This is my reading too.
If only we had some sort of magical device that would let us speak to each other across distances and avoid the ambiguities of writing.
She’s scared and you’re nervous; you’re both muddying the waters by trying to say what you want while also trying to frame it in a way that you think the other wants to hear.
Your relationship sounds about as healthy as her heart.
First, the OP (IIUC) was (commendably) not reading his texts while driving, so he didn’t have that opportunity.
Second, like other posters, I don’t see “company nurse sent me to ER” as necessarily indicating something’s seriously wrong. My first instinct wouldn’t have been to say “I’m on my way” but first “What happened??”
Totally this. There’s downright resentment in those texts, and all that passive-aggressive bullshit as it is means it’s not just coming from this one incident.
Sounds like you guys have some history in this kind of bullshittery? Feels like she wanted to finally crucify you under circumstances you couldn’t worm out from under.
This. Being at the ER doesn’t mean there’s an emergency; it just means it can’t wait until you can schedule an appointment with your regular doctor.
Last time I was in the ER, it was because I’d ruptured my Achilles tendon. That was a big deal.
The time before that, it was because my son, then 5 years old, had managed to get his finger caught in one of his toys, and we hadn’t been able to extricate it at home. This was not a big deal. There was no danger, but it was a Saturday, and it wouldn’t have worked for him to have the toy on his finger until we could see the pediatrician on Monday.
So you don’t drop everything just because someone close to you is in the ER. Whether you do or not depends on the details.
But once the word was MRI and nitro, the OP should have dropped everything and been there.
Nonetheless, if I were the OP, once the crisis is past, I’d drop this chick like a hot potato. She’s sending out all sorts of mixed messages, and blaming him for failing to sort through them properly - and blaming him for her success in pushing him away.
My attitude is, either you believe your SO about something like this, or you throw in the towel. You don’t stay with someone you can’t trust about something like that.
When she was told she was having a heart attack, she should have told the ER staff- “Here’s my husband/SO’s phone number. Please call him and tell him to get here.” Sending cryptic texts seems like an odd thing to do. But when your SO says “I’m having a heart attack”, the correct response is “Which hospital?” followed quickly by “I’m on my way.”
This, and this. No more need be said.
Disagree.
Last year I was refinishing a coffee table and managed to splash some polyurathane in my eyes (:rolleyes:). I got my son (who was fifteen) to come with me, got myself to the hospital (I could see fine) to get myself an eye wash. There wasn’t really any reason I needed my husband - it was an eye wash.
There are lots of reasons not to rush to the ER because your partner is there.
(Heart attack however, is probably not one of them).
Yeah, not detecting a whole lotta love here.
If I sent the initial sequence of texts to my wife, that “don’t panic, am fine, but I’m at the ER, nurse sent me to the ER” part, I don’t expect my wife to drop everything she’s doing and assume I need her right there and then to get to the ER. I would guess she probably wouldn’t, unless I conveyed the information right away that I just suffered a heart attack.
Excuse me? He picked the fight? :eek: Are you serious? Did you actually read the OP? Or is this just a case of the man is always in the wrong whatever actually happens?
That is where it becomes a fight, right between those two messages, and (unless there is a message missing, which you certainly have no evidence for) he is not saying a thing. Maybe he was not quite as sensitive and solicitous as he might have been, and maybe he was foolish to take her at her word, and maybe it is understandable that in the scary circumstances she was in, she got upset enough to pick a fight and start taking things out on him, but to imagine for a moment that he was the one who made it into a fight is fucking insane!
I think it’s perfectly clear that she started off playing a passive-aggressive game of “I’m in the ER, don’t worry about me…” when it is clear to anyone with even a smidgen of a brain that when your SO is in the ER, you leap to offer to go there. It’s just what humans are supposed to do for each other. A basic fucking courtesy.
Then the OP falls for it by asking if he should go home (??). I think that’s a pretty damn clear bit of evidence that the OP doesn’t actually care all that much about the SO.
Who knows what the hell all the talk about blood pressure and whatnot came from, but I take away that the OP is pretty much done with the SO well before this string of texts, and I bet that the SO is a real charmer in any case.
Assigning blame to this mess is like trying to identify which piece of litter makes someone go from “disorganized” to “hoarder.” There isn’t one point where this went wrong, it is the whole thing that is wrong.
My read? She’s a PA bitch. She sounds just like my mom. Obviously she didn’t have a heart attack. They don’t send you home with a heart attack. Nitro doesn’t necessarily mean you are having a heart attack. I have seen them use it to rule out (or in) cardiac issues. Other things.mimic cardiac stuff, panick attacks for one.
Women who play the passive agressive guessing game piss me off. If you want him to drop everything and come, you say “I need you here. Please drive safe, but hurry.”
This, right here, Becky2844 nailed it I think.
I agree with the notion that you were both assholes. Though given that your SO was in the midst of an emergency and may well have been scared, I think you might’ve cut her a bit of slack. People don’t always think clearly when they’re scared, so she might’ve been a bit of a bitch, but you could’ve displayed some sort of urgency around her well being.
I’m so baffled by trying to unpick the conversation in the OP that I think poor communication is a major player in this whole drama.
Yeah, you were.
I agree, but we don’t know what happens when the OP needs her to be there for him, or if “it’s all about you” is code for “it will never be about you.”
When your first communication is “Don’t Panic, I am fine.” you should probably not be surprised if your SO is calm and thinks that you’re generally OK.
BTW, for some people “Do you need me to come home?” IS urgency, because when you say Yes, they’ll drop whatever they’re doing and get in the car.
This. It makes everything much, much easier when people can just take what they are told at face value instead of one or both parties being passive-aggressive.
Grumman
Amateur negotiator between his idiot mother and idiot father