When is enough enough?

October 8, 2005 7:03 AM

In an otherwise great relationship, is it normal to have moments where you feel completely fed up?

I'm not posting to have everyone pat me on the back and make me feel warm and fuzzy, I'm after the sort of large sample size response that asking a handful of friends just doesn't achieve.

I'm in a relationship that I would say is the best I've been in, but there have been times when I just think, "that's it, this is unacceptable". It's never things with a history, or things that have been a long time coming, it's inconsequential stuff. Foe example, she might be in a bad mood, over-react at me, and I'll be so mad at the (perceived) unjustified attack that I'll want to call it off then and there.

Given that this isn't a frequent thing, am I just over reacting myself? Maybe the answer is that the only way to avoid this is to never be in a relationship -- it comes with the territory, and it happens to everyone once in a while. Or maybe it's masochistic to think that this is normal relationship material.

I'm 20 -- I don't have a lot of relationship experience. So, from what only experience can teach, how normal is this?

posted by anonymous to Human Relations (19 answers total)

yes ... best thing to do is step away for a bit and calm down ... as time goes on, you'll still get angry at times, but calling it off won't come to mind so easily
posted by pyramid termite at 7:21 AM on October 8, 2005

It is totally normal, and totally to be expected. A lot of it has to do with relationship inexperience. Your sensitivity to perceived slights and offenses from your SO has yet to be tuned properly.

It also works the other way - there can be things that you don't see as deal-breakers now, that you will realized should have when you gain more experience.

Speaking personally, [12th year of marriage, 41 yo], most of the times that I felt that something was unacceptable in the relationships that I had in my 20s I now consider to be overreactions. OTOH, I didn't marry the woman I was seeing then ;-).
posted by Calibandage at 7:35 AM on October 8, 2005

Married 5+ years without experiencing what you're describing. I suppose we've had minor flares with each other, but believing that I'm with the right person has been as continuous a sensation as, say, believing that I have a nose or that I'll fall back to the ground if I jump.

You're 20 -- wow. Get some iffy relationships under your belt but keep the image of that really good one in your mind. It's worth being very picky over.
posted by argybarg at 7:35 AM on October 8, 2005

I've never felt that way in my current (3+ year) relationship. I've felt that way in previous, doomed relationships.
posted by Jairus at 8:28 AM on October 8, 2005

Learning to compromise is the mark of a good and mature relationship. It isn't easy and IMHO it's ok to feel "fed up" sometimes.

What you do when you do feel this way is what's critical. That is, how you develop an area in your relationship where both of you can sit and discuss each other's feelings is very important. When a conflict arises do you duke it out or do you listen to the other and respond to their concerns (and vice versa)?

Been married 12 years and still learning...
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 9:15 AM on October 8, 2005

One more vote for "Yes."
posted by alms at 9:39 AM on October 8, 2005

Another "yes" vote, even after 20+ years together there are occasionally little moments like that, with the emphasis on "moments".
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:09 AM on October 8, 2005

25 years of of a good, strong marriage and there are still a couple times a year when I could cheerfully shoot him.

And what TakenOuttacontext said ... work and compromise. Fairy tale matches are, well, fairy tales.
posted by chocolatepeanutbuttercup at 10:11 AM on October 8, 2005

There is something for you to learn in that feeling of being "fed up." It isn't whether your relationship is a good or bad one. That's kind of up to you, really, in the end, based on how you think about it and how you handle it. No objective authority is ever going to step in and tell you whether this is "the one" or not. I know that seems obvious, but it's a thought pattern that can creep up in the background while you build toward a lasting commitment.

Which brings me to my point: what you can learn in these heated moments is how committed you currently are to this relationship. If your thought is along the lines of "Screw that. That's it." then I'd say you're not very committed. Part of your brain has been waiting for the signal to get out, and that part of your brain is having its moment. If, on the other hand, your thought is "Goddammit, and I have to put up with this for the rest of my life." then you are pretty much committed.

Take notice of how the thought travels through you, and see what you can learn from it. Examine what you learn about yourself and decide if you are satisfied with that. If you are not satisfied with a relationship where you've always got one foot out the door, then perhaps you need to work on yourself, undertake committing to your relationship as a personal goal. Or perhaps you do need a different partner.

Once you've figured out that the person you're with is a good egg and a safe bet, it can change things for the better to really throw yourself into committment without looking back. It may not come naturally so you might have to kick yourself in the butt a little bit. But your perspective on how to handle problems really does change when you accept the idea that you are in fact stuck with this person, and they are stuck with you.
posted by scarabic at 10:34 AM on October 8, 2005 [1 favorite]

Depends on what you're getting fed up with. Without knowing specifics, it's really hard to tell if you're overreacting or not. It also depends on how long you've been together. If someone's annoying the hell out of you the first month, it doesn't bode well.

I would say, though, as a general rule, that most people stay in relationships that don't make them happy for far, far too long. Yeah, I think that most people have moments of total crankiness. If you are generally very happy with moments of furious, that's okay. If you are generally bleh with moments of happy, you should leave. If you are ever contemptuous, you should leave, regardless of the quality of the rest of the time.
posted by LittleMissCranky at 10:38 AM on October 8, 2005 [1 favorite]

Sounds like transference : In psychoanalysis, the process by which emotions and desires originally associated with one person, such as a parent or sibling, are unconsciously shifted to another person...

When you suddenly feel "fed up" over something minor, take a walk and think. Did something like that happen when you were a child? You're an adult and you can change the way you respond to things.
posted by Carol Anne at 10:46 AM on October 8, 2005

Oh yeah. Oh God yes. You bet. I mean, yeah, definitely.
posted by LarryC at 11:10 AM on October 8, 2005

Yes, within a 95% confidence interval. Depends on you and your relationship. Those feelings by themselves don't indicate that there's a problem with the relationship

If you're only 20, I'd say you have more to gain from fucking up and wallowing in the consequences for a couple of months, compared to relying on dating advice from darkened pixels arranged into roman characters on your monitor.
posted by Eothele at 12:31 PM on October 8, 2005

Yes.

Been married since 1983.
posted by konolia at 12:57 PM on October 8, 2005

I think it has more to do with the nature of your temperment than the nature of the relationship. But I think it's prefectly normal regardless.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:36 PM on October 8, 2005

Nope. Never happened to me. Neither of us is the type to really blow up about things, though, so our personalities and relationship-style is probably a major factor.

I'm 27, in a really good three-and-a-half year relationship, and pretty inexperienced with long-term dating before I met the future Mr. SupaFreak.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 2:41 PM on October 8, 2005

Another yes. (married 6 months, together 3.5 years) I've had moments when there were trivial things that made me want to leave and then I've had deal breaker things that made me want to leave. The deal breaker things I confronted him about and told him how I felt. Sometimes the issue went away when he knew, sometimes we compromised. The little things that make me want to shake him are either my issues, or one of those things that makes him him.

I guess you just have to pick your battles. If something is really, really important to you, you don't have to compromise. On the other hand if you get this feeling a lot, as others have said it may be a sign that you're looking for a reason to end it. Also, you are very young. It's pretty much a given that what's important to you at 20, will not necessarily be important to you at 25 or at 30.
posted by Kimberly at 6:36 PM on October 8, 2005

I'm with scarabic - the underlying question here is about your commitment.

The only time I felt ready to leave in my 9-year marriage was when we were going through a really rocky patch after my mother died and a whole bunch of other bad stuff external to the relationship. But I was committed, and we did some therapy, and we gained tools to get back to a much happier place. We did that because we wanted to be together.

So now I get really annoyed occasionally -- but I never want to leave.
posted by teaperson at 8:00 PM on October 8, 2005

Yes.

Married 21 years (since I was 21).

The biggest thing, though, is to communicate- not so much the fed-up part, but the fact that you can't tell if you're overreacting or your S.O. is really committing an offense worthy of exasperation on your part. Then see what she says, without really trying to really plan out ahead of time what you think the resolution should be. Go for an honest give-and-take.
posted by Doohickie at 11:32 PM on October 8, 2005