Today, before taking an Uber home, she sent me a text wanting me to be downstairs on the street to greet her as the Uber arrives. I read it and told her that yes, I’ll be there. I didn’t notice any further text because I was in the middle of something.
Later, I hear the door opening and went to our door to greet her, she was furious and refused to talk to me. I realized I forgot to turn my phone back from silent mode after work today. I told her that it is my bad, she still refused to talk to me. At this point, things are still normal for our relationship, she would usually become willing to talk after a while.
I usually go to sleep at 22:30 and she knows, so I thought we’d sort things out tomorrow and went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night (later I found out it was 1a.m.) to her standing next to my bed (we sleep in separate bedrooms), and she began asking a series of pointed questions: “What would you do if you found out that I was gone?”, “What would you do if the CCTV on our street is broken by chance?”, “What would you tell my mother if I went missing?”, “If I was actually kidnapped, would you kill the guy for me?”
You know, the usual. I thought she’s just angry at me still and wanted to vent, so I went along with her for the time being: “I’d be very worried and look for you everywhere”, “I’d sue the city”, “I’d tell your mother exactly what happened and say I’m sorry”, and “I’d kill the guy who kidnapped you”.
She grumbled and asked a few follow-up questions, like “if you’re planning to kill the guy, what would you do with our cat?” But at this point, I think she’s finding it difficult to stay angry at me. I tell her again that I’m sorry I missed her text, and that next time this happens, she should just call me to make sure I see her text, but she left soon after without acknowledging my apology.
I know I’m in the wrong for missing her text. Not trying to argue otherwise. My question is, am I really responsible if someone kidnaps her between getting off the Uber and getting into our apartment complex? Is she trying to guilt trip me into thinking her anger is justified or am I really a horrible, kidnap-facilitating bad person for missing a few texts?
Edit for context: we live in a pretty safe city that ranks top 10 in the world on low crime rate. Also, thank you all for educating me on what gaslighting actually means. It was 2 in the morning when I posted this, I did not have the energy to find the answer myself.
If she consistently behaves like this when you make a mistake, then you are being emotionally abused.
I know I’m in the wrong for missing her text
You are not.
Source: 20 years of a successful marriage.
Your partner has some issues she seems to need to work through. Entertaining her delusions probably won’t help her.
So, fair warning, I am autistic, but also, I’ve had several multi year relationships with people of differing similarities to this person, here’s my read of this:
This is extremely manipulative and abusive behavior toward you.
You forgot about a text after a hard day of work.
She got angry and refused to speak with you for hours because you missed a text.
And you say this is apparently normal behavior.
That is fucking absurd, to be frank.
Before any of the rest of the story, that alone is bonkers.
Just do the reverse situation in your head. You’re out late for some on location work event, text her and ask if she can be there when you get back home. She forgets.
Would you be so angry or disappointed that you would refuse to speak to her for 3 hours, would that be something she would accept as normal behavior from you, and would she be inclined to blame herself and totally accept this punishment from you as appropriate?
The rest of this story is she wakes you up in the middle and questions you with absurd nonsensical questions that are all specifically designed as loyalty tests.
I had a 3 year relationship with a person like this.
She was schizophrenic, massively physically, mentally and emotionally abusive toward me.
I am of course not going to say your partner is schizophrenic based off of this alone, I am just saying that reading your story immediately sent me back into the mindstate and memories of my own.
It is however clear to me that your acceptance of this kind of behavior as normal, up until the middle of the night nonsense questioning, to me this indicates that she is utterly dominating you into total submission, and you think this is normal.
It is not.
Fucking bail out immediately is what I would do.
It is completely absurd to think that she could somehow have been kidnapped in the 30 seconds between getting out of an uber and walking to your door.
If she actually believed she was in real danger of being kidnapped, she almost certainly would have told you why, and would have asked you to evaluate her why and what to do to prevent it.
Shes fucking grooming you when she guilt trips you into saying you’d murder someone on her account in a totally hypothetical situation that she is taking extremely seriously.
She is trying to make you feel extremely guilty for things that 1) are not and would not be your fault if they occured and 2) have almost 0 chance of actually occurring.
Maybe there is a 1% chance she will open up later and tell you, wow ok, i was really on edge last night, here is why: and then recount an actual, unlikely but possible extremely unnerving situation.
Or, she is cheating on you or has done something you would be greatly displeased with if you found out, and this is all a reflection/distraction technique. She felt guilty so she leaped at any chance to make you into the bad guy.
Again, I obviously cannot say with any certainty that is what is actually going on, but I can certainly say that she is a highly manipulative and abusive person if you find it normal for her to just completely give you the silent treatment for hours for an inconsequential error.
My main question is why are you already sleeping in separate bedrooms at this point?
One of many reasons; people are shift workers and keep different hours and don’t want to disturb each others sleep when alarms go off/they get out of bed.
I worked night shift for a year or two, that is indeed why we started sleeping in separate bedrooms. Right now, our schedule is still a 1-2 hours apart, enough for us to want to sleep in separate bedrooms.
Absolutely wild lmao. I understand how it starts with opposite schedules but damn. My girl clocks in an hour earlier than me but also wakes up at least a couple before me for her morning ritual. I literally don’t even hear her alarms at this point. You know I’m getting them cuddles.
Although hard to be encouraging getting them cuddles here – your tolerance for intolerable behavior from your significant other is beyond what I’d endure. Obviously just seeing a small slice of the relationship, but yeah nah I don’t play like that.
After a few relationships my tolerance for bullshit drama is mighty low. Love my chill gal who down to earth and behaves like a reasonable adult.
It’s not like we’re constantly at odds with each other as well, normally I’d go to her bed, or she’d come to mine for a while before I sleep to “get them cuddles” as you put it.
For sure, you definitely know your relationship better than I do. Keep an eyeball on how much the drama and loyalty tests, etc, pop up tho.
No shade, rooting for ye, all the best 🤙
Is she Asian ?
We are both Asian.
Yeah I’m sorry if this is insensitive but a lot of this sounds like common cultural expectations for women from east Asian backgrounds. You guys could probably have a discussion about how you understand gender roles and how her upbringing might have informed her.
She is emotionally abusing you.
- She needs therapy.
- If she doesnt get therapy, sadly, the relationship needs to end. In this situation, be prepared to get a restraining order.
I don’t think it’s gaslighting. Gaslighting is manipulating someone into questioning their perception of reality. This is being angry at someone.
I can’t really relate. Is it really that dangerous where you live? We probably live in different countries but I don’t have CCTV in the residential area where I live. And usually in the summer, it’s still bright enough at 10pm an people are still around and it’s safe enough for women to walk home alone. At least in most places.
It’s pretty safe where we live afaik, also CCTV is everywhere here especially in and around the big cities.
So, London?
Haha, our city has a much lower crim rate than London actually.
I get that you’re trying to get more info to help OP out better, but I think that it’s better to drop this “where are you from?” talk. Privacy-wise it’s rather problematic, you know? [Sorry for the uncalled advice.]
Asking someone their country of residence is privacy intruding? Lol
In the strictest sense perhaps, but I dont think a criminal could make something of the knowledge that I am from Germany.
This is absolutely manipulative.
Whether she realizes it or not, refusing to engage or talk about it, except in her own time frame- is not a good sign for a healthy relationship, and when she did decide to talk about it, put you into a compromised position- being unable to think clearly.
The questions she’s asking are meant to elicit fear and massive guilt. Though to be blunt, I’m going to assume there’s no real danger of any of that happening, I assume the neighborhood is fairly safe. Because usually it is.
As for what you’d do…? Call the cops. Duh. You (probably) don’t have the resources to find any one and kill them, and besides which, if she’s really asking that you do, uhm… dodge that bullet.
Whether she realizes it or not, refusing to engage or talk about it, except in her own time frame- is not a good sign for a healthy relationship,
Haaaaaaaaaard disagree. People need time to process and self regulate before engaging with things like this. The silent treatment isn’t the right play, and neither is stewing in it, not trying to reach an emotionally grounded state, and reapproacing the situation.
A much more healthy response, from either individual, would be to set a timeframe for when they can reengage. Either him saying “clearly you don’t want to discuss this now. That’s okay. How about the morning?” or her saying the same, essentially. It’s healthy to admit that you just do not have the emotional capacity to have a conversation respectfully.
There’s a pretty good chance the questions asked were only asked because she was still very emotionally high. The fact that it occurred in the middle of the night, suddenly, after OP being asleep, says that she has probably not been regulating. Not good times to be having emotional discourse. Every person has said weird, gross, or straight up untrue things when they’re emotionally charged. Stuff you don’t believe or wouldn’t act on, and never would have said in a normal state.
None of this is to excuse any of the actions or words said. She clearly has some emotional issues, and needs actual, professional help. I’m just picking at the “refusing to talk” bit. There are healthy ways to refuse to talk, and many benefits to not just butting heads immediately.
Edit for clarity: the only thing I disagree is the bit I quoted. The bit about engaging outside of a timeframe comfortable to you. I feel like some people are thinking I’m defending the GF - to be clear, I am not. Again, I am JUST disagreeing with the bit I directly quoted.
Haaaaaaaaaard disagree. People need time to process and self regulate before engaging with things like this. The silent treatment isn’t the right play, and neither is stewing in it, not trying to reach an emotionally grounded state, and reapproacing the situation.
So she gets to unilaterally decide when they talk? including, when the OP is in a vulnerable mental state? I think you’re focusing too much on what the GF needs and denying the OP the same you’d give her. The fact that he was sleeping would definitely suggest he’s not ready to have the conversation.
I didn’t say he couldn’t also choose to pick a better time. It’s a mutual thing. They both need time to process the new information, get into a more healthy state, and readdress this thing. That can only happen when both say as much.
I’m pretty sure I said as much in the rest of the post, if you want to go back and read the other 80%.
She gave him the silent treatment.
She did not say: “Look, I’m really angry/flustered/sad/whatever right now, please give me some space and we can talk about this later.”
She then was just standing there at 1 am at his bed, implying either she’d been standing there for a while (weird) or she woke him up (rude).
The situation as described has nothing in common with two partners who understand themselves and their boundaries well and set aside a time to discuss things in a mutually agreed upon time and place when they both expect to have more emotional bandwidth.
Again, did I say she did things perfectly? Nope. In fact she did them pretty fucking bad. Go back to my first post and read it again, please. I said those things were bad BECAUSE she was doing them.
I only ever had an issue with the person I replied to saying that you have to engage in the conversation, possibly before you’re ready. No. That’s wrong. You engage with the conversation when BOTH PARTIES feel comfortable.
Both people can be right, or wrong. They both handled it pretty badly. I’d say she probably handled it worse. Again, the ONLY THING I’m commenting on at all is the implication that someone MUST engage with a conversation before they’re ready to.
Nuance and reading comprehension are hard.
Edit for clarity: the only thing I disagree with from the original comment I replied to is the bit that I quoted. The bit about engaging outside of a timeframe comfortable to you. I feel like some people are thinking I’m defending the GF - to be clear, I am not. Again, I am JUST disagreeing with the bit I directly quoted.
None of that is gaslighting. However, it’s a red flag.
the usual? what the fuck kind of people have you dated so far that asking a series of gone girl fantasy questions in the middle of the night acting like Kathy Bates from Misery is usual?
I was thinking the same thing.
She asked me to murder someone. You know, couples stuff.
I have dated exactly 1 (one) girl. I am her first relationship as well. Maybe we just don’t know what is normal lmao
what is normal lmao
It’s not, she’s crazy. Like “GTFO and block her ASAP” crazy.
If there is one lesson I could teach my younger self, it would be to have several low commitment relationships while I was younger to learn what is “normal”. Once you start making murder pacts, it’s usually too late.
I dated in high-school but now I have been single for like 10 years, I feel so lost now it’s insane
Oh well, 7 years too late for me lmao
It’s never too late to break up. People get divorced with really complicated lives and they’re both better off. It will only get worse if you stick around. You should consider therapy together, although I think she really needs it on her own. She has to be willing to change her behavior.
