Partner sends ‘short, mean messages’
DEAR CAROLYN: I am in a longdistance relationship where my partner and I primarily communicate by email and regularly scheduled phone calls. When he is upset with me or feels I have let him down, he has a habit of lashing out in the moment with short, mean messages pointing out how inconsiderate and inattentive I am.
Recently I’d agreed to have lunch delivered to him at work, and then I forgot to do it. When I realized my mistake, I apologized promptly and sincerely, but he kept firing back.
I find this kind of communication immature and unnecessarily hurtful. I have asked him before not to do this, but he still does it. How can I respond in a way that acknowledges his feelings but also sets a boundary for appropriate ways to express them to me?
— Anonymous DEAR ANONYMOUS: When someone’s go-to response to disappointment is to lash out relentlessly in anger, moving you to declare you “would never talk to someone the way he talks to me,” the boundary is to break up.
This was over an innocent mistake. What happens when it’s more ethically fraught than forgetting his lunch?
He’s telling you plainly that when he’s upset, he either has no off switch or thinks he’s right not to use it.
It’s one of the easiest calls in all human interaction (where virtually nothing is easy): Don’t entrust your heart to people who “go low.”
Because you know what? You’ve lived the pattern. You know it when you feel it. You don’t like it. You said so, and he left it intact.
I’m not sure what more information you’re waiting for.
For the sake of belabored argument, though, let’s say your mistakes are bigger than you make them out to be, and his responses are kinder and more proportionate.
Even then, you have a disagreement with your partner that has reached the point of impasse and that you believe speaks poorly (“immature and unnecessarily hurtful”) of his character. Perception is fact in this case. Mr. Rogers is sinister if you perceive “Won’t you be my neighbor?” as such, because you — we, all of us — live in our relationships not as they objectively are, but as we perceive them to be.
You perceive him as providing a recurrent bad experience for you, even after you tried in good faith to improve it, so, again, why do you stay?
The answer to your narrow question, how to respond when someone “[keeps] firing back” after a prompt and sincere apology (since “break up” doesn’t help with neighbors, colleagues, etc.): pointed non-engagement with inappropriate reactions or behaviors. Remember, the apology was already the response “that acknowledges his feelings.” There’s room for conversation beyond that, sure, but don’t fall for demands for more guilt — from him or anyone else.
DEAR CAROLYN: My daughter refuses to speak to me. She’s 24. She claims I am manipulative when I ask her to help around the house when visiting (like emptying the dishwasher), or to keep her room picked up. I’m not an abusive, alcoholic or unsupportive mom, but I’m being demonized. Why? She talks to her dad (my husband), but only as long as he doesn’t mention me. I offered counseling with her, but she refused. What do I do next?
— Estranged
DEAR ESTRANGED: You do the two hardest possible things.
First: Stop trying to fix your daughter.
She not only made her choice, but did so specifically to block your pathways to her.
For the record: I see estrangement only as a last resort for protecting our mental health, one not everyone saves for last.
But we all get to decide for ourselves what’s essential, so whether your daughter’s mental health did or didn’t require estrangement is moot and has no bearing on your options. She has left you only one, to live your life as if she won’t be in it. Agony. I am sorry.
The second: Start trying to fix yourself. You’re listing reasons your daughter is wrong about you when it would help you more to consider ways she may be right.
Your path to understanding her decision goes through every possible hard truth about your choices as a parent. Role-play your kid, in good faith.
You may just be a scapegoat. But that’s a conclusion you come to last, after tackling all the hard questions — not the conclusion you jump to reflexively to dodge them.