Hi, long time lurker, first time poster. On my mobile so apologies for any bad formatting or spelling mistakes.
So this event has literally only happened in the last 3 hours, my head is still spinning from what happened and I’m posting on here to see if I did the right thing/acted in the right way?
I (35f) and my partner (46m) were having an evening together and having a few drinks. His daughter was present and we were talking about her upcoming plans for uni, particularly around finance.
For reference (important for later), we were sat in his conservatory. He was sat on a dining chair, daughter was sat on a two seater sofa and I was sat on the floor, my back against the brick wall.
Daughter made a comment about student finances, which he didn’t agree with and he told her to “shut the f*** up”. I then interjected because I wanted to clarify what daughter was saying, as I didn’t think she has explained herself clearly, and partner then said to me “you need to shut the f*** up too”.
As he said that to me, he kicked an empty plastic washing basket, which hit me in the head. I will say now that I categorically do not believe he kicked it at me intentionally, more he kicked it and it bounced off the floor and hit me on the head (as mentioned, I was sitting on the floor, if I had been sitting anywhere else, it would not of hit me). Just to also add, there has never been any aggression in the relationship before and no reason to suspect it/no red flags that I could see.
Now my partner already knows that I have been in a previous abusive relationship, and my reaction to violence/any sort of anger/confrontation etc is to “run away”/ utilise my flight mechanism, rather than to fight.
So when this basket hit me, I picked up my drink that was next to me and calmly said “I think I’ve had enough for this evening”, left the conservatory, went upstairs to the bedroom and cried.
Daughter followed me up a few minutes later and asked if I was okay. I apologised to her, for her seeing what had happened and we continued to talk about uni for a bit.
The next think I hear is partner, inflating the air bed downstairs. I said to her, “I don’t know why he’s doing that, it was only an accident, I’ll go down and talk to him because I just panicked because it (the action of the washing basket hitting me) gave me a flashback of my previous abuse”.
When I went downstairs to talk to partner he started raising his voice at me saying that I had given him attitude for walking out of the conservatory. He then continued to tell me that I’m “psychotic and have issues”, for thinking that he did this intentionally to me, even though I said that I believed it was only an accident. I said to him “you kicked the basket and it hit me in the head, that is an action and a consequence. I panicked because it took me back to a bad time in my life”, which made him even more angry because to him, he felt like I was saying that he had deliberately kicked the basket at me.
This went round and round for about 15 minutes before he finally said “you have issues if you think I kicked it at your head. I can’t marry you now”, took back our engagement ring and then asked me to leave. (As far as I’m concerned, we are as good as done now)
I am back at my flat, safe and sound. But I just wanted to get some perspective on if I acted in the correct way? He wanted me to apologise to him for giving him attitude, but I disagree because I think he should apologise for accidentally hitting me with the basket.
TLDR: partner accidentally kicked a plastic wash basket and it hit me in the head. My reaction was to walk away from the situation, and he feels I should apologise for walking away and giving him attitude, when I feel he should apologise for the basket hitting me
submitted by /u/BywayM
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