Should I Even Go Home Tonight

[Tattered Heart]

It's been a very rough weekend. WEnt to visit family without my H and I knew there would be hell to pay for it. Saturday evening when I got home we argued all night because I didn't greet him the way he wanted me to. Because I never do anything around the house or to help with the farm.

Sunday he was "sick" and couldn't go to church on Easter. Personally I think it was to punish me for hte previous night. Yesterday he watched me pull a heavy chicken coop across the yard and just watched me with a smirk on his face. We fought again over I don't remember, something stupid.

This morning he started in again. He began to complain about church. We have this conversation about 5 times per week every week. I'm sick of it. After this weekend I did not care. I did not want to be nice. I don't care how he feels. I"m just done hearing about it and wanted him to shut up. I yelled at him. Then I left the house early for work.

He began to text bomb me so I told him I didn't want to be harassed and shut off my phone. Turned it on and had 14 messages. Surprisingly none of them were attacks on me but he was ranting about the same subject we fought about. I didn't respond to the rant. He texted me just a minute ago and said, "Text me later." That was his test to see if I was still mad at him. My response: "The money for the milkman is on the counter near the door." Silence from him.

Honestly I don't want to go home tonight. He'll try to rehash the argument and I don't want to. I don't want to validate him. I don't want to feel sorry for him. I don't want to look at him or be around him right now. Because right now I don't care. I'm fed up.  I can imagine he is sitting at home sulking and storing it up for me. He knows that I've reached a point where I will leave the house if he continues to be argumentative so he will probably do anything he can to try to prevent me from being able to leave. He knows I've reached my limit with him. But he is going to be too stubborn to back off until his point is made.

I'm so torn on what to do. I've never left for the night before. And he honestly isn't doing anything aggressive. He is just getting on my last nerve. It's not like he is being violent, just argumentative. I just don't know. I just want to cry. I just want it to stop. We are at his 3 month cycle. I've seen it coming over the last week.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

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[Grey Kitty]

  Ugh, sounds like a really rough weekend. Holidays are so often a problem like this.

Anyhow... .you don't want to deal with his dysregulation and arguments today. Honor your feelings, and protect yourself from it.

Going away for the night in the middle of a fight is yucky and stressful. You have all day before that will *probably* happen, from what you say.

Make your plans now. Can you crash on somebody's couch or in their guest room? Call them now, and tell them you will *probably* need to take advantage of it tonight, if things go the way you expect them to. If not that, figure out your options for a motel or something.

[Grey Kitty]

Attributed to the Buddha: "In comparison lies madness"

I don't think there is a situation it applies more to than this one... .

And he honestly isn't doing anything aggressive. He is just getting on my last nerve. It's not like he is being violent, just argumentative.

Don't let the "At least he doesn't ______" be your excuse for putting up with the abuse. Those comparisons to other relationships when yours "isn't that bad" just drive you nuts and keep you stuck in them. Don't get stuck in that kind of madness.

[Tattered Heart]

Things may not be as bad as they were headed to. He texted me earlier and just said, "I miss you". That means he is no longer upset and is now sad. Sad works for me because he is at least open to listening when he is sad.

He will still want to rehash this morning. Not sure how to get it through to him that I do not want to talk about this subject. I have never learned how to deal with his obsessive focus on topics. I probably need to begin looking at anxiety type sites to get info on obsessive thinking. The only way I know how to address it is to tell him to stop. And obviously that isn't working so well for me.

[isilme]

Guessing he's not easily distracted.  It's hard when they focus on one thing and you know it's an emotional rabbit hole. 

I guess the fact that my H is often shamed after he has a blow up and does NOT want to really talk about it is a bit of a mixed blessing.  Outwardly, I tend to ignore a fight when we've had one and then gone to work and been separated for a few hours, and don't act like anything is wrong when we get home.  I am polite, and I not super clingy or affectionate, but I talk to him about non-emotionally charged topics as I can, ask about dinner, make a statement if I need/want to do anything that evening.

Can you just say, "I'm really tired, don't feel great, would love to have dinner and just go to bed."?  Will he leave you alone and not want to go over and over the fight(s)? 

[Shane87]

My humble suggestion:

Don't argue with him.  At all.  Don't debate, don't talk "facts" or any of it, because if he has BPD then he will make them up as he goes.

When he dysregulates, try staring at him without expression and without responding.  I'm curious to see how long he can keep up a one sided argument.  He may run out of steam pretty fast.

If he gets too bad, excuse yourself and go for a drive.  "I love you.  I'm going for a drive and I'll be back later," I used to say to my sweetheart when she was severely dysregulated.  It worked wonders for curbing the behavior.

[Tattered Heart]

He did pretty good last night. He was working hard in the yard when I got home so he was out of energy. He tried to throw in a couple of digs, but I just ignored those. We went out to dinner and to Lowe's. He brought the subject up again this morning. It didn't get bad enough that it escalated too much and I tried to validate a little more with what he is feeling. He is angry at Christians and because I am one, I am painted black like all of them and he expects me to answer for all Christians (even though he also claims to be Christian too, but he is different than them).  Thankfully he brought the subject up only a few minutes before I actually had to leave the house.

Not responding to his arguments escalates him very quickly. He does not run out of steam. I've had him rant at me about a topic for over 3 hours with me only saying things like, "Yeah." "ok" "I can see that". He is very obsessive. As I said he brings up this subject at least 5 times per week. When he is in his cycle that's when it gets bad.

Going to bed early escalates him. He already views me taking naps on the weekend as a form of rejection. Bed is only for night time and when I'm extremely sick. If I were to act like I was sad, upset, trying to avoid him by going to sleep, or just tired then he lectures me about how I shouldn't be a victim.

[isilme]

Going to bed early escalates him. He already views me taking naps on the weekend as a form of rejection. Bed is only for night time and when I'm extremely sick. If I were to act like I was sad, upset, trying to avoid him by going to sleep, or just tired then he lectures me about how I shouldn't be a victim.

I used to get this a lot.  Naps were abandoning him.  I slept too much.  I was lazy (even though I do all the house and yardwork AND work full time). So I bought a Fitbit so I could track my sleep.  I did it first just to see for myself if I really was sleep deprived or if there was something else going on (low thyroid, etc).  It showed clearly that for every hour I was in bed, I "might" get 30 minutes sleep.  So 7 hours in bed = about 4 hours sleep on a good night.  After several months of data, I would laugh and show my terrible sleep patterns to other people when H was around (so it'd not look like I was accusing him) and he was no longer to ignore that yes, I am extremely tired in the day time, I need more sleep time than he would admit (liked to call me lazy), and it HAS resulted in him changing some of his previous habits that would keep me up or prevent me from taking a nap when needed.  Mind you, this has taken about 6 years or so, but he's far better than he was when I'd get yelled at for turning off the bedroom TV at 5am so I'd hear my alarm at 6:50 (the TV would mask the alarm).  He'd watch it all night, crash about 3 or 4AM, and then freak out on me if I turned it off because it was keeping me awake.  So, some empirical data may help you. 

So here's a question - do you see anything that triggers his cycle where he is prone to needing to fight?  Was it Easter as a Christian holiday that triggered it?  Will he calm down a bit now that it has passed? 

H is triggered by seeing his family, and that usually means most family-oriented holidays and birthdays.  4th of July and Memorial Day are fine - Thanksgiving - dysregulation city. 

[Grey Kitty]

I tried to validate a little more with what he is feeling.

Validation isn't very good at releasing the pressure (i.e. getting him out of the argumentative mood). A steady diet of validation, including times when he's not in such bad shape, when validation is easier should generally reduce the heat, perhaps having him be a bit less obsessive. But it is much more of a long-term aid than a short term fix.

Not responding to his arguments escalates him very quickly.

I guess that leaves boundary enforcement: "I won't discuss this with you" Followed by whatever you need to do to enforce it, given that he sounds likely to keep following you and keep badgering you to argue with him.

Going to bed early escalates him. He already views me taking naps on the weekend as a form of rejection. Bed is only for night time and when I'm extremely sick. If I were to act like I was sad, upset, trying to avoid him by going to sleep, or just tired then he lectures me about how I shouldn't be a victim.

If you are going to bed early in order to avoid him, that isn't working. Sigh. 'Tho you should be able to go to bed early for any reason or no reason and not get a lecture from it, so again, boundary enforcement might be the way to go.

If you are going to bed early because you need more sleep than you've been getting, and he's interfering with your sleep, that's a bigger thing. Time to take it more seriously, and plan out contingencies where you can sleep out of the house when you need to enforce that boundary... .'cuz it will come to that if you decide to fight this battle.

[Tattered Heart]

He had several upsets this week: he fell asleep while driving home from an overnight shift and wrecked his car, I went out of town, and Easter. I think the car wreck scared him quite a bit (it scared me too). I also notice that since it is on such a regular cycle of 3 months that there many be some minor manic depression going on. Towards the middle of last week he became hyper, began talking a lot and rapidly, and bouncing from one subject to another. By the end of the week he was acting depressed, quiet, withdrawn, began getting agitated at people for things that had nothing to do with him (someone posted a Pentonix video on their own FB page and they are stupid because Pentonix sucks! How offensive!  )

He is coming out of it now. Today he is texting me pics of our dog in the yard.

As for my sleep, I just like a nap to recharge on the weekends. I'm a natural introvert so going into stores, church, restaurants, running errands, etc requires me to get some quiet time. I'm not lacking sleep at all. I get a solid 9 hours per night, especially since I began using a CPAP machine.