“Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse” is a column by Kai Cheng Thom to help you survive and thrive in a challenging world. Have a question? Email askkai@xtramagazine.com.
Content warning: This article contains discussions of abusive relationships and behaviours.
Dear Kai,
I’m struggling to articulate my question in a way that isn’t sensationalizing or overstating. Basically, I’m feeling a bit … not unsafe per se, but unsettled around my partner of late. I’m a cis guy with some genderqueer inklings, and my girlfriend is a bisexual cis woman. We’ve been together for three years. My girlfriend has a long history of mental health struggles—a problem for me, because I have mental health stuff too. My girlfriend and I have supported each other through some really rough times, and she’s extremely important to me. I think of her as my best friend, as well as romantic partner.
Yet she seems to be struggling with her mental health more than usual lately, and in an unprecedented way. We’ve had fights before, but lately she’s started to say things that scare me. She’s not threatening me, but the things she’s saying are making me doubt myself a lot. For example: I’m graysexual, and we don’t have sex much anymore. A few times she’s said that I’m making her feel ugly and unlovable, and that I’m withholding affection from her because of my unresolved avoidant attachment issues. That really stung. And I recently found out that she lied about something huge. About a year ago, we were going through a rough patch and I had asked to take a break. Then she told me that she was having a pregnancy scare (and the baby could have been mine), so we went through this kind of crisis bonding and got back together. A few weeks ago, I was telling a mutual friend that we were struggling with our relationship again, and that person told me that my partner had sort of implied to them that the pregnancy scare was made up. I just don’t know what to think.
In our most recent fight, she got really overwhelmed—I definitely was wound up too, and said things that I am extremely ashamed of. I said she was acting “really fucking crazy” (which I know is horrible to say to any woman, and especially to someone with mental health issues), and that I didn’t know anyone other than me who “would put up with her crap” (also completely horrible). And then she said that I was gaslighting her and she picked up a glass, threw it at the wall and it broke. I want to be clear that she was NOT throwing it at me; the wall was in the opposite direction, there’s no way that it could have hit me, or that she could have meant to hit me with it. But it was still scary. There’s never been any physical violence—ever—in our relationship, and I know she would never hurt me. The truth is, I’m also “the man” (whatever that means) in the relationship, and I’m physically much larger than her. But I just don’t know. Is this a red flag? Or am I the one acting badly? Please help.
Broken
Dear Broken,
I am filled with care and concern as I read your letter. I can feel the worry and confusion, the inner conflict and the guilt behind your words. And it is very clear to me that the questions you raise require support and assistance beyond what a humble advice columnist can offer. I strongly recommend that you seek out the services of a qualified counsellor or other professional to get some help thinking through these relationship issues. Situations like yours often require highly contextualized support, because they are complex, and cookie-cutter approaches are not likely to meet the needs of those involved. What I can do is provide some ideas and ways of thinking that I hope you will find helpful to reflect on as you consider your next steps.
When the people we love are in distress, they can sometimes act in ways that are unsettling, shocking or even harmful. This is true of all human beings. What makes a loved one different is that our attachment to them is likely to cause us to respond to their extreme behaviour with an extreme of our own.
Having worked professionally with human beings for over a decade, Broken, I know that for some folks in your position, the behaviour you describe in your girlfriend would be seen as an immediate cause for condemnation and withdrawal from the relationship. Others might feel compelled to excuse or minimize her actions, empathizing with her mental health struggles and shifting the blame on to themselves. There is a tendency in situations of high conflict to want to assign blame as a way of understanding and justifying what to do next.
In this blame-centred paradigm, if she is the one in the wrong, then that means you are the one who deserves sympathy and support, and it’s justified for you to leave. Yet, if you are the one in the wrong, Broken, that means that her breaking the glass was justified and she deserves sympathy and support. In today’s world, this paradigm is very popular. The dominant culture seeks a villain and a hero, and wants to label an “abuser” and a “survivor,” as though that is the key to knowing what to do next.
Yet, when I look at the scene you’ve laid out, I don’t necessarily see the need to assign blame. I see two people who are in a lot of pain and losing control of the situation.
In my experience, harm—whether emotional, physical, or both—is most likely to happen in an intimate partnership when: 1) something stressful is happening (like losing a job, having a fight or experiencing a mental health crisis); 2) one or both partners is losing control of their ability to manage how their emotions affect their behaviours and 3) when the relationship dynamic is isolated from outside support.
When we look at it this way, the need to assign roles such as right/wrong, survivor/perpetrator and victim/offender becomes less important and we can shift our focus toward assessing and reducing the level of risk to all parties in the situation. Instead of asking “Who is at fault? Whose behaviour was justified? Who deserves help?” we can ask, “How stressful is this situation? How likely is it that hurtful behaviours will escalate into harmful behaviours? How much support is available to these people?”
When the level of emotional pain in a relationship is rising, behavioural self-control is dropping and outside support is not present, that is a situation of escalating risk. When I look at your situation, Broken, I see increasing risk. That doesn’t necessarily mean something harmful will happen, but it does seem like the possibility is growing. And when that is the case, it’s often helpful to take de-escalatory measures such as: taking time away from one another, getting in touch with professional health and/or mental health services and alerting friends to the situation in a way that as much as possible preserves support and community connection for all involved.
What I’m getting from your letter, Broken, is that you are feeling worried about the potential of escalation. You wonder if your girlfriend’s actions signal that she is dangerous or abusive. You wonder if your words signal that you are dangerous or abusive. And in the case of your girlfriend having potentially lied about her pregnancy scare, it seems like you are wondering if you really know her as well as you once thought.
When one is feeling this level of worry or uncertainty, it is usually a sign that space, time and support are needed. We need not assign blame to acknowledge that a relationship in a healthy phase does not include worries that we will be harmed, or that we will harm others. (I prefer to think of relationship health going through phases much like a physical organism moves through a spectrum of health and un-health, rather than simply categorizing relationships as “healthy” or “unhealthy” on the whole.)
My guess is that your feelings are a sign that something needs to change, and whether that means staying together or ending the relationship, setting some boundaries and taking space from each other will likely be helpful in getting clear about what’s wrong and what you each really want.
I will say that serious deceptions (like lying about a pregnancy scare) that are intended to control or manipulate an intimate partner’s reactions are always highly concerning to me. This is, generally, not an acceptable behaviour. Neither is denigrating someone by calling them “crazy.” Personally, to feel okay about continuing or returning to a relationship where something like that had happened, I would need to know more than that the person who did it understood why what they did was wrong and felt remorseful. I would also need to feel absolutely certain that the behaviour would never happen again—and that is a judgment that, in the end, can only be made with the heart.
Extreme situations drive us to extreme feelings, which in turn can lead to extreme behaviours—and that is both sad and frightening. Neither you nor your girlfriend deserve to be in this situation, Broken. Before any judgments are made, I want you to know that you deserve to feel safe and to feel loved. You deserve to be helped and supported. I hope you both get there.
If you are looking for support related to intimate partner violence, contact The Network/ La Red at 617-742-4911 or toll-free at 800-832-1901 in the United States. Contact The Crisis Text Line (Text HOME to 741741) in Canada, The U.S., The U.K. and Ireland. Help specific to Canadian provinces and territories may also be available.
Kai Cheng Thom is no longer a registered or practicing mental health professional. The opinions expressed in this column are not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content in this column, including, but not limited to, all text, graphics, videos and images, is for general information purposes only. This column, its author, Xtra (including its parent and affiliated companies, as well as their directors, officers, employees, successors and assigns) and any guest authors are not responsible for the accuracy of the information contained in this column or the outcome of following any information provided directly or indirectly from it.
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