Your "I can't do this anymore" moment

In My Humble Opinion
61

I was peacefully reading the newspaper at the kitchen table before work when all of the sudden my wife slammed her fist on the table and exclaimed " You do the same God Damn thing every fucking day! "

I admit to not being the most spontaneous person in the world and I like a certain structure in my life, and maybe I am kind of boring. But was that really necessary I’m thinking to myself.

I told her I’ll move out on the weekend. She has a famous temper, she sputtered something about a trial separation. I said lets make it permanent. This was just the final straw for me.

62

…and this one unfortunately hits very close to home with my wife and I currently. She’s under a lot of stress with major medical issues recently, and that’s definitely a contributor to the short fuses, but it is very hard to work with and I don’t know how to really solve it. :frowning:

63

In 1970 I was a social worker in the Aged, Blind, and Disabled division of my state’s welfare department. I saw lots of disturbing and heart-rending things, but the final “I can’t do this anymore” moment came when I had to tell a 90-year-old man that his life insurance policy had (theoretically) acquired enough cash value that it counted as an asset which would disqualify him from receiving his $200 a month check from the state. I felt really awful when I had to tell him that unless he canceled the policy, his welfare checks were going to be discontinued. The old man burst into tears, saying that the life insurance policy was a great source of pride, since it meant that his children would not have to pay for his funeral.

Somebody has to enforce the state’s welfare laws. But it didn’t have to be me. I gave notice and accepted a job with the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission, where I administered, scored, and interpreted aptitude tests to job-seekers.

64

I dated one of those guys, too! I would think he was asking me for information and then discover he was quizzing me instead:

HIM: What song is this?
ME: Not sure, something by Coltrane, I think.
HIM: It’s “After the Rain”.
ME (in my head): If you knew, why the fuck did you ask me?

But that last line quickly moved from “in my head” to “out loud” when he didn’t knock it off, and we broke up shortly after.

65

Thanks for the explanation. I can see that.

For me, whenever I hear someone’s family member has died, it can get a little awkward as I try to reach for an appropriately supportive comment. It’s death and mourning and grief-- some people freeze up and have brainfarts and don’t react normally. Silence can be deafening in those situations, and you feel like you have to say something, anything… and then something inappropriate or awkward comes out. I thought maybe that’s what happened to your SO.

66

Not to dismiss flodnak’s ICDTAM, but having been involved in conversations like,

“My father died Saturday”
“I’m so sorry”
“Why? I’m not”

I have some sympathy for those who blurt out “Were you close?” first.

MY moment was walking into a family party and finding that the four pizzas that had been ordered all had a substance I can not stand. I left, with a pointed comment and polite excuse, never trusted the person I thought ordered them again.

Years later I found out an different family member ordered them, after that person probably tried to burn down a house they wanted to get rid of.

Never trust anyone who tries to force your interpretation of ‘anchovies’ on you.

67

I wanted to hit her. Hard. I wanted nothing more than to slap her really REALLY hard, and then do it again and again while she begged me to stop.

Broke up the next night. (And no, I never hit her, or any woman.)

68

Something that certainly didn’t help was when she started asking me to hurt her during sex. She wanted to be held down, then have her hair pulled, then most disturbing she started asking me to bite her. Hard. I’m all for a little adventure in bed - if she was into mild bondage or spanking or something, fine, but actually going to the point of causing harm or real pain? Freaked me out.

When all that you can think during sex is how troubling your partner’s request is that utterly kills the mood.

There were other issues, some harder to explain without copious background info. That one still bothers me.

69

I’m curious - was there a reason you wanted to hit her or just because? And where does the “whilst begging me to stop” figure in this? Are you confessing to suppressed sadistic tendencies or something?

70

My lightbulb moment came during a movie too, though in my case, it was Garden State. Walking out of the theatre, I was talking to my friend and explaining how much I missed the whole head-over-heels fluttery-belly feeling of new love… and suddenly realised that I’d never ever felt that way about my BF at any point in our relationship.

To be honest, by that point the only thing keeping us together was habit. We were constantly bickering over stupid things, the sex was virtually non-existent, and I’d been playing second fiddle to his hockey and work schedules for nearly a year. It was honestly a struggle to explain to anyone what I saw in this guy any more (or what I’d ever seen in him, for that matter).

Shortly after this revelation, I met a guy who instantly generated giddy butterflies aplenty. Within two days, I’d unceremoniously dumped the BF by phone, since he must have figured something was afoot and was carefully avoiding seeing me in person.

I’m not particularly proud of the fact that I ultimately found the guts to put our pathetic excuse for a relationship out of its misery because I wanted to sleep with someone else, but it was on its last legs by then.

71

GGGRRRR. This also gets to me. My husband does it all the time. It is now my habit to ask “Do you really want to know or is this a quiz?”.

72

The phone rang at 3 am. I rolled over, still mostly asleep, alone in bed as usual, thinking “it’s THE call.” You know, the one where the sheriff says “Ma’am, I’m sorry to say there was a tragic accident. . .” Except it was a wrong number. :frowning:

Much later that same day, after work, I was making dinner when he finally wandered in, and promptly proceeded to have an incoherent batshit hissyfit about the song playing on the radio (Mindy McReedy’s “Guys Do It All The Time”) before leaving again.

When the door slammed, I realized that I was actually hoping for another human being’s death. I moved out that night, and retained an attorney at 9:05 am the next day.

To this day, I just love that song!

73

Jodi, Foxy40, overlyverbose, obviously you already think so too, but

WTF?! :eek:

I mean, I loves me some geeky fact-hungry smart man, but *testing *the one you love about stuff like that? No question that’s seriously not OK. Paternalistic, condescending assholery.

74

She had a way of antagonizing me just for shits & giggles. I was a nerdy 18-year-old, and she put out, so I put up with it, but after a while I realized I was in a poisonous relationship. It just took thoughts of violence for me to realize it.

75

That is EXACTLY what it is. Let’s see if you know as much as wonderful me. After a while, I just learned it really isn’t about me but about him feeling good about himself which is really sad if you take time to think about it.

76

Anger is my kryptonite. I’d rather be punched in the face, hard or be hit with a shovel than to be yelled at. I find it that condescending.

But I put up with it because she and I had such a great relationship prior to her reaching a point where she was “comfortable” enough to go into toxic yelling fits. We talked about it and she blamed the habit on a previous relationship and the fact that her parents argued themselves into divorce when she was growing up. She also began going through a paranoid phase where she thought I was cheating on her with her friend because we had met for lunch, publicly, a couple of times. I was very forgiving until…

I was supposed to meet with her one evening and there was something that intervened. I honestly don’t remember what it even was, but there was a genuine, physical, legitimate reason for my lateness, probably car trouble since I drove a piece of shit car back then (college days). She was scolding me relentlessly, even after I had explained my reason and presented the evidence. She was shrieking about how heartless I was and I responded that I intended to be there. She hissed, “Good intentions pave the road to HELL!” That was the end for me. I wasn’t prepared to take a misinterpreted saying and change my life to be filled with bad intentions from that day on.

Second Story. Different girl, years later.

She wouldn’t yell, but she would condescend. She seemed to want me to be some kind of deadbeat whom she could whip into shape. I was fresh out of college and I took on a temp job doing data entry so I could pull in some income while job-searching. I finally got a full-time job and things seemed to be going well. However, I got fired from that job after only a couple of months. On the day I was fired, I broke the news to her and her parents at dinner. Her father asked, “What are you going to do for income now?” I said, “I’ll go back to data entry.” Both her and her father said, “You can’t do data entry for the rest of your life!” Wow, totally not what I said or implied, but she gave me an insulting lecture later that night about how I needed to be a responsible man who can bring in a steady income. WTF? Try lecturing people who need it, please. Goodbye!

And, finally, a sign that a relationship wasn’t going to even start.

My friends set me up with this girl, we hit it off pretty well, had a lot in common, etc. We went for a walk, had a good talk. I called her that evening and we had a nice chat. She shared a house with a lot of other girls, so I thought it would be easy for her to call me, since I would be the only one to answer my phone. So I offered her my number and she refused to even take it! Her reason? “Because the man should be the one to call the woman. Men should be the head of the relationship.” I found out later that she was upset that I never called her again and that she was actually interested, but if I wanted someone with that attitude toward roles in a relationship, I would just get a dog. I saw her a couple years later at a concert with my new girlfriend. She was kind of bitchy to me, being all scoldy that I hadn’t found a church in all this time. I’m glad I bailed when I did.

77

I agree - feeling good about himself was most of it. My ex was also a big snob. As in, he wanted to feel good, but he wanted to do so at the expense of others. In his world, you can’t be superior unless everyone else is inferior.

He was that way with overweight people - he was really skinny and seemed to enjoy talking about how anyone who wasn’t was a stupid, ineffectual lardass with cancer/heart attack/impending early death just around the corner. I was really skinny when we were dating but also knew that I wouldn’t be forever - hell, what happened if we married and I got pregnant? He’d have turned into a bigger jerk.

Anyway, good riddance to that one. Last I heard he was still single and, from my experience with him, for good reason.

78

Hey, I dated that guy as well!
What was their freaking problem?

79

When, after four years of condescension and controlling behavior, he tried to rape me. If I had the guts then that I do now, that guy would still be a vegetable. But I thought he was as good as I could do, at that point in my self-esteemless life.

80

EWS:
My ex grew up in Woodbridge, VA. We once got into a heated argument because he thought it was stupid that RFK was in MD and he had to travel through the District to get to the stadium to watch Redskins matches. Because, you see, he was from VA and the Redskins shouldn’t play at RFK because it was in MD cos it was too far away.

From DC.

Y’know, I"m just gonna take a moment for y’all to pull out Google earth and measure the respective distances between the Washington Monument and either RFK or Manassas fucking Virginia.

ICDTA:
I found an email to him from his parents indicating that he shouldn’t mention anything about his new girlfriend because did he remember what happened when Mrs. A, the neighbor, found out that Mr. A was dicking around with Mrs. B, and Mrs. A took Mrs. B for all he was worth?

dot dot dot.

Actually, now that I think about it, that wasn’t really the ICDTA moment. Cos we talked about it in family/couples therapy, when my ex assured the therapist that I was far too technogically inept to purposely search a laptop for incriminating evidence and had to have stumbled across that document by accident. Whether or not that was true is up for debate, but it’s true that I didn’t go dicking around in his work laptop before I found her telephone number in his wallet.