My boyfriend and I seem to have very different ways of dealing with conflict. I'm naturally a calm person, but more importantly, I make a very conscious effort NOT to react in the heat of the moment. Even when I feel attacked, spoken to disrespectfully, or someone raises their voice at me, I try not to give them the same energy back.
It's not because I'm not angry or hurt. I just don't want anger to make me speak to someone I love in a way I wouldn't normally consider acceptable or respectful. I'd rather control my reaction, cool down, and communicate without saying things I'll regret later.
My boyfriend is very different. He is anxious, he can get heated extremely quickly, and I've noticed recently that relatively small disagreements can escalate very fast.Three incidents involving his puppy made me realize how much this pattern is starting to affect me. (For context, I've never owned a dog and have basically no experience with puppies. He obviously knows his dog and its limitations much better than I do)
Incident 1
The first time his puppy came to my apartment, he peed on the floor. I told my boyfriend to take him outside while I cleaned it. After cleaning, I put a few drops of bleach on the floor because I thought it would disinfect the area and help with the smell. I genuinely had no idea that this could potentially be dangerous around a dog. When my boyfriend came back and smelled the bleach, he immediately got very angry. He told me I was putting his dog in danger and that he couldn't trust me. I told him I genuinely didn't know, that now that he had told me I obviously wouldn't do it again, and suggested keeping the puppy in another room and closing the door so he wouldn't be exposed to it. I completely understood him being worried. What was difficult for me was that even after I acknowledged the mistake, explained that I didn't know and offered a solution, he remained angry at me for about an hour.
Incident 2
Another day, after a walk, we were walking home when he noticed that the puppy seemed to be stumbling or walking a little differently. He said something like, "Maybe we walked him too much today. It might have been too intense for him." I looked at the dog and said, "You think so? To me he seems okay, and we also sat in a bar for about an hour, so he had a pretty long break."
That was literally it.
I wasn't trying to tell him he was wrong about his own dog. I wasn't trying to convince him with anything as we are on our way home (5MIN) . In my head, we were simply having a normal conversation where one person says what they think and the other responds with what they think. He suddenly got very angry and said, "Stop minimizing what I'm saying. Am I allowed to worry about my own dog? He's a puppy, he shouldn't walk too much," etc. Again, he stayed angry with me for around an hour. I tried to explain that I wasn't minimizing anything and had zero intention of invalidating his concern. I was just responding to what he said and sharing what I observed.
This is where one of our biggest communication problems comes in: when he gets angry, I try to explain what I actually meant or clarify my intention, but my explanation often seems to make him even angrier rather than resolving the misunderstanding.
Incident 3
The next day, I suggested that we take the puppy to a park. Before leaving, I asked my boyfriend if he was okay with going there, and he agreed. He didn't know exactly where the park was and apparently thought it would take around 10min to get there. While we were already walking, he checked and realized it was actually still about 20 minutes away. He became angry with me because that would be too much walking for the puppy. He asked me whether, from now on, he needed to explain things to me in terms of kilometers — basically, if a walk is over approximately 2 km, I should understand that it's too much for the puppy. I said okay. Then I said I also had one request for him: when I suggest a place or activity involving his dog, I'd like him to do his own due diligence and check whether it works for the puppy before agreeing, because he's much better placed than I am to anticipate his dog's limitations and challenges.
I'm happy to respect whatever constraints he tells me about. But since it's his dog and he has much more experience and knowledge than I do, I don't think I should be the main responsible for anticipating every possible issue when I suggest an activity.
That's when he exploded.
He said what he had explained to me the previous day was perfectly understandable and asked why he needed to repeat himself. He asked whether I was capable of retaining information for 24 hours and whether I was a child who needed things repeated to her. He told me I was putting his dog in danger and said that if his dog eventually needed surgery because of this, I would be the one paying for it.
I still tried not to react to the way he was speaking to me. I told him that I understood his concern about the puppy. I wasn't asking him to repeat anything and I wasn't arguing that the puppy should walk more. I was simply asking him, as the owner, to also check whether an activity is suitable when I suggest something. I also told him that I didn't see why this disagreement justified asking whether I was a child or talking about me paying for hypothetical surgery.
His response was basically, "Okay, now you're really pissing me off. Stop. I'm not coming to your place or your city anymore. You're putting my dog in danger. Stop, I don't want to talk to you anymore."
At that point, I felt like nothing I could say was going to land well. So I stopped trying to defend myself and basically surrendered. I told him, "Okay, I'm sorry I suggested that park."
He walked away saying, "Stop, I can't anymore."
Later that evening, after he went home, he texted me: "I hate myself for getting this worked up every time."
And that message is important to me because he IS aware that he gets disproportionately angry. I am sure he's proud of it, and I'm not posting this to portray him as some horrible person. What concerns me is the pattern I'm starting to notice.
When he's upset with something I've done, he can express that very strongly and I make a conscious effort to listen, stay calm and not retaliate, even when I feel attacked. But when I try to explain my side, correct an assumption about my intentions, or especially set a boundary about HOW he's speaking to me, it almost never seems to land peacefully. It heats things up even more.
If I say, "That's not what I meant," he hears me as arguing. If I say, "I understand you're worried, but I don't think you should speak to me like I'm a child," the conversation escalates. If I ask him to take some responsibility too, it escalates.
And eventually I find myself thinking less about the actual disagreement and more about, "What can I say right now that won't make him even angrier?" ( i hate having coversation or being in the same room with a furious person). That's the part that bothers me.
I don't expect my partner to never get angry. And I don't expect myself to always be right. I can apologize, accept criticism and change my behavior when I've done something wrong. But I also don't want the solution to be that because I'm the calmer person, I'm always responsible for absorbing the anger, for managing the situation, staying diplomatic and carefully managing my responses while he gets to communicate however his emotions make him communicate.
For people who have been in relationships where one person is very calm/conflict-averse and the other gets heated very quickly: have you actually managed to find a healthy middle ground? Especially if you were the calmer partner, how did you handle being spoken to aggressively without either escalating the fight or just absorbing it?
And if you used to be the quick-tempered partner: what actually helped you change the way you communicated when angry? Was there something your partner could reasonably do that helped, or did you eventually realize that regulating your anger was something you had to learn to do yourself?