He shouted at me to shut up in front of our friends.

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The four of us meet regularly and there's often lots of banter between us. Last night, myself and one other were talking and my boyfriend suddenly raised his voice and told me to shut up. I guess he felt we weren't giving him room to talk. On top of the other hour of him acting like a tough guy the way he always does around our friends, poking fun at me, and being distant, it was too much. This has been escalating for a while and it makes me feel hurt and small.

Right now I've canceled our plans for the week and am not comfortable talking to him much. We've been together for 6 months, known each other for a year, and met through these same mutual friends. I thought this was the perfect relationship. He was always funny and kind, at least when we're not around them. His family likes me. My family likes him. Now, I'm not so sure.

We talked about it and I don't feel that's helped. At first, he claimed he was acting the way we always did and didn't understand why this was different or why I was upset. It was only joking. We've always playfully teased each other, getting in pretend arguments, but the tone was always playful and we never shouted (or I wouldn't have dated him). We only did it a few minutes at a time. The frequency and intensity when we're around our friends has slowly been increasing.

Eventually, he admitted the tone was harsh and not what he'd intended. I took a break to calm down, and when I came back I asked him if he'd be okay with someone else talking to me the way he'd talked to me. He said no, and admitted that he had a habit of getting too excited while wrestling with friends growing up, too. He promises to change, but I'm uncertain. In my experience, people don't change and what you see is what you get.

I feel that I've been very understanding about his differences, struggles, and when he does things his own way. However, I feel like there's a point where a 28-year-old just needs to grow up and gain some awareness without leaning on Asperger's for social mistakes. I can't be responsible for "teaching" him how to not shout at me. I feel that I may have misjudged him, and that if I stay I deserve anything else he might say down the road.

Does anyone have insight on what I can do? I want this to be okay, but I know that it's not.

You should keep reacting the way you reacted when he told you to shut up.

That is not okay whether in public, or in private.

You must be consistent about it.

You cannot allow a person to talk to you like that. Otherwise, he won’t respect you.

That might not be a bad idea.....

Not appropriate at all

Yeah...totally uncool.

Normally I’d say end it NOW.

However...

I do think sometimes people make mistakes, or perhaps they aren’t aware of a problem. So if you make him aware that there’s a problem, I think if you ever cared about him you owe it to yourself to give him a chance.

Seriously, stick this one out and let it go. If it happens AGAIN, send him packing. It not like that many people HAVEN’T done something that stupid or worse, and they’re ok people. But you need to make sure this is a one-time lapse of intelligence that won’t be repeated. One time is an accident. Twice is a pattern. Don’t let there be a strike three.

My own personal story, and how it ties into your situation:

A couple years ago, my dad and I were invited to have dinner with some friends of his. There were 2 non-adults there: me and this girl a couple years younger than me.

Being someone who was desperate for social interaction, I was upset, confused, and jealous when all the adults were paying attention to the girl, but not at all to me. I asked my dad about this, and he said that she had just returned after living in another state for years. Being shaken from spending several minutes feeling ignored/not knowing that until then, I stepped away and took a walk, in tears.

At least a few of the adults knew me(there was about 7 of them, including my dad), and that was a rare opprotunity for them to talk to me. You, on the other hand, probably spend a lot of time with your boyfriend, and give him all the attention in the world. When you're at this gathering, you wanna talk to your friends and catch up with them. All that is perfectly fine.

This comes off as him being controlling. I understand that he struggles with that, and he acknoweleged that. So, I guess it wouldn't hurt to give him another chance, and, well, AngelRho already said what I would say in conclusion.

This is the first I've read about your relationship so not sure if this is an ongoing issue but it does not bode well.
Your boyfriend has established a pattern of incremently increasing bad behavior. It's time for it to stop.

My husband is very controlling and tries to tell me that I am controlling because I don't do things the way he wants. He also denies whatever it is that's wrong, often tries to downplay it as joking or that it's my problem, and claims to never remember almost anything that has been a problem in the past. He throws whatever issue I try to discuss with him back in my face and tries to say that's what I do until we have to have a long drawn out discussion about the truth of the matter. He will see the light and forget five minutes later.

I have never been as happy as I am now that we live separately.

If your boyfriend can only come up with excuses for his behavior or he forgets the right way to behave it's time to move on for your future happiness and mental health.

I'm going to chime in and agree with the several posters who said to give him one more chance. There is a small chance that he really had no clue that his behavior was a problem.

However, there are some serious red flags here. Now that he knows that his behavior really upsets you, he should get one last chance to change. If he doesn't, run (don't walk) for the nearest exit.

Thanks for all the responses. We had another long talk and are seeing how it goes for now. I'm still pretty upset, but he's pointed out that any other time something bothered me (thankfully, not much), we discussed a solution and acted on it immediately. Which is true. Outside of this, the relationship is great and we have many similar values, goals, and interests, so our lives align well and we're comfortable. A future together minus this attitude would be great. This just shocked and worried me because it's hard to truly know anyone, so you can be unpleasantly surprised after 6 months, a year, or more...