Hi all,

I've been the butt of my boyfriends seemingly random anger, and it hurts whenever it happens. I've listed out a few of the situations that illustrate this, and I was wondering whether you'd be able to help me dissect what the heck is going on:

1 - The Case of The Hard Jammy Toast:
He's usually rushing around to leave for work in the morning (he thinks it's dumb to get up earlier, and usually loses track of time in toilet despite having his phone with him to check the time), so after the first few requests to help, I've made it a habit to get up with him and prepare his toast with jam while he gets ready. He'd usually grab it and eat it on the way to work, but there were a few mornings when he would bite into the toast while scrambling for his car keys and complain with apparent anger and annoyance, that I'd left the dense homemade bread in the toaster for too long (hence leaving him to deal with hard crunchy crust), or that I'd spread the jam "all over the place", got his fingers all sticky, and, now he's gonna have to "deal with **** dropping all over" him while he drives. No thank yous, just anger, and huffing out of the door. There were a few times when I'd get teary in my half-asleep state, utterly confused by the anger. I tried to help, didn't I?

2 - The Case of the Despicable Potato Chips
I was in the grocery and sent him a text message to ask whether he wanted anything. The response was "Uhh Chips!...I don't know? Jam?". I brought back chips from the Asian grocery and he was genuinely FURIOUS. Saying, why didn't I just get the regular chips he usually purchased. Why did I have to force this on him. Why didn't I tell him I was in the Asian grocery etc etc. I'd figured that, he was only being cheap and un-adventurous whenever he purchased near-expired potato chips that were on sale. So I thought I'd change it up a little and introduce him to new things, as I usually do. I mean, I've bought him Asian chips before, so this shouldn't be any different. Apparently the issue was that I'd ask for his input, disregarded it, and then made a decision without thinking "properly". He thought I'd know him well enough to purchase the same flavor chips he usually buys. He hated the Asian potato chips I bought, but slowly ate them with apparent disgust and contempt while watching TV. He gave me the cold shoulder (I kid you not) and sulked for the rest of the night. I thought it was amusing at first, but watching him stew in anger over potato chips made me really sad...


3 The Case of the Soupy Curry
He wanted to have a vegetarian dinner, but couldn't find a recipe online that would accommodate what we had in the kitchen. He suggested throwing things together to make a vegetarian curry and I agreed. He left the ingredients up to me and tried to help out with chopping and what not. Towards the end of cooking, he went up to the pot and looked disappointingly at the consistency of the curry. It was too liquid. He wasn't happy. Why was it liquid, he asked, and why had I not included the cornstarch in the mix. I explained that I'd forgotten to add it in, my memory's not perfect, and to add it in now would be to have a gluggy disaster that has proven highly unpopular with him in the past. He got mad, why didn't I remember, why bother leaving the cornstarch out there if I wasn't going to use it.
So, in attempts to alleviate the anger and remedy the situation of the soupy curry, I tossed in a few handful of breadcrumbs. Unfortunately,
this visibly insulted him, and he proceeded to glare and space out at the pot. Silence. I managed to finally coax him to tell me what was wrong, and he accused me of being careless. He didn't want bread crumbs in the curry because (in his mind) this was going to make the curry sludgy. He hated sludgy curry. He'd rather a soupy one. Why didn't I ask him first. Why didn't I add the cornstarch to begin with. Why did I ruin his dinner by adding breadcrumbs - something that has yeast in it. He has fungal problems on a few of his toenails. He doesn't take yeast at night. He avoids it. Why was I so inconsiderate and thoughtless. Silence. More glare at the pot in plan disgust.
The odd thing is, I'd made several dinners with breadcrumbs - without his help - and he's had several orders of garlic bread and pizza delivered for dinner - so really, I don't know why he was going off at me like that....

The Case for Random Anger
A few similarly petty inconveniences have occurred, but even as I braced myself for anger, he didn't seem to have as bad as a reaction and in fact ignored what had happened?

Taking Offense
His memory is much worse than mine. I've brushed off all of the small screw-up he's made, even during incredibly annoying and painful instances where he's accidentally made body contact and bruised me while sparring with me (something i reluctantly do with him). But it just seems to me like he readily and eagerly displays how much I've offended his chaotic "zen" whenever I've unknowingly inconvenienced him with my good intentions.

What makes this all the more upsetting is that he manages to turn the tables on me, saying sarcastically "Oh, so now I'm in the wrong for expressing how upset I am for what you've done. I'm the problem, I know, you don't like how I react. I get it." whenever I get upset at the extent of his anger over this small thing.

He rarely acknowledges the effort I put into anything that benefits him. I'm always giving, and, when the opportunity comes for him to acknowledge me, or to reciprocate, he casually disregards all the things I've done for him, and asks me to keep giving. On the rare occasion he does do something, I'm expected to immediately return the favor in other ways to make up for his troubles.

He's come a long with with this giving thing. At least these days, he steps up more and volunteers to pay for things instead of letting me shell out my money. He tells me that he doesnt really keep tabs on how much other people are paying for him, that it's something that doesn't matter to him (which isn't true. I'll explain in a different thread).

I've been trying to be patient with him. So far it's working, albeit slowly and painfully. But at least he's improving. He's generally a nice guy, but he's completely different on the road, and apparently when he's forced to deal with things that don't suite his expectations...