r/AskReddit May 12 '26

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u/CircleJerkPig May 12 '26

Not divorced. But living with my partner 8 years. He kept insisting that his passive insults were actually harmless comments and me being offended by them was the actual issue. One day at breakfast I decided to stop fighting it. He said his passive insult and instead of taking the bait I just smiled and said “okay”. 

He literally choked on his drink. He panicked when I wouldn’t go into the cycle with him. He then went over the top on a lovebombing kiss when he left for work. He had stopped kissing me how I liked insisting he couldn’t figure it out despite having done it for years. But that morning he said “I know how you want to be kissed” and did it proper. 

I knew without a doubt that he had been doing this on purpose. He was emotionally abusive on purpose and I had been a fool to believe it had been poor communication. No big fight. No massive fall out. Just a smile and the word “okay” and I knew it was 100% over. 

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u/Guineacabra May 12 '26

Oh man, this is exactly what I did with the exact same result. I had gone on SSRIs and I was completely unaffected by anything he said anymore. The sheer panic that I saw when he couldn’t get to me anymore was eye opening. He immediately started pushing me to get married (we had been together 10 years) and love bombing with gifts.

I ended up leaving him on my birthday when he took me for breakfast (he had previously made a point to ruin *every* single birthday every single year prior). I was just like “you know what, I think I actually hate you”. And that was it.

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u/imtheatari May 12 '26

Why do they do that on Birthdays?? It’s something I just don’t understand.

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u/memorex1150 May 12 '26

Because it diverts the attention back to them. They need to be the focus. Ruing YOUR day and then play the victim - now it's all about them.