abusive behaviour?
I've just read some of the posts here about abuse. Interestingly, this word has come up in my relationship recently for the first time in my life. Lately, my bf has been picking fights with me when he gets really drunk. They are verbal fights, nothing physical, and often happen on the phone. The last one happened on the weekend face-to-face. I feel like he was being slightly abusive, but when I talked to him about it the next day he was shocked that I used that phrasing and totally denied that his behaviour was unreasonable. I've lost all perspective so I wanted to post here and see how it sounds in writing to you all.
So it usually happens when he has been feeling really insecure earlier on in the night. On Friday he was worried about how he looked, said he looked like a lesbian, and wouldn't get out of the car to go into the bar where we were meeting my sister & husband. He has put on weight lately hand feels very bad about his body. He is pre-t and doesn't pass. To deal with these feelings of anxiety he drinks. This helps for the first few glasses, and he relaxes and gets chatty and lovely. Then after about a bottle of wine or so the anger comes out.
We were on the dance floor and he started grabbing me quite forcefully and trying to make me dance 'sexy' with him. He kept grabbing my head and ass and saying how it turns him on when he is forceful. I started to get a bit scared and embarrassed, so I tried to move away. If I say 'stop' when he is this drunk, he gets angry and belligerent and turns it into a fight. To avoid this happening in public I just made an excuse about feeling tired and needing to go home. He got mad and said that he was just starting to have a good time and why was I making him go home. On the way out he yelled at me about pushing him around.
When we finally got home, everything was a potential fight. To avoid this I just went to bed feeling very upset, but not saying anything lest I provoke him. This is the first time I have felt silenced in our relationship. The next day I told him how I felt and he denied it, said he was just having a good time, and that it was just abusive from my perspective because I don't drink.
This is not the first time it has happened. The other times he gets drunk and picks a fight about something that he later says he doesn't even care about. I understand that he gets insecure, I even understand that he deals with it with alcohol, but I'm nobody's punching bag. Am I being unreasonable here?
So it usually happens when he has been feeling really insecure earlier on in the night. On Friday he was worried about how he looked, said he looked like a lesbian, and wouldn't get out of the car to go into the bar where we were meeting my sister & husband. He has put on weight lately hand feels very bad about his body. He is pre-t and doesn't pass. To deal with these feelings of anxiety he drinks. This helps for the first few glasses, and he relaxes and gets chatty and lovely. Then after about a bottle of wine or so the anger comes out.
We were on the dance floor and he started grabbing me quite forcefully and trying to make me dance 'sexy' with him. He kept grabbing my head and ass and saying how it turns him on when he is forceful. I started to get a bit scared and embarrassed, so I tried to move away. If I say 'stop' when he is this drunk, he gets angry and belligerent and turns it into a fight. To avoid this happening in public I just made an excuse about feeling tired and needing to go home. He got mad and said that he was just starting to have a good time and why was I making him go home. On the way out he yelled at me about pushing him around.
When we finally got home, everything was a potential fight. To avoid this I just went to bed feeling very upset, but not saying anything lest I provoke him. This is the first time I have felt silenced in our relationship. The next day I told him how I felt and he denied it, said he was just having a good time, and that it was just abusive from my perspective because I don't drink.
This is not the first time it has happened. The other times he gets drunk and picks a fight about something that he later says he doesn't even care about. I understand that he gets insecure, I even understand that he deals with it with alcohol, but I'm nobody's punching bag. Am I being unreasonable here?