Crazy-making Patterns

There are several patterns in this relationship that are crazy-making – and very confusing, because I haven’t seen them in all my reading about verbal abuse. The most I can say to make sense of them is that they seem to be about my partner’s belief that I am merely an extension of her will, and that when I fail to implement her will perfectly, she becomes furious. One such pattern revolves around vacation planning.

I wrote earlier about the book-throwing incident. That incident started with her upset about my inability to engage about vacation planning. This pattern comes up frequently; it happened again a few days ago. What typically happens is this:

She says something like, “We need to plan for our upcoming vacation time”, but never says anything like, “Can we sit down now and talk about plans?” Then, after a few days, she angrily accuses me of not engaging with her about plans. In other words, she seems to expect me to initiate the talks about plans, when she is the one who expressed the need to talk. What makes this even more crazy-making is that when I say, “OK, let’s sit down right now and do some planning”, she refuses the offer. In fact, the offer seems to make her even more angry.

It’s not that I mind the talking (though I find she needs much more detail in these plans than I do; I tend to be more spontaneous and don’t need to know exactly when and where we have to be at every step of the way). What bothers me is having a responsibility pushed on me that I did not ask for, and that was not explicitly pushed on me in the first place.

I also have come to believe that her need for me to engage about planning is mostly about her need for me to approve her ideas with enthusiasm, and that my own ideas are much less important, and even dismissed. When I tried to express my feelings about that last year, the result was the book-throwing incident. I have learned that I need to never express such feelings.

Another example of a similar pattern is this: she frequently says to me, “Help me remember something I need to do tomorrow”. This is something I never ask her to do for me. I feel it is my responsibility to remember things that are important to me. But she seems to feel that it’s natural for me to take on this role for her, again as if I were a mere extension of her will. Of course, when I fail to remember something for her, she becomes very angry at me if she misses or is late for an engagement.

A couple of days ago, I questioned her about her expectation of my role as an reminder mechanism. I mumbled something about how it’s difficult for me to remember things for her, when I have to remember my own life necessities (plans, engagements, duties) on a daily basis. She expressed disbelief, saying something like, “What all do you have to remember?!” I felt terribly diminished and devalued by this comment, because it seemed as if she was saying my own life work is much less important than hers. But I have learned by now that I should never express any unhappiness about things she has said to me, so I kept quiet.

Both of these patterns drive me crazy, and it’s been difficult even to be able to understand why they do. It’s not that I don’t want to be helpful. Yet in these examples, I seem to be stuck in a role where I am expected to take on an implicit, unstated responsibility that I did not ask for, and when I fail in this responsibility, I am subjected to yet another angry blast.