Walking on Eggshells

I feel your pain on this one too.

I am in a marriage with a guy who does this to me all the time. To the point where I am to blame for everything. He blows up at small things and misinterprets things all the time. I also walk on eggshells around him and so do my kids. Its a horrid way to live and he is a total monster. He needs therapy and more medication. He has been diagnosed depressed and I feel there is more to it.

He also refuses to talk about anything unless it is to do with him. Turn's every talk into I am so selfish or I am to blame. Doesn't listen to what I have to say and now at the point where I don't say anything at all. Its better this way.

I think you need to decide if this is worth the effort or not. If it is, get some counseling and work though it. If not, break it off. There are better things out there for you.

That is good that not much of it seems to apply to you. I put it there not to say that you were being abused but as a reference of what abuse can look like. It still isn't good that he is emotionally abusive though but hopefully he can work on that.

I was in a relationship like this for about 8 months. It was horrible.

The way he's treating you sounds like gaslighting. Basically a way of making someone doubt the validity of their own position and undermining them often by making out things that happened didn't or reframing them to make the other person seem unreasonable or crazy.

Firstly, are you absolutely sure that the text was sent automatically? It seems strange that an automated text wouldn't be labelled as such - like the texts that say "you have a missed call from..."

The awkward thing is, I bet if you raised the issue of the text again, he'd get angry and say you were making a big deal out of it - don't go on about it etc. That's not a good basis for a relationship so you need to stand up to him and make him understand why you don't like being treated in this way and that when something is bothering you, you have aright to be listened to.

It's perfectly understandable that the text would have caused confusion. Your reaction was normal in the circumstances, it's his anger which is excessive so just keep that in mind and don't let him make you believe otherwise.

So funny that you use the term gaslighting...I was thinking of the same word while this was going on! As for the text message, I have the same feature on my phone, and the default reply is 100% the same as what was sent from his phone. So, I know the phone auto-generated the reply, but just not sure why he got so angry when the situation was weird and not exactly in my imagination. Oh well...I don't mind standing up to him, but I was wondering about my fault in any of it...maybe only the part about asking if he'd meant to send the text to someone else...which still seems logical to me, but I can see his side on this one.

Thanks!