e: “Are you hungry?”
She shrugs or says “yeah”
Me: “what would you like to eat?”
She completely ghosts the question…
Me: (after 3-4 full minutes of silence) “Do you have anything in mind to eat?”
J: “Stop hounding me! I said I don’t know!”
Me: “I didn’t hear you respond with anything at all”
J: “Clean out your ears dipsh1t! I said I don’t know 8 times and now you’re digging and digging!”
I pause the conversation…
5 minutes later
J: I was thinking of XYZ restaurant
(I don’t ever posit my desires on a restaurant choice- it’s not a battle I care about winning and I’m happy eating anything she chooses)
Me: That sounds really good!
J: Their website says they won’t take online orders
Me: Does Uber/DoorDash/Grubhub show them as available online?
J: Forget it! They won’t let me order the dish I like thru DoorDash.
Me: Let me call them and place the order and then I’ll go pick it up
J: Just forget it! You don’t know when to stop- do you! No means no! It’s always all about you! You’re a narcissist! I told you I don’t want to order from them now and you just DO WHAT YOU WANT! It’s always what you want! You’re selfish and can’t just leave things alone! This is what narcissists do! They only think about themselves!
(She storms off and locks herself in the bedroom)
I’m still hungry and personally want the restaurant she chose.
Me: I’m still hungry.
J: Do whatever you want and leave me alone!
I call the restaurant and ask if they will take orders over the phone- they do. I hang up after telling them I might call back.
I go to the door and knock gently- advising her gently that they will take the orders on the phone.
Silence.
She starts a texting rant 20-30 texts long about how I never listen and only do what I want to do- and I don’t care about anyone else.
I tell her that I am going to order for myself and if she wants to order I will include it.
Silence
I explain that I will wait 10 minutes so she can decide what she wants and if she doesn’t want anything and I dont order for her, then she can eat something in the house but I won’t go out more than once.
She opens the door violently and screams at me to leave her alone.
I wait 10 minutes and ask if she wants me to wait longer.
Silence
I wait another 5 minutes, call and place my order. I also add things she likes to the order- mostly because I don’t want her to go hungry and I am not going to “skip to the loo” on her request to go somewhere else after I get home.
I leave and pick it up- she texts me 20-30 texts of angry rant about how I don’t leave things alone and how I’m a narcissist, a chauvinist who orders on her behalf despite her not wanting any of it, etc. Goes on and on about how I’m all sweet on the phone but abusive and dismissive of her needs off the phone and how that’s how narcissists and abusers act…
Long quote pull, I know.
Boogie74, I've been thinking about your interaction a bit. I've also been thinking about your comment (paraphrased) that it isn't healthy for you to completely shut down just to "make things work". That's fair.
Here is an analogy:
Imagine a person with a unique visual impairment. They are effectively blind when the light is on, but after a while, after lights go off/sun goes down, they can get around and see OK enough in the dark. But, there is a settling period after the light gets turned off, where it takes them a bit to go back to their functional vision baseline. It's not like "OK just turned the light off, now I can see fine again". It takes more like 30 minutes, an hour, two hours, something like that. Of course, while we can all relate to this at some level, for people with "generally normal" vision, we get back to night vision/baseline/ability to see within seconds to minutes. This visually impaired person takes orders of magnitude longer.
So the visually impaired person (VIP?
) is in a room with the light off, doing their thing pretty OK. I go in and turn on the light because I need to find something. I also ask them, Hey, can you help me find this thing? They are a little frustrated because now it's going to take time to get back to baseline, but sure, they will help look as best they can, when they can see again. I can't find the thing and I turn the light off and leave and look elsewhere, but the VIP knows where this thing is, and it's probably in the room, and I need it within a given time frame -- soon.
I go back in 10 minutes later, turn the light on, look again, and ask them to help. Frustration grows -- they were barely getting back to baseline, and now the whole process has to repeat. AND, I'm asking them to engage in the search again? I leave, also getting frustrated that they KNOW what the thing looks like, they're in the room with it, it's in there somewhere, and they're not helping. I leave and turn the light off.
I return 15 minutes later and-- "VIP, we HAVE to find this, and it's not anywhere else in the house, so it has to be in here. Haven't you been looking?"
That's when things blow up. VIP has
not been able to return to baseline, even though a "normal" person would probably have been able to in that time frame. My repeated attempts to engage with the VIP have hampered their ability to return to a functional level, again, even though many people would have been able to return to a functional baseline in that time.
The more I go back in and turn the light on (engage in a "normal" way), the more I contribute to the impaired person's inability to baseline.
That being said, it is not acceptable for me to live in a house without ever turning the lights on. My needs are not less important than the VIP's needs. I cannot live in the dark all the time; that's going too far in the other direction. We need to find a balance of how often to turn the lights on, and how long to leave them off before turning them on again.
Can we "get more done" with ONE or maybe TWO instances of turning the light on, with a longer break in between, versus multiple (I think I read nine) "engaging by turning the light on" interactions?
Can we do more of a specific (yes, perhaps longer) statement in ONE go, then "leave the light off"?
I wonder if you'd also like to spend less time in your life checking in with your partner, and more time doing more, uh, enjoyable things. Honestly, you guys may have some common ground there. Neither of you seems to enjoy this checking in process.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
