Memory Trigger: Putting clean sheets on the bed.
Memory:
It was one evening late in the last year of the relationship. We were at my home, having spent the day and the evening together, rounded out by a nice meal that I had planned and shopped for and lead the cooking of.
We were closing up shop for the night, getting ready for bed. As usual (and as is usual for many women), I was running around the house doing a dozen last-minute tasks (including making sure the front door was locked because I'd learned I couldn't trust him to have locked it after going out out his car for something). So I'm running around doing physical and mental labor, and meanwhile he's already in bed, pretending to read (really just waiting for me to come to bed so he can move on to what he hopes will come next - sex).
Finally after about 10 minutes of tasks, I come to bed . . . to find him pouting and upset. My first thought was, "Really?! What the fuck did I do or fail to do this time?!"
I truly believe that he considered himself to be taking an "adult" approach when he turned to me and scolded me for not bringing his water glass into the bedroom and putting it on the bedside table next to him. You see, as part of the dozen or so tasks I'd done while he sat there pouting in bed, one of them was to bring my own water glass to my bedside table. So seemingly, in his warped mind I was selfish for bringing my glass but not bringing his.
Nevermind that he could have brought his glass his own damn self. Nevermind that he was five steps away from the kitchen and could have gotten a different glass of water for himself. Nevermind that I can't recall ever even once seeing him drink out of a water glass during the night. Nevermind that I don't believe he regularly had a glass of water beside him in bed on nights when I wasn't with him.
It's impossible to have a happy, healthy, sustainable relationship with someone with such an incredibly low level of emotional maturity. With someone who wants to hold their partner's every action under the microscope of criticism and fault-finding. With someone who could not seem to internalize the thousand positive, giving, loving things I did but would hyper-focus on any perceived failure. With a partner who needed so much care-taking that his expectation was that I should bring him his fucking water glass while he sat there in bed waiting for me to do it and sulking at the fact that I didn't.
It was utterly demoralizing and crazy-making. And I'm still living with so many psychological triggers for these memories. Instead of getting to remember a tender moment of affection or intimacy, I have to remember abuse and manipulation and control at every turn.
#pathological #crazymaking #emotionalabuse #psychologicalwarfare #intimatepartnerviolence
