I had a rough one tonight out with my girlfriend and some friends. She got very tipsy and started flirting more than usual with the people around her (not the intention of having sex or anything of the sort) but still showing enough attention to herself. Naturally, I hear some friends hollering at me to come get my girl from these thirsty men trying to lure her in. I reacted insecurely and told them to back off. She looked at me with a wide grin and a spacey look of “what is happening right now?” That made me uncomfortable and lead to me closing out our tab and leaving the bar. That’s when the reaction from her came out. She began cursing at me, accusing me of my own insecurities, threatening the relationship, and just being plain rude. I did my best to focus on the road and listen rather than react. Of course, I defended myself somewhat but overall refused to raise my voice or rule to belittling her as a person. Overall, she ended up going to sleep and I just sat there in my room with her turned the other way. I’m frustrated that she can’t seem to control her impulses. I’ve explained to her that walking away from the scene for a moment helps me process rather than react. She has not showed that understanding what so ever tonight. I’m hoping tomorrow we can revisit this subject and hopefully try again to deal with it better next time.
Hey @Tyler777,
I’m sorry you had this stressful interaction. Did you have the possibility to talk together in a more calm and collected way since it happened? I hope you have the opportunity to discuss peacefully and put all of this behind you. 
Hey @Tyler777. She sounds like my ex. I understand what you’re feeling. It sucks. You want her to have a good time, maybe even flirt just a little (I always said to make the other guys jealous 
), but to not cross any lines. When the situation turns a little more serious and you go to remove her, she turns mean and starts pushing all your buttons because she knows how to so well. She says you don’t know how to have a good time, points to your insecurities, maybe even starts her own rant about where your insecurities come from, then gets pissy when you don’t engage. She wants to fight, and she knows how to push your buttons to really upset you and make it really hard to not engage.
Unfortunately, this just may be the way she behaves when she drinks. I always talked about it with my ex the next day. She would say she saw where I was coming from, admit that she was out of line, apologize, but she’d always have something to say about what she was thinking that night. We never resolved these issues, we just moved on until the next time it happened. We had plenty of fun in our relationship, and chose to just focus on the good.
There are a few things I’d suggest to you. Have a next-day or day-after-next conversation with everything you want to say in a manner that doesn’t point fingers. Tell her “This seems to happen a lot when we go out, and it hurts me.” Don’t say “you cross lines with your flirting and then turn mean when you drink,” that will make her defensive. Hopefully that will open up a productive conversation. Try asking what’s going through her mind if she doesn’t offer that up, and try to reach a mutual understanding. Yeah, you may feel like your position is pretty clear and that she’s the one who needs to explain herself, but effective communication and problem solving is best done together. I can think of a couple results of this conversation: either she’ll “take it under advisement” and you’ll just need to hope for the best, or you can come up with a plan together for if that situation arises again. From there, you need to decide if you can tolerate her drunk behavior in favor of your sober time together, or if you’ve had enough emotional abuse and want to move on. In my case, I did the first thing and tried my best to tune her out; but in hindsight, she tended to be insulting and condescending even when she was sober, it came out worse when she was drunk, and I spent too much time putting up with it for the sake of “love,” all the while internalizing it and disrespecting myself. I wish you luck man.
Thank you so much for your thoughts. I will certainly take this into consideration moving forward. This was very helpful.
Thankfully we did have the opportunity to talk about it the next day. We both apologized for our behavior and came to the conclusion that we will separate in different rooms the next time we are both feeling so angry that it can’t be solved in the moment. Typically staying in the same space during the moment of reactivity does not help resolve or communicate anything effectively. Thank you for your concern.
This is what my husband and I do. We don’t approach any disagreement while we’re upset. I will usually go to a different room until my initial feelings are gone and I feel my anxiety/heart rate come down. Then I will go to wherever he’s at and talk to him. Doing this, we can avoid all kinds of arguments and actually have constructive conversations. I think it helps a lot. Its good that you did that.
Wow! This was so awesome! Thank you Taylor for your upmost support and genuine heart. Music connects and expresses so much gratitude at times.
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