AITA for wanting to finally show my boyfriend Im right
Let’s just start with this: honestly, I know I’m not the a**hole, and this post is purely for me to know I’m not crazy and that the gaslighting is just making me question reality.
You’re all welcome to come for me about being spiteful or say I should just leave, but if you’ve been in my shoes, you know sometimes it can be hard. And I truly think he believes what he says when he tries to justify himself lately.
I (F30) and my boyfriend (M34) have been together about 6 years. We have 6 kids: his 3 boys, my daughter and son, and then our daughter together.
For this post, I’ll call him Landon. Landon is a great dad. He can be an amazing listener, yada yada, but when we argue it doesn’t take long for things to take a turn for the worse. I’m super hard of hearing, which, yes, is annoying, and I don’t know how else to explain it—when I hear something wrong, it’s not like I know I heard it wrong. So that escalates things because he tries to act like I’m being unreasonable, even after I’ve said sorry and taken accountability for snapping over what I thought I heard. (I do use the iPhone Live Captions setting, but it glitches and mishears people too, so my life is basically a horrible game of telephone.)
But let’s get back to my main point. No matter what or who started the fight, there have been times when he gets aggressive. He’ll apologize later and say it shouldn’t have happened, but he always doubles down that I made it happen. Not that it matters much because it’s still unacceptable, but for broader context, he has never actually “hit” me. He’s put his hands on me, yes, but I’m hoping y’all understand the stupid distinction I’m trying to make.
The most recent fight, he got in my face, nose to nose, and at one point forcefully pushed his nose into mine. He wouldn’t get out of my face no matter how much I screamed for him to or told him to leave. I’ll admit I tried to kick him in the crotch twice—once to get him out of my face and once out of retaliation after everything, when he still wouldn’t leave like he said he so badly wanted to.
I got sad during the fight and tried to step outside because I wanted a second to cry. He put his hand on the door as I opened it and held it shut. I couldn’t open it, so I waited a second to make him think I’d given up, then used my free arm to elbow the crook of his arm so he’d move it off the door. He tried to close it again, and while I was pushing back, I guess I clipped his face with my arm. He says I purposely punched him—backwards, while not even looking at his face, just trying to get out. What?!?
When we calmed down and I tried to explain that him getting physical wasn’t okay, he pulled the same, “Well, you shouldn’t have…” insert generic excuse here.
I try to explain that, yeah, anger is natural. I overreact too sometimes. But I don’t call him out of his name or get physical or aggressive unless it’s to defend myself. He’s 34 years old. I’m not saying I don’t piss him off, but I’m not holding a gun to his head. I am not in control of his actions. But he doubles down.
He blames me for defending myself and uses my own words against me. “You’re a grown adult. Learn to control your emotions.” I even tried to explain that when I got him off the door, I wasn’t reacting the way he was—I was reacting in defense of myself, and he was literally holding me hostage, even if it was only for a few minutes. I told him even a cop would tell him that. Other professionals would too.
He literally asked me to get a therapist so we could tell them about the fight because he’s convinced he didn’t react abnormally. I want to because, as spiteful as it sounds, I almost want the satisfaction of hearing a professional tell him this is abusive behavior. He tells me I’m “playing the victim,” like always, anytime I try to say I don’t like something he’s doing. Even if I take accountability for whatever I did, somehow I’m still the victim for not wanting to be insulted or scared of his actions.
I’d like to add that the love bombing started right after.
I tried one more time to talk to him, but this time I decided to actually record it. I don’t even know why I did besides wanting proof for myself. I think, in the moment, I thought maybe if he heard himself, he’d finally see what I do. But now we have physical proof of his behavior and messages that he outright denies. He blames me for his actions, gaslights me, tells me I’m playing the victim, calls me names, etc.
And I hate it all. “Why do you stay?” you all ask. Because I can’t stop questioning myself.
I do love him. Not that I want to hate him, but I hate questioning myself because he’s so sure he’s right.
I know it doesn’t help that I love all of our kids too, and I don’t want to feel like this is my fault. I don’t know.
I truly don’t know if anyone will read this, but if you do, give me your honest opinion. Maybe I’m just trying to write it all out to get some catharsis for myself.