My boyfriend (36M) and I have been dating a little over a year, and I honestly don’t know what to think anymore.
For some context: last year on this exact day, I was blindsided with news that I unfairly and unexpectedly failed a clinical rotation in my graduate program (Acute care nurse practitioner program). They failed me 8 months before graduation and the program is four years total. I would have graduated in May. I’ve spent the last year grieving that (severe depression) and just last month I finally got to re-enter the class. I am now working with a lawyer and spending thousands of dollars because the same mentor and professor tried to dismiss me unfairly again during the first week of classes – after one year of waiting to retake this class. Just yesterday, the lawyer asked me for a time sensitive document and also has asked for one today on my birthday.
He came over unexpectedly last night even though I told him I had a lot to do. I barely slept. This morning I was tired, low energy, and emotionally drained, not mean or not picking a fight. I asked what we should do today (our only plan was an 8pm dinner with my family), and he just said, “Well, what do you want to do?”
I got frustrated. I’ve been carrying so much lately, I was hoping he’d just step up, make a plan, or even grab a coffee or breakfast to start the day. I took a shower, got ready ect. About an hours worth of time and I thought when I went downstairs around 10:30am he would have a coffee waiting for me since I expressed I wanted one. Well, went downstairs and he was sitting on the couch with a grim look on his face. I said “you didn’t get a coffee or anything?”
He got defensive and said I was being ungrateful. He ended up yelling at me, storming out, telling me I ruined my own birthday, cursing at me and that I should “sit with the consequences” of how I acted. He left around 11:30am and hasn’t contacted me once.
We have a dinner reservation tomorrow with some of our friends, but he already told me we’d go “for the sake of the guests,” not to celebrate me.
Now it’s 6pm. I still haven’t heard from him. I need to write another legal document for my lawyer since today is the last day of the semester, and I’m under intense pressure to get it written ASAP. My boyfriend knows all of this.
I’m so depressed and overwhelmed that I can’t move. I don’t even want to go to dinner with my family anymore.
He says I never take accountability. He says I make everything about me. But I didn’t scream at him, I didn’t insult him, I just expressed disappointment and hoped to feel special after the last year on my birthday.
I also want to mention once he started yelling at me and insisting that I said he does nothing for me (which I know I did not) and telling me I owe him an apology and I need to take accountability, I lost it. He knows I am not okay and all the pressure I am under and acting this way on my birthday. I started yelling back and crying and slammed my bedroom door. That’s when he left and said “fuck you.” I said “you’re really doing this on birthday? You know I was failed unexpectedly last year on my exact birthday and I wanted to reclaim that.” He said “he didn’t care and I should think about my behavior and that they have consequences.”
One more edit: His dad and I share the same birthday. He’s very enmeshed with his family, which I usually don’t mind since we live an hour apart and don’t get to see each other daily. Before my birthday, he brought up using a hotel suite we had won during a Halloween contest to celebrate with his dad on Friday, my actual birthday. The hotel is meaningful to his parents because they spent part of their honeymoon there. He said we could celebrate my birthday the next day instead. Also, his parents don’t like me because they think I’m unreliable and unserious (my unexpected clinical failure), and my parents don’t like him, as they are around a lot when he acts like this and see me crying on the phone and and anxious ect. When I should be focused on school. So me celebrating with his family on Friday was not an option.
I was a little disappointed, it was my 30th, and I hoped he’d want to spend the actual day with me, or at least part of it. But when I said that, he flipped out and called me selfish and yelled at me. I was already so emotionally drained from everything going on with school and the lawyer that I just told him it was fine. I even sent him screenshots of my mom telling me it wasn’t a big deal and to let him celebrate with his family, just so he’d calm down and stop attacking me.
Later, I found out his sister and her boyfriend were in Greece, so his family wasn’t even celebrating that day and expected me to just assume he can come to dinner with my family and I. This left a bad taste in my mouth and ruined the excitement around my birthday
Is this on me? Or is he emotionally abusive and unsafe?
Comments
Welcome to /r/relationship_advice. Please make sure you read our rules here. We’d like to take this time to remind users that:
We do not allow any type of am I the asshole? or situations/content involving minors
We do not allow users to privately message other users based on their posts here. Users found to be engaging in this conduct will be banned. We highly encourage OP to turn off the ability to be privately messaged in their settings.
Any sort of namecalling, insults,etc will result in the comment being removed and the user being banned. (Including but not limited to: slut, bitch, whore, for the streets, etc. It does not matter to whom you are referring.)
ALL advice given must be good, ethical advice. Joke advice or advice that is conspiratorial or just plain terrible will be removed, and users my be subject to a ban.
No referencing hateful subreddits and/or their rhetoric. Examples include, but is not limited to: red/blue/black/purplepill, PUA, FDS, MGTOW, etc. This includes, but is not limited to, referring to people as alpha/beta, calling yourself or users “friend-zoned”, referring to people as Chads, Tyrones, or Staceys, pick-me’s, or pornsick. Any infractions of this rule will result in a ban. This is not an all-inclusive list.
All bans in this subreddit are permanent. You don’t get a free pass.
Anyone found to be directly messaging users for any reason whatsoever will be banned.
What we cannot give advice on: rants, unsolicited advice, medical conditions/advice, mental illness, letters to an ex, “body counts” or number of sexual partners, legal problems, financial problems, situations involving minors, and/or abuse (violence, sexual, emotional etc). All of these will be removed and locked. This is not an all-inclusive list.
If you have any questions, please message the mods
This is an automatic comment that appears on all posts. This comment does not necessarily mean your post violates any rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Leave him? Sounds like a POS. Good luck on your next dating adventure
Why are you on reddit instead of finishing your document
Do you really think that the person you just described fits the bill of “teammate” or “partner”?
Finish the paper. Go to dinner – without him. Then carve out some time to really think through whether with all you’re already dealing with, you need a significant other who not only can’t be bothered to make any plans for your birthday under any circumstances, but throws a tantrum and hurls insults when called on it in the mildest of terms.
He reacted poorly. However, I don’t think asking what you’d like to do for your birthday is outrageous unless you told him beforehand that you’d like him to do the planning.
It would probably have been better for you to tell him you’d like for him to make the plans and fix stuff for your birthday. I understand wanting him to take initiative, and again, if you already told him that’s what you want, it excuses and explains your complaining but makes his behavior even worse.
What do you do? You throw this one away and find a better boyfriend. He’s 36 and still acting like an unregulated toddler. Maam. Really?
Stop looking for someone to make you happy. Turn in that doc and go to dinner act like nothing happened and go to a bar without him after with your friends go home pleasure yourself and go to sleep and say nothing. Enjoy yourself for yourself!
I’m not exactly sure why people come on here and ask for advice when they are in a shit relationship. It makes no sense. They want validation they are in a shit relationship? They think someone will say what happened is normal? Are there that many people without any sense?
Are you serious? He thought being disappointed upon hearing what do you want to do was out of line? You should sit with your consequences? He didn’t plan anything. He spoke down to you and treated you as if you were his child. He yelled. Told you to fuck off. Is your question really is this on me? The only thing that is on you is that you tolerate anyone treating you this way. You really should fuck off right out of his life. Never excuse the inexcusable. It’s concerning that you would ask if this is your fault. He’s abusive. I strongly recommend getting a therapist if you don’t know that you need to leave.
He is not a mind reader and it is not his fault about your nursing program.
Anyone who talks about you “facing consequences” or doing anything that is clearly meant to punish you in some way is a huge asshole and walking red flag. Leave him. You will be better off without the emotional abuse.
It’s shitty that he didn’t plan anything for your birthday, but it’s worse that he got extremely angry & verbally abusive towards you for pointing it out.
Please stop hoping he’ll be different. This man doesn’t really care about you.
Pick yourself up. Make a coffee and do your document. After that’s complete, send him a message and tell him that you dont want him to attend the dinner as your relationship is over. Contact those guests and ask them if they wouldn’t mind rescheduling the date or the location and briefly advise that he will not be attending.
Im quite confident that this man is a significant source of your stressors.
you are being abused
Why are you with this person?
Update us when you dump him.
Girl, start planning your exit from this POS but for now maintain composure and don’t give him the satisfaction that he ruined your birthday, HE DOES NOT HAVE THAT MUCH POWER over your happiness. Go and get yourself a coffee and hit up any of your free friends and spend the day with them and don’t even ask him or confront him about today, don’t cancel any of your dinners either, show up as your best self and pay him no mind. Not every action deserves a reaction and you don’t need a conversation just so he can gaslight you.
Do not waste any more time with this man. He is inconsiderate, not supportive, clueless, and insensitive. Or he simply doesn’t like you that much. Either way, my next communication with him would be to break up. You are only 30 and unless you’d enjoy spending your life being disappointed by this man, find someone who will actually cherish you.
Also, as an adult, in the future YOU be the one to orchestrate exactly what will happen on your birthday. You will never be disappointed and you will be doing exactly what you want. Even if it is on your own for a spa day. Good luck with your class.
This was exhausting to read. You need to focus on what you need now. Finish what your lawyer needs, celebrate you, break up with him. Get into therapy if you need help processing the past years events and the breakup. Best of luck to you.
He is using DARVO on you, classic abuser behavior — Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim Offender. If you think through this interaction (and probably many more throughout your history), this pattern may become quite clear. I totally agree with your therapist (also a psychologist here) — let him go, focus on yourself, and later you can unpack why you choose narcissistic abusive partners.
Best of luck to you. 💙