Me (33M) and my fiance (32F) are less than 3 months from the wedding and we are at a breaking point
TLDR; 3 months from wedding and we have really bad arguments every 1-2 weeks.
We’ve been living together about 7 months and have a wedding in less then 3 months. Been a couple for just under 3 years.
The first year of our relationship felt nearly perfect. But then we had our first big fight, which was my fault. I was in regular contact text contact with a close female friend who I had known for 7 years.
This friend was someone who had helped me a lot over the years, and was struggling with her mental health and I was on her short list of contact for her therapist in case of emergencies.
My finace knew about this friend, but she didn’t know that we had tried to date for about 2 months (3 years prior), and after it not working out because we had zero romantic compatibility we decided to stay friends.
When she found out that I had dated this friend she exploded, and said she didn’t want any ex’s in my life and that I need to cut contact immediately. I tried to explain that neither of us had romantic feelings for each other, but she basically said I need to chose between the two of them.
So I chose my fiance and told the friend that we shouldn’t be talking anymore. I accepted responsibility for this mistake and agreed that I shouldn’t have been hiding this situation from her. (Was this the right thing to do?)
After cutting off the friend, she was still angry with me for 6 months, often blowing up over small things and yelling at me for hours.
I don’t like confrontation and arguments and for most of this time I just tried to disarm the situation and move on. But often she would escalate any disagreement into a shouting match in an attempt for me to agree with what she says.
It got so absurd that one time I was making fresh coffee in the morning, because I know she loves coffee, and she got mad at me because I didn’t ask her first if she wanted to out to get coffee. There’s no reason we couldn’t have just went and gotten coffee…
Anyway, there were a lot of blowups like this for months, then things seemed to get better for a couple months and I thought we had worked through the issue. I was still very optimistic about our life together, I thought we were returning to the way things were in the first year.
A couple months after engagement we were on an international trip together and she started a fight over something that wasn’t true. I kept pointing out that it wasn’t true but she insisted until it turned into a huge fight and she said she was going to take the next flight out and leave me. I was devastated and told her to do whatever makes her happy. She left the room for an hour, then came back and said she was sorry and that she wouldn’t actually leave.
This is one example, but she’s used this false threat of leaving a lot, explicitly saying if she leaves she will never come back. I will not engage in this hostage type behavior and I’ve always said that she really feels that way then she should leave. I assume she wants me to beg her to stay, but I wont do it. I’ve told her this is toxic behavior and after a while she stopped.
The reality is that this blowups are still continuing, our primary issue is that when we have small disagreements on how we should be treating each other, she will often blow up on me, very angry and yelling.
At first I was very shocked by this, I don’t respond well to angry yelling and I’ve never had it in any of my previous relationships. But after the past year of being berated, I’ve started responding the same way. I feel like my rights aren’t being respected and that if don’t push back as hard as she’s pushing, she will trample me as a person.
It’s very strange because 90% of the time, things are great, she’s kind, we both like each others families. We split housework well and are a great team for tackling projects.
Now we’re close to the wedding date and things haven’t gotten better. She’s tried saying its stress from a laundry list of things, but all the “stressors” are things she’s been dealing with for years before she met me and will continue to exist into the next decade.
I’ve also noticed her snapping at her father sometimes which I had never seen until we got engaged. This really scares me, because her father and I are both easy going people, who almost never get angry. But maybe she thinks this is normal, possibly how her mother treats her father?
I know I made a big mistake, and maybe that broke the relationship. But at this point I’m starting to wonder if there’s any hope things will get better. I’ve told her I’m unhappy and expressed how I feel about the all out screaming arguments happening every 1-2 weeks. It’s not sustainable for me.
Someone close to me recently reached out to ask me if everything was okay because I seemed sad. My fiance says that she loves me and that I’m the perfect person for her, that I’m the only person she ever wants in her life and that I make her incredibly happy. My fiance says that I’m only seeing the negative and that she will work on herself to be more like me. I feel lost and sad.