Reddit Stories - Stuck at my PARTNER'S place EXPERIENCING intense anxiety as his GUARDIANS yelled at

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #relationships #anxiety #familydrama #partnerproblems #conflictresolutionSummary: Stuck at my partner's place experiencing intense anxiety as his guardians yelled at. Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, relationships, anxiety, familydrama, partnerproblems, conflictresolution, guardians, yelling, stress, communication, coping, support, mentalhealth, emotions, challenges, resolutionsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Stuck at my partner's place experiencing intense anxiety as his guardians yelled at him about spaghetti. After parting ways with him, I had a sudden realization. I mainly need to find clarity. This off my chest, I won't lie. Charlie lives 15 to 20 minutes away by car. We've been dating five months and it used to be my pleasure to drive up there and spend a few nights at his place. I knew his parents are abusive and so.

scream at him for nothing sometimes, physically assault him and take away his phone and computer. He will be able to get out of there by the end of the school year, when he gets an internship. His plan for the future is to have very limited to absolutely no contact with his shit family. I tried to make sure his family liked me, and it worked, I always try to be very agreeable and nice to them and since they love keeping up appearances anyway, it worked pretty well. Some time ago, I'm going to guess about three to four weeks ago, I was staying over on a Sunday evening and I didn't have my car, because a friend of ours would come drive us to school in the morning. The parents had been away all day, they came home in the evening, pretty drunk actually,

and Charlie's little sister, 17F, went to complain that we ate too much lasagna or something. Okay, sibling trouble. His parents then proceeded to severely overreact to dumb sibling trouble by calling him in the kitchen, berating him, and screaming at him. He apologized and left me in the room while he went there, told me not to worry too much and this is normal to him, it happens all the time. So there I was alone in his room, in the dark, absolutely panic because nothing terrifies me more than people screaming, helpless, alone, in danger and with no way out, because I didn't even have my car there. I had been in this situation before and it went about the same way. I don't know how to really convey how terrified I was. So I was having one hell of a panic attack

and crying like I was actively trying to shoot my eyes out of my sockets, and I hear a bang and louder screaming, so I think they're attacking Charlie and I panic, some more, and go to the kitchen, again, in tears. I arrive and attempt to say something like is everything okay in here, it comes out as what is wrong with you people, with a broken tearful, pathetic, screaming voice. Obviously I still regret this. It sounds like a bad excuse but I wasn't really in control here. Next thing I know, Charlie's father, a terrifying motherfucker, is millimeters away from my face, screaming at me so hard I think he actually spluttered on my face. My first instinct was to block him with my arm and push him away as hard as I could,

I'm frail, and from there my boyfriend finished the job by pushing him the hell away. It was a mess. Everyone was screaming. I was trying to get my phone, and kept repeating, I'm calling my dad, I'm calling my dad, in the end I didn't. I was still sobbing so hard my chest was actually hurting, at some point I thought I couldn't breathe anymore. When Charlie was done pushing the whole family away from me, he gently took me by the shoulders and led me outside to get away and calmed down. He was very sweet and patient and seemed to know exactly what to do, including getting me out of there. His mother

came out a few times on the doorstep to glare at us wordlessly. Charlie said, go away, can't you see she's not doing well, can't you see this isn't normal behavior, she's not used to it. She tried arguing that I wasn't to speak to them this way, don't know if this is the correct wording, but he made her leave. He let me calm down, said it was a normal reaction, I kept apologizing and he didn't let me. He let me go inside to pack my bags and talk to his family in the meantime, so I didn't have to face them. We left through the window so they wouldn't try to stop us, and went to seek refuge at his aunt's place. Everyone there was very sweet and welcoming.

Everyone in the family knows Charlie's mom is a monster. I haven't faced Charlie's parents since. I refuse to. Charlie told me he told his mom this isn't normal and she said, do you think she's normal with her gross scars all over her arms? I used to self-harm and I haven't done it in years. My scars are very faded. She's just a disgusting, vile woman.

The thought of talking to them makes me sick. I've ignored them the last time I saw them from far away. Last time I picked up my boyfriend I was very scared just from being in my locked car in front of the house for five minutes I know I'm not over it and need to process it. I was actually hoping this thread would help me overcome the ADHD and finally text my therapist. My boyfriend seems to understand that I don't want to come back. I told him I probably wouldn't apologize to his parents and didn't want to see them. at least for now, I just can't.

He seems to be getting sort of tired of it, though. I feel bad that he has to come over, we both live with our families, though I try to make it as comfortable as possible and my family likes him. He has expressed today that he's sort of upset that he has to choose between being home and being with me. I don't think he understands how terrified I was and I don't know how to tell him so he understands. I have this feeling that he's so used to it he just thinks I should stop feeling bad after a few days. That's sort of the way he acts sometimes, though he keeps telling me it's all right,

I know it bothers him. I don't know what to do. Edit, thank you, I didn't expect so many responses. I don't know how to answer everybody, but I appreciate every response, even those guys that tried to determine in what context it is okay to assault your child over lasagna. I'd like to stress that the reason I was so panicky is also because they have a history of physical abuse. I ran in when I thought they might be hitting Charlie. I agree I was overreacting. I disagree, though, that I owe them any excuses, because acting adequately anyway would have been to leave quietly and never cross paths with these people again. Charlie and I are on the same team. We've been talking about this and I've been translating the comments for him. This post led to a sincere talk

about how we were both feeling about it and that's ultimately what I wanted. I am I'm not going back there and Charlie agrees with that fully. He said he didn't realize I took it so harshly and was still thinking about it. Obviously he's not a mind reader. Charlie is getting out in a few months. That's when we all leave the school we're both in for an internship, and until then we're going to make it work like this. Thank you.

Update, what happened in the original post is, I had a boyfriend who has a physically abusive family. The boyfriend would convince me to stay over at his house all the time. because I had a license and he was too lazy to get his. He insisted I'd play nice with his disgusting family so his life would be easier. I did so because I had lots of sympathy for his situation. He knew about my history of abuse and how scared I was of his father and how terrified I could get of everything sometimes, PTSD, but nagged me on staying over at his place because he didn't feel like going over to mine. That particular night he had convinced me to stay over

without my car as a friend would pick us up to go to school in the morning. I forget why I didn't have my car, sorry. His parents came home and started screaming at him. What I described as a panic attack was an emotional flashback to severe childhood abuse. When I heard what sounded like someone hitting my ex in the kitchen, I went there because I was afraid for him, and reverted to what would sometimes end the screaming matches in my family when I was younger and my brother was there, crying out for them to stop. In my family it leads to them switching for screaming to insulting me and being mad at me more quietly, I don't know why this works. Here it resulted in the father screaming in my face and me pushing him away instinctively. Some posters commented on me saying

I'll call my dad and not doing it. I didn't explain that I wouldn't have called my dad as I felt like this was all my fault. I said that to introduce the idea that another adult could hear them be this way and see if it would affect their behavior. Later we had to flee out of the window to go my ex's aunts. My ex caught me writing the last post. Laughed at comments that said that he shouldn't want me to go back there and agreed with comments that said my decision was stupid, which I guess it was. I didn't dare talk back to commenters and pretended like my ex 100% rejected his parents and was a good person. What I didn't say is that he never got a job during the summer despite multiple family members offering him easy gigs, always wanted to go out for

fast food and let me pay, told me that not everyone was as wealthy as I was when I complained. I'd gotten a summer job at a clinic despite crippling yet undiagnosed PTSD making me cry and hurt myself every morning and evening because I was so scared of interacting with people. Two months after that post he got tired of coming over and nagged me into apologizing to his parents. I went back, despite being absolutely terrified just being in the house. When he stayed over at my place where my parents left us alone, he stayed up all night playing fortnight despite me telling him I couldn't sleep. He didn't care, I was severely sleep deprived all the time.

He would smoke on the balcony despite me asking him not to, stomp around the house at night when everyone was asleep and then would sleep until sometimes 6 p.m., leaving me to wait around the house for him until it was dark and the day was practically over for me. He had no respect for the routine I'd set up for myself to exercise, be healthy and keep my head above the water. He got mad at me the one time I self-harmed, hit myself without thinking and left a bruise during a breakdown that took me days to recover from. Then told his female friend over Discord what I'd done after she admitted to doing the same,

after he comforted her the way he never comforted me and told her she was beautiful and unique. I had to buy him his tobacco, smoking paper and filters to keep him from being horrible. He said he couldn't help it when he didn't smoke for a while. At the time I was still trying to quit smoking, and he kept giving me cigarettes and smoking around me, and not having a cig made me upset but not to the point of being mean to my partner. He never brushed his fucking teeth. Got really fucking mad at me when I asked him to brush his teeth and ignored me. Combined this with 20 cigarettes a day.

I was prescribed Paxil and it did nothing but give me bad side effects. When I went off it gave me terrible withdrawal symptoms, weird electric shocks, flu-like symptoms, and terrible, terrible despair and crying. I once spent an entire night crying my eyes out and being sick while he ignored me and played fortnight, not even turning off the screen to let me sleep. He would punch walls when he was mad. I would show up at his house to go to our plan date and he would be drunk and I had to sit down and wait for hours until he could move without puking.

He would tell me he'd come to my house. house in the evening and be five hours late. Once he literally went to the cinema with a friend without telling me after he said he'd come over. He laughed at me when I was upset. He dragged me to parties when I said I was afraid of people yelling and being drunk. He got mad at me until I went. He was either upset at me when I had to leave because I was terrified, or pretended to care about my well-being for five minutes and stayed at the party while I drove home sobbing. until he drank a bottle of vodka and ate five edibles at once because he thought that was some weak shit and then I had to come pick him up in my pajamas and hold him all night until he stopped

crying about people's faces being made of colors. But you know the very worst in that relationship? I stayed while he was passed out drunk. I kept giving my money away after I said I didn't like it. I bought him more cigarettes. I didn't kick him out of my house. I drove him everywhere. I let him make fun of me and fuck with my head. I went back to his abusive household and played nice. So much of it is on me. I'm so very mad at him, but really I am so, so mad at myself. I can't believe this was all I thought I was worth.

I moved to the UK from the south of France in May for an internship. I left him after he told me I was just too fucking lazy to make food and I should stop fucking complaining because he's got real problems. in response to me being exhausted all the time and being literally too scared to go outside and go grocery shopping. Panic attacks level scared. His problems were him doing badly in school and not caring about it, and sleep apnea I'd been trying to get him to see the doctor and treat for six months. At this point he still wasn't trying to move out and was content letting him mom iron his t-shirts and playing video games all day and night while being silent on Discord calls with me. I'm still in the UK.

I made a few friends. I discovered I have C-P-T-S-D. It's very hard and I've been very alone. I feel a lot of shame. I've been making sense of my life and relationships up till now. I needed to write this somewhere people will see it. You don't have to stay with people who let you cry your eyes out over your dead cat while ignoring you and complaining that your parents' food is disgusting and he wants to go to Burger King and let you pay for it. Unlakely, there's Thanks to that one commenter on my previous post that said I probably have PTSD and I should get out of that cluster fuck, that we all laughed at and downvoted at the time. Shears mate. Edit

Wasn't expecting so many comments. I can't answer everyone but I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for the support. Next story, boyfriend's brother asked him to break up with me because his new girlfriend got jealous at family dinner, then I found out he's actually mad because my BF bought me a ring. It's a bit of a long story. I, 21F, and my boyfriend, 21M, have been together since we were 17. We have a healthy relationship, and I have a fantastic relationship with his family as well. I spent every Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and any events in between with his family.

His mom and I get along really well, and my boyfriend annoyingly complains about how she calls me more than him. same with him father who's been a second father figure to me and always reminds me i'm more like a daughter to him than his son's girlfriend my boyfriend has an older brother 24m who i also get along with just fine but he's more kept to himself so i don't know him as well as the rest his older brother recently got himself a girlfriend and actually the first time since i've met him has he had a girlfriend This Halloween weekend was my boyfriend's parents' anniversary, and they invited me over, as usual, but also asked the brother to bring his girlfriend over for the first time. His girlfriend is the same age as me, so I was looking forward to meeting her.

That Saturday, I arrived at my boyfriend's parents' place early as me and his mother had plans to cook a large meal for everyone. That afternoon was mostly just me, my boyfriend, and his parents hanging out. The girlfriend came later in the evening with him brother. Right off the bat, she became overly comfortable with my boyfriend and his father. She said I didn't know all the men in your family are handsome and gave both men a rather tight and long hug. She then made her way over to his mother, ignoring me completely and saying you're so pretty. Watch out, though, your husband's on my radar.

Immediately his mother turned to me and whispered I have a bad feeling about her. We stayed in the kitchen, but the kitchen looks into the living room so we saw everything go down. The girlfriend sat on both my boyfriends and his dad's lap when trying to talk to them and both men seemed uncomfortable. Soon my boyfriend joined us in the kitchen and said I don't like her. I called her over to taste the pasta, we all like spicy food but I didn't know if she could handle it. To which she took a bite and said, It's good, I see why they keep bringing you around. That compliment felt backhanded and I felt more uneasy with her. We set up the dining table and it was time for dinner.

My boyfriend's family usually says Grace before the meal, and invited the girlfriend to lead today as she was a guest. The girlfriend accepted and happily thanked God for the food and all the members intentionally leaving me out of the grace. I didn't mind too much, but my boyfriend and his mom looked at me with the you saw that look in their eyes. As the dinner moved along, my boyfriend's dad grilled her with questions about her life and this and that, something he did to me as well. She seemed like a decent girl from a decent background.

After he was done, he started asking me about the things I was working on, and my plans for graduate school. Before I could answer, she interrupted and started talking about her work and how much she hated it. I could tell my boyfriend's dad didn't really want to listen, as he gave dry responses back and then turned back to me and just asked how my family was doing. This trend went on the whole night, where every time I was acknowledged, she would interrupt me. Near the end of dinner, she jokingly said, be careful David, brother's name, I might just leave you for Blake, my boyfriend's name. I'm at a point where I don't get jealous or annoyed at this type of stuff, so I went along and said, yeah, Blake, remember to invite me to the wedding when it

happens. That seemed to be the breaking point for the girlfriend. As she started crying out and saying, she's been trying to embarrass me the entire night. She then went on a ramble about how I'm hogging my boyfriend's family and making her look bad in front of them. Right after dinner, she dragged my boyfriend's brother out of the house with her and they left for the night. We invited them to stay over for the weekend. My boyfriend's family apologized to me for having to witness that, and we all chilled down

to some drinks and kept the celebration going without them. The next day, my boyfriend's mother gets a call from the brother who seemed extremely pissed off. She put her phone on speaker, so we all heard him talk. He said his girlfriend is really upset with me and his family. How she's now having doubt about him and their relationship. She says that as long as I'm involved in the family, she doesn't think the relationship with him will work out. The brother then began to ask that I break up with my boyfriend so his girlfriend would

stop crying and finally have peace with their relationship. My boyfriend denied the request, so did his parents, to which the brother then said, Either she's out of the family or I am. I don't want to end this relationship over someone who's not related to us in the first place. Since then, no one has been able to get a hold of his and it's stressing his parents and my boyfriend out a lot. I feel guilty but also confused on what to do. I don't want to break apart this family but I love my boyfriend and his parents too. I don't know what to do or how to process any of this.

Update. Thank you for the response. I feel reassured knowing I'm not selfish to stay with the family. And I plan on keeping things how it is and not letting my boyfriend's brother or girlfriend take control of the situation. An update on the situation that sort of gives me more clarity on why everything happened. This morning my boyfriend's mother got a hold of his brother and we all went over again and sat down together no girlfriend this time. The brothers seemed to calm down a lot more and apologized for the commotion the other night.

However, he's still backing up on my boyfriend and us breaking up for the betterment of his relationship. There was a lot of back and forth between my boyfriend and his brother a lot of what I simply chose to stay out of. His brother got angry again, and right before he left, he said, You can shove that ring up your ass and done think about inviting me to the wedding. He left after that, and the room got tense, so my boyfriend opened up to me about something. Basically, he planned to propose to me. Not now, but he bought the ring a few months ago and told his family including his brother about it.

He said the tension between his brother and him started the moment he told him he planned to propose to me. I didn't know if I should be happy my boyfriend wants to marry or upset that this was sort of over a ring lull. Now I'm still confused on the girlfriend's behavior, but I think I can safely say that beyond the girlfriend. A big reason the brother was upset was over the fact me and my boyfriend are going to get married. That's the update for me. Also a lot of people asked about my boyfriend's older brother's dating history and I found out this was the first time he dated someone since he was 16, he's 24 now. Anyways, that's all, my boyfriend was bummed out that he had to spill the beans on his plan

but we talked it out and he said he's going to officially propose with the ring in his plan time. I'm going to stay with him, I'm going to keep my distance from that family though, for the time being just in case any more mishaps come to fruition.