My fiancé and I have been together for almost 13 years. He's a great human being, has a heart of gold and is always there for everyone he loves, including me. Overall, I think we've had a decent relationship with good memories, and have built a decent life together. However, our relationship has long struggled with recurrent conflicts and arguments, often for things that really don't matter.

He has untreated ADHD, which I didn't realize until last year how this impacts his life, his emotions and the way he executes things. Recently, he started seeing a therapist after I insisted he needed to seek help for his ADHD and for what seemed to be depression, but turns out to be anxiety. I've been seeing a therapist on my end as well for the past 1.5 year, and have done so in the past to treat my anxiety and panic attacks, which I have under control now.

Last night it downed on me that he might also struggle with anger issues. It has been tricky to figure this out because literature always describes these things to include abuse and violence, but he never gets violent with me, insults me or threatens me at all: he doesn't make me feel afraid or unsafe, and I know he would never lay a finger on me. But he has difficulty regulating his emotions, and often gets exasperated over anything on a daily basis (life, noises, job, relatives, me, politics, incidents, driving, news, career, small inconveniences, etc), and his verbal berating can be exhausting. I don't consider myself an angry person, but when we started living together 2 years into our relationship, I developed this defense mechanism to match his energy in order to defend myself whenever he yells at me. We can get into shouting matches that are useless because we talk over the other without listening, we can get disrespectful towards the other, and it just becomes an overall toxic dynamic that leads nowhere. This doesn't come naturally to me, though, so while he has the ability to just release his anger/frustration and go back to feeling totally normal again as if nothing had happened, I am left feeling totally depleted. I have never been able to get used to this. And what bugs me the most is that I know this is not who I am, especially since he's the only person I've ever had this dynamic with.

On three separate occasions during our relationship, his berating has pushed me to a limit where I have punched a surface to make it stop. This weekend was one of those moments, and this time my frustration was very particular because I planned this Memorial weekend so that we could relax and enjoy a getaway, but in the back of my head I worried about things getting spoiled over a stupid argument, and eventually it happened — not once, but twice. Obviously, hitting a surface/anything is not right, but I've only done it in moments where the intensity of the argument becomes too much, and I just want it to stop but words won't do, so hitting a surface halts the argument immediately.

This time, he said that we have the right to verbally express anger (as if saying anything goes as long as it remains verbal), but there is no right to punch things; that's where he draws the limit (insinuating that he will break up with me over this if it happens again). But my question is: what is the verbal limit, then? Can he really have the freedom to berate me and expect me to just take it? I am not saying that my actions are right or justified, and obviously I don't want this to happen again, but there must be a limit to verbal anger. As of now, we agreed on a safe word to avoid arguments escalating to a point where they become too much, let's see if that works...

Thoughts? I feel sad, lost and confused. But more than anything, I am tired. Still, I love him deeply and want to make it work.