My boyfriend tries to lead me in crises, like I am a child.

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One day, when I was 4 months pregnant, I accidentally smashed two long fluorescent lightbulbs that were standing leaning against other stuff in the hallway. What bothers me about it is how my boyfriend whom I'll call Stan (an Aspie and a member of WP) treated me after I did it. He heard the crash and me yelling, "Oh, s**t!" because I thoght I might get in trouble for smashing their brand new lights. Stan said it was okay, and asked me to clean it up. I spent a while cleaning it up. Then Stan went on the internet and researched fluorescent lights and found out that that kind may contain mercury. He immediately went back into the hallway and told me to stop cleaning it up. He blamed himself for making me clean it up. What bothers me is this:


1. He blamed himself for making me clean it up, but he didn't blame me for smashing the lights in the first place. That means he felt that he was competent to be held responsible but that I was not competent, so therefore I should not be held responsible. I found this insulting to my mental competence.
2. Stan then started bossing me around like I didn't know what to do. He told me "Don't step here, don't step there, don't go in here, don't go in there, take a shower." When the lights smashed and then he found out it had mercury in them, he should have come in and said they're dangerous (if he didn't want to think about the mercury let alone talk about it, he could have at least told me they were dangerous) and asked me if I knew what to do instead of telling me what to do or doing it for me. I resented him bossing me around, so I pretended to feel sick and sat down in front of the toilet. I didn't want him to think I was following his orders just because he told me to, like a child blindly following their parents. He came back into the bathroom, saw that I wasn't showering, and told me to shower again, but that's okay. What I mind is what happened next: he thought he knew better than me how to wash off contamination, when I knew better than him. He just assumed that he was the one who knew better. I was standing under the water letting it rinse off, which is all you? have to do when you get contaminated by powder, but he thought that I had to scrub and that I didn't know that. He assumed he knew better than me what to do, which is an insult. He blindly trusted himself when he was wrong, but he couldn't blindly trust me? I've been to high school; I know that there's no soap next to the safety shower in the lab. Why didn't he know that? Instead of thinking "I'd better help her out because I know better than her", he should have thought "Maybe she knows what she's doing, maybe she knows better than me, maybe that's why she isn't using soap."

3. Then he started scrubbing me like I couldn't scrub myself. Sure, he wanted to make sure I got all the powder off me, but why did he think he was perfectly capable of getting it all off himself and me but I wasn't capable of getting it all off me? (I was embarrassed, so I pretended he was washing me just for fun like he sometimes does and I started washing him too.)
4. Stan did not tell me about what he had found out about about the mercury. He now says that he knew I could handle the truth about the mercury, that it wasn't that. He says it was that he himself, however, couldn't handle the truth and that if he talked about it it would make him think about it more and make him break down or freak out, and he didn't want his freaking out to upset me. But another time he said he kept the info about the mercury from me because he thought I would care, but I didn't. (And I did care... I just handled it way better than he did, but he thinks that if I cared I would have freaked out.) So I don't know what to believe. And if he kept the truth from me because he thought I would freak out, he shouldn't have done that, because I can handle the truth and when in doubt he should have given me the benefit of the doubt and assumed I could handle it.
5. He thought I couldn't handle him being upset. I can handle people being upset as long as they aren't upset at me.
6. After we got out of the shower, he took me to the bedroom and told me, "Stay in here. Go to bed." (Because I had trailed the powder throughout the house and he didn't want me to touch it anymore being pregnant. He would rather clean it up himself, which is understandable.) But why did he tell me what to do in the room? Why did he tell me to go to bed? I was not sick, injured, tired or doped up. I did not need to sleep. I resented him bossing me around like that.
(I lay down but stayed awake reading.)
7. He had to think about the mercury just as much while he was telling me where and where not to step and where and where not to go and to take a shower, as he would have if he'd told me and let me do it all myself (being informed about the mercury, I would have known where to step and where not to step and not to go in certain parts of the house), but no, he chose to keep it from me and do it all for me.
He came in a while later and told me about the mercury, half an hour after he had found out himself.


In all, I feel that he treated me like I was his 7-year-old daughter instead of his 20-year-old girlfriend. I am seriously thinking about breaking up with him over this. I also hate being the last to know about my own condition.

Last edited by Ana54 on 14 Mar 2009, 7:55 pm, edited 12 times in total.

he is just not skilled at treating you the correct way. being a gf/bf means you compromise between his quirks and your quirks. you will feel better if you tell him up front everything you just said in a monotone way and not accuse him of everything. open communication is key to happiness. good luck to you guys, i hope you can work things out.

For the record:


He treated me like an adult before. That's why I stayed with him, and that's why I counted on him treating me like an adult in crises too. But he didn't. He let me down.


He had sex with me, and asked me if I wanted to first, so obviously he thoght I was mentally competent then. What changed his mind?


He offered me alcoholic beverages.


He was happy when he learned I was pregnant rather than distraught. So he thought I could handle a child. But what made him change his mind about my ability to handle things?


He said that taking my meds was my own decision, and even thogh he was worried about me not taking my meds once, and tried to convince me to take them, he said it was my body and I could do what I wanted... though he was a bit angry at me.


The night the fluorescent light thing happened, when it was all over and he offered me a beer, I was so relieved, because he was offering me alcoholic beverages and therefore must be thinking of me as an adult again. (One beer is okay when pregnant and on meds.)


And for the record, the light turned out not to contain mercury after all.

But being treated like I can handle difficulty is the one thing that means everything to me in the world, more than anything else. It's the very thing I've defined love by for years and years. It's LITERALLY the most important thing to me... for my partner to believe I can handle difficulty on my own and that I can handle bad news no matter what state I'm in. Even if a man did everything else wrong, if he treated me like an adult in that way I would be happy and stay with him. But even thogh Adverb did everything else right, I cannot accept that treatment from him. Because the only thing that matters to me is being treated like an adult who knows what to do and can handle bad news.

Sounds "normal"ish to me. Pregnant chick, guy freaks.

He knew it was an accident that you broke the lights, hey accidents happen. Stated the obvious that "hey, this needs cleaned up." had a thought of... what's that thing made of, looked it up. Felt bad that you were cleaning it up when it might not be safe after all (after he led you to believe it was safe to clean up).

Freaked out.

I think that overall it's a good sign that he cares deeply about you. Sounds like he was in freak out mode to me and he considered you more valuable and vulnerable in your "condition" than he felt he was. I'd say he just wasn't thinking straight.

Did you at any time during this say "It's okay, I can get the rest of this junk off me, why don't you finish cleaning up the mess out there."? When he told you to just "stay in the bedroom and to go to sleep" he might have been thinking something to the effect of "this is going to take a while to clean up, don't wait for me."

Sounds to me like he was in panic mode. He saw trouble, thought the worst, and decided there was no time to negotiate with you over what everybody (you) ought to be doing right then. You being female and pregnant I'm sure evoked a more primal than usual response as well. Or maybe he'd have reacted the same if ANYBODY had done the same thing. I wouldn't take it as a "He thinks I can't take care of myself" thing so much as a "He really cares about me and can't think straight under pressure" thing. Which isn't better, but it's much less patronizing.

I was too embarrassed that he was washing me to say anything.


I just got an email from him saying that I can't have been upset about it for month or I would have told him, but that's not true, I was. It was just in the back of my mind, something bothered me about that incident that I hadn't told him about, and it didn't come to the surface of my brain until now.


He also said I am acting like I didn't care that my child might have gotten bireth defects.


He didn't care about me at all. He didn't know about me. He only knew and cared about the child he thought I was.

Well, I don't want to be with someone who can't think straght under pressure. I want someone who I know will treat me right NO MATTER WHAT.

Not necessarily. Breaking the lights in the first place could be a clumsiness thing, and accidents do happen. Also, people are often hardest on themselves.

He was responding to the situation as well as he could, and probably had no idea that he came off as bossy.
Also, the exact required response in that situation is a rather obscure piece of trivia -- why would either of you judge anyone for not knowing it?

You didn't get in the shower right away, so he made you. He wanted you to scrub, and you didn't, so he scrubbed you. By making you clean it up, he'd put you in danger. Now he had a chance to fix that *and* make you safe. Would you rather he didn't care?

Sometimes people have more than one reason for doing things. He may have been weirded out by your response to the shower and scrubbing things. He might have been very embarassed about putting you in that situation in the first place, and been afraid you'd blame him for it. Given that he was responding to an emergency situation, he probably didn't have either the time or the mental calmness to sort through all of the reasons for it and select one as "the" reason.

Did he know that at the time?

You may not have been sick, but you had just pretended to be.

I wasn't there, and I have no idea how he treats you normally, but from what you wrote about this, he seems to have been motivated mostly by fear for your safety and embarassment over having put you in danger (even accidentally).

As I said, he didn't care about me, just about the child he thought I was.


And yes, I had pretended I was sick, you're right. But I want to make sure that it really was that he thought I was sick that he told me to go to bed.


Also, I want him to assume I could handle things, so I'm still pissed about him trying to hide his upset-ness from me.


Also, he assumed he knew better than me what to do, which is an insult. He blindly trusted himself when he was wrong, but he couldn't blindly etrust me?

You can care about someone without getting upset for them. I cared about my child as much as he did, but unlike him, I knew there was no point in getting upset. I handlked it way better than he did.

I don't understand why you think that.


Does it really matter? If the bedroom was the only room that was clean, what else was he going to assume you would do while he cleaned it up? If he was really trying to be condescending, wouldn't he have got mad at you for not taking a nap when he told you to?


I don't understand how him not wanting to be upset in front of you automatically translates into thinking you couldn't handle it if he was.


How? Especially if he'd just read up about it on the internet.


I don't see what trying to help you has to do with not trusting you.

I have a very hard time understanding your point of view. I mean, I get that you don't like condescension, but I don't see any condescension for you to object to. It may not matter that I don't get you, but it matters if your bf doesn't get you. Have you explained it? Does he understand well enough to understand why you're complaining?

As far as I can tell, he seems a decent enough bf, so if you dump him over this, without even explaining it so he can really get it, what makes you think the next bf will be better?

Okay, you MIGHT be right about the taking a nap thing.


The thing is, him reading up on the internet and finding out the stuff was mercury has nothing to do with it. He thought I didn't know how to protect myself from contamination. Whether it was mercury or something else. He did not read up on what to do in the event of contamination, just on what the stuff might be.

And Ancalagon, it was public knowledge that you don't need soap to decontaminate yourself. In every high school lab I've been in, there was a safety shower but there was no bar of soap next to it.

Also, it should have occurred to him that maybe I knew what I was doing. That maybe I knew better than him.

Actually, as far as I know the safety showers are only for your eyes. If you get soemthing in your eyes. And you would not put soap in your eyes. But if you got it anywhere else - then you should probably use soap. I have a chemical sensitivity, and I *always* wash very well with soap if I get any kind of chemical substance, even if it's one most people wouldn't react to, off of me because I know water alone won't do it. I really think he was acting in your best instance....was trying to help.... was thinking about you....yes I know it felt condescending.... but I don't think he intended it that way....and if he's an Aspie, sometimes you know we don't say the things we mean in the way we meant to say them....he might be mad at himself over this incident but not want to say it.

Well, he'd BETTER say it. And no, the safety showers aren't just for your eyes. There's an eyewash basin attached to the safety shower that shoots water up into your eyes, and then there's the overhead shower that you pull the handle to turn on.

well if those f*****s did contain some bad shit-it could have killed your unborn baby
and that's serious s**t
i doubt he was thinking of his words, he was thinking of the baby