This one nails it…

[DCF1952]

"YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER DOESN'T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HIS ANGER; HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR ANGER. One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn't rise and your blood shouldn't boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone. When your anger does jump out of you—as will happen to any abused woman from time to time—he is likely to try to jam it back down your throat as quickly as he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel straitjacketed. You may develop physical or emotional reactions to swallowing your anger, such as depression, nightmares, emotional numbing, or eating and sleeping problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to belittle you further or make you feel crazy."

― Lundy Bancroft

[Discovelpis]

My spouse is of the more covert nature, and I am not an angry person. I got angry once, and it has been brought up repeatedly through teary eyes and sobs. How scary it was to see me that angry (I raised my voice and cursed, no name calling, nothing like that).

If it weren't for therapy, I never would have even started looking into any of this or even considered that it shouldn't be this way. What is seen cannot be unseen, and I'm glad I saw it. Scary as it is

[square]

Yeah that quote is spot on.

I once tried in vain to explain to my husband the basic principle of cause and effect, as he had done something but was entirely focused on my emotions. I gave him an example like "if you had done X then would I be allowed to have any feelings about that?" And he said "whatever I do, it's your anger that is the problem."

To me, that's mentally ill right there. It's not sane. And he absolutely could not see how reality-bending his position was.

Over and over, he would blame all conflicts on me, saying I caused them all, I'm the one who started it, I'm the one who ruined a perfectly good day. And I would be so confused because it would have been him that did a thing, but he would tell me that my being angry is what started it.

We would often go in circles over who "started" a conflict, which besides being childish confused me to the max. He would reverse timelines so he would say I said X before he said Y. I wished we had recordings. But none of it even mattered because I did not understand that the recordings would actually confirm his point of view for him - he would have pointed to the frame where my face started to look shocked or teary or disappointed and said, see? That's where you started it all. I only called you a ___ after.

[NBRiverGuy]

I wished we had recordings. But none of it even mattered because I did not understand that the recordings would actually confirm his point of view for him - he would have pointed to the frame where my face started to look shocked or teary or disappointed and said, see?

Square-I've only been here for a few days, but I am learning a lot from your insights and finding plenty of commonality. Last year, my uNPw got put on mandatory leave and called into her human resources office after an emotional outburst at work. Convinced that she had been wronged, she planned to record the meeting on her phone in case she decided to "pursue legal action". Just to clarify, we live in a "one-party consent" state, so she was within her legal right to record. Anyways, she came home from the meeting and played me the recording to vindicate herself and I am telling you, we heard two completely different conversations. I was fully prepared to take my wife's side before she played me the recording. But the mean woman who my wife described was out to get her did not appear in the recording. What I heard was a kind woman who was gently trying to explain to my wife why her behavior was unacceptable (i.e. you are disrupting the work environment, you are making your co-workers uncomfortable, etc.) and my wife coming back at her aggressively with a laundry list of reasons why her behavior was justified, including "I didn't get any sleep the night before, so I was overly emotional." That's one of her greatest hits. I remember the HR woman saying over and over, "Nevertheless, if you notice those feelings coming on in the future, you should excuse yourself to the bathroom or even out to the parking lot and sit in your car until it passes." After reluctantly agreeing to keep her behavior in check, she was then allowed to return to work.
At the end of the recording, I was wide-eyed. I said, "Who do you think sounded more reasonable in that conversation?" She did not answer but instead said, "She didn't even try to understand what I was going through." I said, "It's not her job to understand what is happening in your personal life. She is not your counselor and neither are your coworkers." With that, she stormed off. That is probably the moment that I realized that I was dealing with a bigger issue than just some unresolved anger that she was trying to work out in therapy. Sorry for the long post. Lots of stuff is coming back to me all at once.

[SeaBreeze]

Thanks for sharing this quote. It really does sum things up!

Square said:

Over and over, he would blame all conflicts on me, saying I caused them all, I'm the one who started it, I'm the one who ruined a perfectly good day. And I would be so confused because it would have been him that did a thing, but he would tell me that my being angry is what started it.

Same with my stbx. He would say or do something abusive. But when I called him out on it, asked why he said/did that, or told him not to treat me that way, well guess what, it was me, not him, who "started the argument"!

[square]

NBRiverGuy, damn, that really is eye-opening.

SeaBreeze, yeah. I can get muddled up in acknowledging we all have our own perspectives, but when he literally said my anger was the cause of our conflict, it clarified that we were on two different planets.

To this day, I have trouble saying the words "my anger." I say "my feelings" or something, because he directly and specifically told me for years my anger was always inherently bad - not merely unjustified but it made me a bad wife, a bad person.

NBRiverGuy, your story also underlines the whole idea about it being beyond just "perspective" or "opinion." It's an entire paradigm shift. You think you're discussing if the sky is blue and she's talking anteaters.