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The original was posted on /r/aitah by /u/pizza3point14 on 2023-08-11 09:20:50.

My wife often doesn’t meet the needs or boundaries I set. Here is the current cycle:

  1. I express a need or a boundary.
  2. She agrees to respect it
  3. She continuously doesn’t do it (or maybe like 10% of the time) or violates the boundary
  4. Each time, I’ll mention it e.g. “Hey you’re doing that thing again and I don’t appreciate it”
  5. She’ll get angry and meltdown OR deflect OR blame me OR say something like “I can’t be perfect 100% of the time” even though she’s literally not done it at all and I’ve previously mentioned that she doesn’t need to be perfect, I just want her to try/show progress.
  6. She calms down then writes me a “calm” message but is still unhinged basically calling my need or boundary controlling or selfish and then listing every single thing I’ve ever done wrong (even things from a few years ago which I have worked on) and that she’s committed to changing/trying BUT without acknowleding the original behaviour AT ALL and that she agreed to it.
  7. When she’s calm I’m like to her “OK let’s talk about these issues now” and she basically says that these aren’t real issues and that she was just angry and wanted to hurt me. She then apologises to me and gives a big speech about how she’s committed to changing and how she’s going to change.
  8. The original behaviour persists and the cycle then continues/repeats.

In the current scenario, I notice that she dumps on me a lot via messenger and then when it’s my turn, halfway through, she will often abruptly end the chat, saying “sorry gtg to [insert event here] right now.” It makes me feel frustrated as she does this without any forewarning.

I communicated to her that I’ve noticed that sometimes our FB messenger chats seem to end quite abruptly after she mentions she has to leave.

I’ve requested if it’s ok if we could take an extra moment to wrap up our discussions before leaving the chat, particularly if it’s an important conversation. It just helps me feel more connected and provides a sense of closure to our conversation.

She responded that she thinks what I’m asking is abusive and controlling. She said that she can’t do it 100% of the time and she hates how I’m asking her to be perfect.

In the past I’ve said that I’m totally chill (when reasserting my need) that if she doesn’t do things perfectly as long as she shows that she’s trying and things get a bit better, so I felt confused by this.

In the past when I’ve asserted boundaries or needs, she has gotten really angry at me and shouted or threatened to kill herself.

She’s stopped messaging me for 12 hours and now I’m thinking — AITAH?