Living With Someone Who Needs You To Stay Distressed

Last night (May 18, 2026) started so normally that part of me still can’t believe where it ended up.

I made dinner. I took care of the dogs. Tidied up some things around the house. I’m feeling very displaced since I’ve been sleeping in the guest room and the majority of my things are still in our shared room. Realizing that going in there when I needed something would be problematic, I opted to grab a few towels, face lotion, pj’s and socks.

He was laying in bed when I walked into the room. Not sleeping, not really watching TV but it was on. I gather my things and exit without a word shared between us. Then I went about my night just existing in my own house trying to get through an evening without incident.

It was getting late and I decided that I needed to fix the Roomba once and for all. (For the third time this week.) As I’m taking it apart to insert a new battery, I hear this loud crash to my right. I jumped out of my skin. When I look over, he was there and had thrown my Yetti into the sink, which crashed against the other items I was going to wash. I said, Damn you scared the shit out of me.

That was all it took.

Suddenly it was screaming through the house.

“People don’t jump unless their hiding something.” “You fucking bitch.” “You’re the narcissist.” “You’re the gaslighter.” “You keep moving the goalposts. And Now you don’t like where you put them” “I won’t tolerate being disrespected. Go take more photos of yourself.”

It went on and on and on. The kind of screaming where eventually the words stop sounding shocking and the whole thing is just exhausting. I remember noticing that I wasn’t feeling hurt by the vile things he was saying, but that I was irritated. Irritated by the constant accusations. Irritated by how absurd it all was. Irritated by how every reaction I have somehow becomes proof that I’m guilty of something. He will look for anything to support the narrative he has created, regardless of me having and showing him irrefutable proof. So I stopped, “proving” myself a long time ago.

As hard as it was, I did not engage. I chose to go to my room and close the door. That didn’t stop the verbal assaults being thrown. So I turned up the TV to drowned it out.

After about 30 minutes, it had quieted down and can hear him in the bathroom. Quietly, I open my door and go to the kitchen for my bottle of water. He must have received a notice on the internal camera that there was movement because he comes out and says,” You’re gone. I’m selling this house, You just watch me bitch.”

As I’m walking back to my room, I realized the irony of it all and almost made me laugh out loud because he has zero rights to sell or do anything with the house. Everything is in my name. Every single bill. The house. His truck. His cell phones. Everything.

He comes to the door bangs on it and says, “Don’t worry I’m not going to come in there. You don’t have to worry about me coming in that door unless its during the day and I got a question. I’m not going to come in there and mess with you so you just got to listen to me scream. I don’t care how loud you turn the TV up. I’m going to talk doesn’t matter how long or how loud you turn the TV up I can talk right over don’t you worry about. I can be here all night”

That sentence stayed with me.

Not because it scared me as much as it would have months ago, but because it revealed something so clearly: this was never about resolving conflict. It was about overpowering my peace.

That’s the part I understand so clearly now.

He treats my reactions to his behavior as evidence against me. If I defend myself, I’m guilty. If I I’m quiet, then I’m hiding something. Or See “Gotcha, nothing to say?” If I withdraw, I’m cold, selfish and don’t know how to love. If I react emotionally after hours of screaming, then my reaction becomes the story instead of what caused it.

But logic barely matters in moments like that because your nervous system still reacts like danger is standing in the room. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, maybe for the first time without denial attached to it, I realized I’m done.

Not angry done. Not dramatic done. Not “maybe this will wake him up” done. Done in the quiet way where your body finally understands what your mind has been trying to negotiate around for years.

The name-calling alone has gone too far for me to ever come back from. The contempt. The cruelty. The way every vulnerable conversation eventually becomes ammunition.

At one point he accused me of “profiting off him” because of my book, and I almost fell out of bed laughing because the accusation was so detached from reality that for one brief second, the absurdity outweighed the fear.

I am not profiting off him.

I am surviving him.