A
female
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:I have been with my boyfriend for almost one year. He is my first boyfriend (I'm 21, he's a few years older). He has a bit of a temper and sometimes gets angry at little things. I am a very very sensitive and emotional person, and am not very good at tolerating anger. My parents got divorced when I was 12, and throughout almost my whole childhood they would yell at each other. It got to the point where I would just have to leave, or shut down emotionally as a defense mechanism. Now in my relationship, when I sense he is irritated/angry with me, I feel very unsafe (emotionally) and it really freaks me out. He never yells or gets physical, and always uses this as his easy way out "well I never raised my voice did I?" But still, he gets a tone to his voice that I perceive as being mad and angry. Or sometimes he will refuse to answer my questions and I can tell he is visibly upset. So last weekend he told me to wake him up so we could go see a movie. He is very difficult to wake up, but I tried to, telling him if he wanted to keep sleeping that was okay, but that I thought he wanted me to try to wake him. So all of a sudden he gets up, storms out of the room. After asking him several times if he still wanted to go, and him not responding, he finally said in a nasty tone "what do you THINK I wanted to do." And I tried to tell him if he wanted to stay asleep that was fine with me, but I thought he might want to go out. It's difficult because numerous other times he has told me to wake him up at such-and-such a time, but he acts the same way like he's really pissed to have to wake up. So I never really know. So anyways, after him ignoring me and then randomly snapping back, I go into defense mode, he ends up telling me "you can't ever handle anything, I thought you said you wouldn't get emotional anymore." It was awful. Later on that night I told him it's very difficult for me because my parents were constantly angry and would yell all the time when I was a kid, and it scares me when I feel like he's mad at me because I don't want to ever break up with him like they did. So he tells me he wasn't mad at me, and that he loves me. Then a couple nights after, the same type of situation occurred. He told me I should sit down and wait for him, but I couldn't sit down because my uniform was dirty, so I told him that and then he says "alright" in a pissed off tone. So I tell him okay, I'm gonna just go so you can finish your stuff, don't worry about it. And I left because I was afraid he was going to act like he did the night before. I'm always afraid it's going to escalate like it did with my parents. Anyways, I think we worked it out because I told him that from now on I'll just ask him if he's mad, so he can tell me directly. But that it's difficult for me to deal with this type of issue because of my childhood. I really cannot tolerate this type of anger directed at me, even though it does not include yelling or hitting. I just can't tell if this is my issue or his. I mean there have been several occasions where I've heard him snap / talk back to his parents, and I think he just is really not aware of his tone of voice because his parents have never really held him accountable for it. And every time I ask him after the fact, "were you irritated with me" he says he wasn't. But I swear his tone of voice makes it sound that way. How do I figure out how much of this is his behavioural problem, or how much of it is mine and is just because of some stupid childhood issue?
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female
reader, QuirkLady +, writes (24 June 2009):
 Have you ever been to counseling? I think that might be beneficial to you. Conflict is an inevitable part of life and we all have to learn to manage it somehow. Right now it seems like he gets angry, you get defensive and you both end up walking on eggshells...that's not good for either of you IMO. You both could end up stuffing your problems and feeling resentful about it.
I think a good round of counseling can help you learn some techniques for dealing with anger...not only for this relationship but for the others in the future as well.
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