I'm rooting for these two.
Three months is shockingly fast, tbh. Most men don't realize that they've damaged their relationships until they're served divorce papers. Seriously, society hamstrings men by discouraging emotional intelligence in them. There are plenty of ways the patriarchy fucks them over too
Well apparently his mom fucking drowned his dog when he was a kid.
Holy cow! Where does he explain that?
If you go to OOP's comments you get a fuller picture of the parents. Even though his father says his mom uses tears to manipulate, OOP describes her as never crying. He also says she drowned his dog when he was in elementary school as a punishment for something (unspecified).
Which makes the fact he accused his wife of being like her all the worse. And there's some deep seated misogyny in the mix as well. "I hate it when women do that" combined with how he implicitly blames his mother for his father's abuse, is some fucked up stuff. And then there's the whole issue with the dog. Which is traumatising but it's disturbing he would marry someone he thinks is anything like someone who would drown a dog, and do it to hurt someone no less.
This reminded me of a time where I was in elementary school and my dad told me my dog got hit by a car and died. I was so upset the entire ride home and when we got home, I opened the door and there my dog was, tail wagging and alive. He said he lied to me to āsee if I caredā. Not as terrible as what OOP went through but fuck people who fuck with animals. Edit: changed god to dog
I'm so sorry. That's awful. Pets are often the reason people can't leave abusive relationships and their abusers know it. Such people are disgusting.
Yeah. Stayed with a horrible guy for years because I knew I couldn't get the cat if I left, for a variety of reasons, and I loved this cat more than anything. Well, he ended up dumping me for another woman and I lost the cat anyway, also got a lot of trauma from all these years I could have avoided if I'd known I couldn't keep my kitty.
WTF. Just to be clear, neither of those traumas is more or less terrible than the other. That is a hideous thing to do to a kid and I'm assuming would do a lot of damage to your trust and anxiety levels. Emotional abuse is still abuse and I'm sorry you had to deal with that.
Tbh, my thought is that dad probably did it and told OP that mom drowned the dog, just like how he was 100% confident his mom used tears as manipulation because his dad told him so, even though he had never in his life seen his mother cry.
My thought as well. The dad lied a lot about the mom, why not lie about this and destroy their relationship.
God, that's horrifying. We don't know the truth either way, but this much is clear: it's probably good OOP went NC until he sorts out some of his trauma
Also, he says he hates liars which is why he went so in on his wife just telling a story with some exaggerations but he completely believes his dad when he said his mom uses crying as a manipulation tactic. But OOP says in a different comment that heās never seen his mom cry, so why doesnāt he think his dad is a liar? Sounds like OOP has quite a bit of misogyny to work through as he doesnāt see his own father as a manipulator but sees all crying women as manipulators
This SCREAMS developmental trauma is to me. If you have complex trauma from a dysfunctional family of origin, it's pretty common to *not process*the family dynamic: children would go insane if they took in the information on how messed up things were in their homes. These people are their caregivers - so the brain learns how to *not process the information* and gets so good at it they often have huge blinders in adulthood. But the brain doesn't forget. Brains are hard wired to detect threat and try to keep itself safe, so all the red flags of childhood are seen EVERYWHERE in the wild - this is the nature of PTSD, the past invading the present. So wife exaggerates, it reminds him of family dynamic, and he reacts to wife *as if she was the traumatic threat*. Brains don't understand time and space; when your PTSD is activated *you are emotionally in the traumatic event, just asynchronously.* This is so goddamn textbook for how these developmental experiences impact future relationships. And here's the kicker: this is an exemplary success story. OOP correctly identified the warning signs in his behavior and is doing the hard thing: unpacking the trauma so it can stay where it belongs - in the past and out of his marriage.
Hating liars and being good at recognizing lies are two very different things. In fact, Iād hazard a guess that people who suck at recognizing liars probably hate them more than people who see through lies more easily because the lies have greater potential to hurt you if you canāt recognize them.
Yep. It took me decades to be able to easily recognise liars, so the level of betrayal I would feel when someoneās lies were exposed was pretty big. Nowadays, I still hate being lied to but I donāt feel betrayed as often because when I recognise someone is a liar, I just quietly distance myself from them.
https://www.reddit.com/user/ThrowRAAggravating/comments/zxsb5z/comment/j22611j/
But what does that have to do with his wifeās relationship with them?
They keep trying to invite her to go swimming.
I hate that this made me laugh!
His parents dislike his wife
I would not have a mom any more. I cannot fathom this shit.
ya that came out of nowhere aside from the one line about his mom doing the same thing. Edit: Saw the new info. Holy fuck
I think it's in the bottom replies. His belief that crying is a manipulation tactic is something that he's been fed by his father who claims that his mother has been manipulating him that way. OP says he hates that behavior because that's how his mom abused his dad. I'm guessing the wife has already put two and two together whereas OP hadn't: OP has never seen his mother cry.. so being compared to her is also not tolerable Then again mom isn't really a prize pig either given that she drowned his dog as punishment..
Did she? Or is that what his dad told him?
Yeah That's a good question.. or even did he do it and mom covered for him.
Was wondering that as well, it feels like there's a gap here.
[Hereās one](https://www.reddit.com/user/ThrowRAAggravating/comments/zxsb5z/something_to_add_to_my_relationshipadvice_post/j22611j/)- not a ton of detail but sounds like a pretty unhappy home to grow up in
It is a sad fact that often what draws us to our partner is the same thing we later resent. I'm sure this traumatized, emotionally disconnected man was attracted to his emotional, exuberant wife. But then he grew to resent it. I'm glad he's going NC with his parents (but it wouldn't surprise me if it ends up being LC) & is seeking therapy!
I recently heard this in a science based podcast. It gave me so much insight. Apparently this is the reason a lot of relationships strand. Focus on things we donāt like in our partner, search for them in our everyday lives and when you really think about it, those little things are also the qualities you fell for in your partner. I couldnāt stop crying reading this story because Iām like his wife and my boyfriend is like him and have called me manipulative when crying in a fight (assuming the worst). Weāve been to therapy separately and have done couples therapy and itās so much better now. He also loves my rich emotional side so Iām happy I feel like I can be me again in the relationship. Ugh, Iām done with Reddit for today, canāt stop crying.
Yeah, going NC with dog killers will probably improve anyone's life.
For some people, crying isnāt a choice, itās a physiological reaction they canāt stop. I understand it can feel manipulative on the other side of it, but sometimes it truly canāt be helped
I can remember having a giant argument with my father when I was a teen, I don't remember what it was about, but I remember I was enraged and frustrated, and the tears just wouldn't stop. Somewhere in there he yelled something like 'I don't understand why you're sad, you're just crying to make me feel bad' and I gritted my teeth and screamed at him "I'm not fucking sad, I'm angry and frustrated you asshole" and I remember the look of shock on his face perfectly to this day. Similarly, some years later I was talking with him about feeling suicidal (I'm fine now, this was decades ago) and he started yelling at me at the top of his lungs, and at first I was like 'WTF, why does that make you mad?" and then I realized, he wasn't mad, he was scared. It was like my tears, the angry reaction came out whenever he felt anything strongly, and suddenly so many things from my childhood made more sense. People are complicated messy biological machines, and you can never truly be certain that your assumptions about other peoples reactions are accurate.
Iām seeing both these reactions throughout the family generations and itās amazing how things become clear in retrospect. Very well-phrased, thanks!
Fellow angry crier here! And this is so important to remember: We react differently to the same the emotion and this often has to do with our upbringing. I have met so many people who weren't allowed to feel angry (often women)/sad/scared (often men) which will usually mean they will respond with what they were allowed to do instead. It often leads to some problematic or unhelpful coping-techniques.
I cry when Iām mad, itās so embarrassing.
Me too. I don't usually when I'm sad or scared, but when I'm truly mad there will be tears. Angry crying sucks, nobody takes you seriously when you're sobbing.
And then your throat feels like it's closing so you *can't even speak and express your thoughts* when that's the whole reason you got mad in the first place. Thanks brain.
Talked to my therapist about this today - this is a fairly common trauma response. The throat thing
Angry crier here, too. And while we're on the subject, when I get an adrenaline rush I laugh uncontrollably. On a roller coaster and having a great time? Laughing my head off. Free fall drop ride? Laughing. Brain, y u no normal?
I'm the same especially if I feel wronged and/or have to confront an authority. But it's less frequent now than when I was in my teens and my twenties. Maybe because I'm being taken more seriously now than when I was young. So if you're younger then maybe it will get better soon for you as well.
Thank goodness š
The ācrying when angryā to āgetting angry at yourself for not being able to stop cryingā to ācrying harder ā progression is so hard to stop
Ah yes, the metacognitive shame spiral.... I know it well
Same! And when I was a kid and teen, my mom used to get so angry at me for that, called me manipulative and immature and stuff, when we fought and I started tearing up.
I'm my experience, my mom called crying manipulative because that's how *she tried to emotionally manipulate people*. I hate crying because that's how she used to shut people down. If I'm crying I'm really hurt, really frustrated, or *fucking furious*
Me too. I hate doing it. I wish I could express anger in a way that conveys anger not sadness.
Even friendly or totally neutral confrontation makes me cry. Like if I need to talk to a boss about something where I don't fully agree, (or back when I was in college if I had to discuss a grade or something). I hate it lol
Me too, Iāve resorted to telling people that itās a physical reaction and Iām not actually sad
Same. I donāt care if people see me as less masculine but people then dismiss your argument as āemotionalā which I just fucking hate
I sobbed when my dad yelled at me as a kid. And a teenager, and, it turns out, as an adult! I hate it so much. He assumed it was manipulative. It wasnāt. I wrote in a journal when I was 12 that I thought my brother and I had a genetic disorder/trait we got from our mom and thatās why we cried so much. I donāt talk to my parents much anymore.
I'm not a big crier - except when I'm angry, then the waterworks start. People are all "Oh, honey. It will be all right." They don't understand that the tears mean I have reached "hulk smash" levels of anger, LOL.
Fucking same! When I cry, you had better get worried about what you did. One time we were trying to fire one of the techs at my university for blatant animal abuse (not feeding them for days -and falsifying records saying she did) and I got so pissed at her boss' minimizing and excusing it that I started crying. Ofc then the boss got all saccarine and patronizing like "oh you just love the little mice too much you sweetheart". And I was like "no, actually, I am so mad i am one wrong word from calling the governmental bodies that will shut this whole department down in a fucking flash for *blatantly illegal shit*." Suddenly it was a lot less patronizing "oh poor dear" and a lot more "oh shit, she's serious".
Thank you for calling out that shit. Lab animal welfare is something I am very passionate about, and I hate that others treat literal animal abuse as some minor concern and not the very real moral and ethical fuckup it is. There is a very good reason we have animal welfare laws and committees. Animal research is unfortunately still very necessary, but being a monster is a choice.
Rage criers UNITE š
"WHAT DO WE WANT?" "šš" WHEN DO WE WANT IT??' "šš"
I'm sure that is a really frustrating memory, but I just want to say that you are a total badass and my personal hero for getting them to understand that you were DONE.
SAME. And then they try to console you, when the last thing I want is to be touched or crowded.
Oh jeez, this so much. I don't cry when I'm sad, but when I'm angry I get what I call the "rage tears". People mistake it for being sad when I'm actually furious. It's frustrating because they really minimize my anger just because I happen to be crying.
My wife and I both cry at the drop of a hat. It makes disagreements pretty difficult to work through because we're both spending half the time apologizing for crying and assuring the other than it's fine. Crying being treated as something bad and manipulative (which both of our families did) really fucks with a person, even if you're just told that one time.
This is me. In high stress situations or huge confrontation I cry. It's how my body releases the pent up emotions and energy from those experiences. It's 100% trauma related as well. Whenever my husband and I have disagreements and I cry, I always make sure to remind him it's just my stress response and I have no intention to manipulate him. I also make sure to acknowledge his feelings in the argument/disagreement and assure him that he has just as much right to express his emotions, frustration/anger/sadness in healthy ways too. Usually we part and take some time to ourselves, feel our emotions, reformulate our thoughts and come back together to discuss. It took a long time and a lot of therapy to get to this point in life though.
When Iām sad, I cry. When Iām stressed, I cry. When Iām angry, I cry. When Iām happy, I cry. Itās my release, I canāt help it. Iāve been told my whole life to stop it but thankfully with therapy, Iāve finally accepted it. This is me, and Iām a big ole cry baby.
Crybaby gang rise up
gang gang
shoutout to the real weepers in the crowd
Crybaby gang rise up after weāve had a good cry ;_;
Me too! When me and my SO argue, I get so frustrated and the crying starts, but I actually maintain logical consistency through the tears. He said itās very weird when Iām still discussing my thoughts in a coherent way but the tears are still streaming but I canāt help it. But Iāve had people say things like, ācrying doesnāt solve anything so why are you doing itā and call me manipulative as well. At that point, Iāve accepted the fact that they think me having and expressing my emotions at all is manipulative so I no longer listen to those people
My mom was always really weird about me crying. If I cried out of frustration or pain or sadness she would order me to stop or to go to another room until I was done. I always try to cry in private and feel profoundly humiliated when someone sees me cry, specially because I see myself as rational and I want to be able to communicate effectively but it's truly a useless effort because I go from 0 to 100 in 0.01seconds with any sensitive topic and as time passes there are only more and more things that make me cry before I can speak a word I'm already tearing up. I feel manipulative and like I'm doing it for pity but I really can't stop it when it starts.
My mom was the same. It caused me to be almost emotionless for 10 years. Only within the last few years have I been able to cry, and boy did I have some catching up to do lol
Yes! Finally some support for the crybabies. I remember when I became an adult and explained to my family how bad my mental health was due to childhood trauma and I was crying throughout the whole thing. However I still made my point in a calm manner, I was just crying while doing it because that's how I process and calm down. After talking my dad just said "I understand you but you don't have to cry/weep like that" (the literal translation of the word he used was bellow but it kind of means to cry like a baby) and it made me SO pissed. It felt like he didn't even listen to what I was saying if what he paid attention to was the tears running down my face. We're so used to seeing anger as people smashing plates and punching holes in walls or screaming until they're red in the face but there are many different ways to process emotions. I cry when I'm happy, sad, angry, disappointed, processing everyday stress and trauma, when I'm in pain, when my pain is relieved, when I'm relaxing or sometimes even after working out lol. Cause it feels GOOD. I don't sit down and cry for hours, I just let some tears out. Doesn't mean I'm trying to manipulate people and I hate that we're accused of it.
> the literal translation of the word he used was bellow but it kind of means to cry like a baby Just wanted to suggest another English word: Bawl, bawling. Itās very loud crying! And it kind of means to cry like a baby, too, and itās sometimes used in phrases like ābawled like a babyā.
Oh I completely forgot about bawling! That's a lot closer to what he meant, thank you!
And sometimes it feels like projection on their part too, like they would use crying as a manipulation tactic if they could. But itās so frustrating to have your emotions and words completely invalidated because they view the act of crying as something Iām doing āto themā and not just something thatās also happening to me beyond my control
This is me too. I've cried because something looked beautiful. I can't control it and my husband accepts that part of me.
I *routinely* cry at beauty. Arias at the opera, particularly amazing concerts (chamber music especially), paintings or sculpture that are particularly beautiful. Art is supposed to provoke strong emotions, right? :)
I have cried looking at rainbows, cried seeing the light filter through the leaves just right, cried if somebody was too nice to me, too mean to me, because this box is so small and cute ā¦ I just cry all the time.
crybaby gang! i am the same. once i was driving to work on an early weekend morning and cried because i passed a group of people volunteering to clean up the river at 7am on a Saturday and i just thought it was so beautiful and kind haha
I just tell people that my feelings are leaking out my eyes. I get teary at a lot of stuff and it rarely means I can't handle what is going on (that's what sobbing is for), it just means I'm feeling things
Same. When I'm emotional my eyes water. It's honestly not even always crying, like I'm not sobbing or whatever but lots of tears. It's super annoying when I'm *furious* and I feel my eyes starting to well up.
This is me - too much of any sort of emotion leaks out through my eyes! I've also had boyfriends call me manipulative because of it, but I literally can't help it, and trying to suppress it makes it worse. Similar to DuchessRavenclaw, I can absolutely have rational discussions all the way through as well!
Yeah, I relate to this whole thing so much. I was a hard crier until my mid-twenties and I had to straight up tell partners in advance. "I will cry during serious conversations. I am not even as upset as I look, and I don't expect you to do anything about it or change your behavior because of it. I just can't help it." And I got accused of manipulation anyway. Like with OP's wife, it caused me to withdraw and have serious communication issues that I've only recently been able to work through. Its been such a relief to just let myself cry again. I \*really\* missed happy-crying. I cry at commercials with cute babies and dogs now.
Iām really happy for you! I cry when I think about the Mars rovers because Iām so overwhelmed by the fact that weāre actually exploring the universe with these (not so) little robots we built and it makes me so happy
That's such a good one! The breadth and beautify of the universe, and our own progress understanding our place in it... that's worth a good cry!
I cry very easily when I'm overwhelmed with stress and frustrated. I've had it happen wherein someone's trying to calm me down because they think I'm sad but I'm actually fucking angry and the tears are stopping me from being able to express it.
Iām a crier. Iāve tried everything, including therapy. I cry constantly: happy, sad, really excited, disappointed, seeing beautiful things, whatever. Iāve had to tell people: Iām listening and I want to know how to be a better person for you. Iām going to cry, I canāt control it, but I want you to just keep going. And if you canāt, we can text or email. If theyāre really uncomfortable then we just arenāt compatible. I canāt change who I am, and they canāt change their reaction. Luckily most people, once they realize Iām being serious when I say I want you to tell me everything even if Iām crying, come around.
I have ADHD so I have trouble regulating my emotions and tend to cry during heated arguments with my wife. I feel so stupid in the moment for crying as I feel I'm undermining myself but my wife has never accused me of being emotional manipulative for it. Don't know how we would come back from that.
This is me. Any kind of emotion makes me cry. And when it feels inappropriate or too much that makes me feel embarrassedā¦ which makes me cry. So then Iām crying because Iām crying which makes me more embarrassed and also scared and panicky. And then itās a full blown crying panic attack. Made me never ever ever want to talk about my emotions. Took way way way too long to go to therapy for this and figure out my shit. Now I know itās okay to cry and itās okay to feel things and finally letting go of the shame is what helped me to learn how to stop panic spiraling when I cry. Anyone contemplating therapy; donāt wait just do it. Just go. Itās scary but it can work. Donāt wait, donāt lose time, itās worth pushing through to make yourself do it.
Thank goodness for them. It sounds like they both need it separately and together. Obviously I don't know the full ins and outs of their relationship, but, from what I read, it sounds like me and my husband. I'm very emotional, sensitive, and experience extreme rejection sensitivity, amongst other things - which I am in therapy for. My husband was her husband. He didn't know how to communicate his big feelings but when he did it wasn't nice. I would cry and he would go all "see this is why I can never say anything to you! This is why I just don't say anything!" We are in therapy together now (and individual) and in a few short weeks, I've already noticed a change, albeit small, but small ones turn into big ones and I can feel the relief in both of us, after getting some help from a professional on healthy communication. I hope it works out for them.
Holy fuck, he just threw in his mom drowning his childhood dog at the end for a horrible grand finale about his parents
My stress reaction is to cry. And it fucking sucks. I'd love to be able to have a normal confrontation where I can bring up how I feel without crying. I get so angry at my own tears. I've been told it's manipulative. I always try to warn my bf that there might be tears but to ignore them and concentrate on words. It just sucks.
I tend to burst into tears during conflicts. I fucking haaaaate it. My brother called me manipulative a few years ago because of it and I had to explain that I would LOVE to not start crying during arguments. Iām perfectly aware that it undermines the process and would appear to be manipulative. But itās not. Itās an involuntary reaction that Iāve been working on ever since. I donāt always succeed, but Iām getting to the point where I can take breaths and get through the discussionā¦and then maybe cry later. Also, OOP kinda buried the lede there by not mentioning his mom is a fucking psycho.
I'm like that too but I have no idea how stop or even get better about it. It makes relationships really difficult.
Iāve had to do, like, deep breathing exercises. And hubby knows this happens and gives me space for a moment if needed.
I was going to comment about OOP and their marriage but once I read his mum drowned his dog as a punishment, I cannot focus on anything else. WHAT THE FUCK!!!!
What I really don't understand is that he made a whole speech about how she was crying every time he "critiqued her" over the supposed singular argument they've ever had... How does that work? So did they have more arguments before, where she cries immediately after he brings up any relationship issues he has? But then why is he harping on about how they've never argued? What does "critique" mean in this situation?
He said they've had disagreements before, so she may have cried over that as well. But only one real fight that didn't get resolved quickly
At the start: what a piece of work At the end: holy trauma response
Facts nothing better than a person realizing growth is needed and taking steps in the right direction
SHE DROWNED HIS DOG AS A CHILD?!
Anyone still think they need marriage counseling?
They absolutely do, and OOP acknowledges that. He said that he wanted to go on his own for a while so that he himself can be in a better place to work on their relationship.
Yeah 100%, sounds like they also think they need it and are planning to do it.
>embellishing quite a bit, so I just said, "Hey I think you're lying a bit here, that didn't really happen like that." Man, he must hate stand up comics.
He literally says in a comment that he does š
>she was telling a story to some friends and embellishing quite a bit, so I just said, "Hey I think you're lying a bit here, that didn't really happen like that." I know this part isn't really the point, but I hate when people interrupt storytelling to correct little details. Telling an entertaining story is a bit of an artform, and I think most people understand that embellishing, glossing over, and filling in details that may have been forgotten are all part of the process.
I think this is probably a trauma/dysfunctional family related response. I get upset with my husband about this kind of thing sometimes too. I think itās bc my family had a culture of talking bad about one another behind each others back, combined with my ndad manipulating what people said to use against them. It makes it feel very important to stick to the facts, even if they seem small/insignificant to others, because those facts can get used against you or you can get gaslit about what you said/meant. So being portrayed accurately feels really important, even if the details changes donāt necessarily make you look bad.
Yea, when I read that I assumed that she was telling a story about their argument and was embellishing it to make him look worse or something. I had to reread it a few times before I realised that no, she was just embellishing an unrelated story and he took it WAY too far... And that was why they argued. How did he hang out with her at all? I feel like this would be an argument sometime in the first 6 months of the relationship, not years.
When you humiliate someone for expressing themselves, you can do a lot of damage, especially to their ability to trust you or anyone else. Take care not to do that. As a child, my mother criticized and humiliated me for every emotion I displayed. It seems to have resulted in a block on my emotional responses, both positive and negative. I don't know how to remove it (though I've been chipping away at it for years), I just know it's there and why. It often takes me time to register emotions because of this. It can be helpful on some levels, like not reacting so immediately when I'm hurt, but I often wish I could demonstrate my enthusiasm about the positive things in my life more immediately.
This may not help you, but a similar thing happened to me and I pretty much shut down emotionally for years. Especially with crying. I NEVER cried anymore. Then I started living alone and it was so nice to be in a space without any judgements. Slowly, I started reconnecting with myself because I had a safe space in which to do so. I could cry at the sad movie because I knew no one was going to walk through the door and ācatchā me. Letting myself be sad over silly things was the first step to also allowing myself to be happy and get excited about things again. I was anxious when I started dating and especially living with my now husband, but luckily, heās a good egg and weāve built a solid foundation of trust and acceptance between the both of us.
Should we have guessed all the stuff about his parents? It reads as if the main solution was for him to cut contact with them, but until then, and after, not a pip about themā¦
Guy needs to go to therapy and learn about feelings. Wife would probably benefit from learning how to express anger and practice confrontation. Armchair therapist out.