My partner creates so much tension when we’re in the car
My on-and-off partner of 6 years has always created a lot of tension when we’re in the car together. I’ve been thinking about all these situations and I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.
Here are some examples:
- The seatbelt: He used to get very irritated because he said my seatbelt was making a cracking/clicking noise. I could barely hear it, if at all, but he would get angry and tell me I needed to do something about it. I genuinely didn’t know what I was supposed to do.
- Road rage: He has a lot of road rage. He constantly comments on other drivers, swears at them and gets angry about what they’re doing. When I tell him he shouldn’t pay so much attention to other drivers or get so worked up about them, he gets angry and says that he needs to be able to express himself. If I ever criticize another driver, he tells me to calm down and not pay attention to it. Last weekend, a driver in front of us started reversing and almost hit me. My partner immediately wanted to take off his seatbelt and get out of the car to confront him. I had to stop him.
When I’m on the phone with him while he’s driving, I regularly hear him swearing at and getting angry with other drivers.
- Threatening to turn around: We’ve had many arguments in the car, and he has sometimes threatened to turn the car around and go home, even when we were on our way to do something nice.
- Bathroom stops: He used to refuse to stop when I needed to use the bathroom. He has gotten somewhat better about it, but he still makes it clear that I’m inconveniencing him whenever he has to stop for me.
- Criticism of my driving: When he is a passenger in my car, he frequently criticizes how I drive. I know that I’m a good driver, but being under that much pressure makes me nervous and causes me to make small mistakes sometimes, which gives him another reason to criticize me. He has also complained about getting carsick, which made me really nervous.
- Navigation: He often didn’t set up the navigation properly before we left. Then, once we were already driving, he would suddenly expect me to fix it. Because I was already stressed and had to figure it out under pressure, I sometimes panicked and couldn’t get the navigation working properly. He would then get angry at me. He has said things like, “You can’t do anything, can you?” when I struggled to set up the navigation. I would ask him to simply pull over so he could set up the navigation himself, but he refused, and then still got angry with me when I couldn’t do it.
Over time, all of this has created so much tension that I sometimes preferred not to be in the car with him at all.
Has anyone else experienced this kind of dynamic with a partner? Were there similar things that happened in the car that you only later realized were not normal or healthy?