I (24m) have lived with my girlfriend (22f) for 8 months. We’ve been together for 18 months. We moved in together when she lost the lease on her apartment, and my parents hinted that they’d like to turn my bedroom into an art room. I didn’t mind moving out, and the timing just felt right.
My girlfriend, I’ll call her Linda, is a wonderful person. Very warm and affectionate, very calm and chilled out. We split the chores and the bills equally, and don’t have any issues with intimacy or communication. But the only thing that has been a problem, for me at least, is how calm and controlled she is.
I know that doesn’t sound like a bad thing, and really it isn’t I guess, but she never seems to get excited about anything. She enjoys things quietly, dislikes things with the same amount of energy. She never reacts to anything without complete self control.
I started to wonder if she had the capacity for strong emotions, if there was some buried trauma causing her to stifle her reactions, and because our communication has always been so good I had no problems asking her about it. She told me that honestly, she’s not that bothered by anything and doesn’t see any reason to “act out” unnecessarily.
It still bothered me though. She could watch a horror movie and not even flinch at jumpscares. She will watch a comedy and just chuckle at the funniest bits. When we planned a trip to Disney world, something she said she’s always wanted to do, she seemed quietly pleased and barely excited at all.
I know it shouldn’t matter, but recently I’ve been thinking about proposing to her, and part of me dreads her reaction if she says yes, which I’m fairly confident she will do as we’ve discussed marriage often and she seems to be agreeable.
I’ve been watching Tiktoks of women getting surprise proposals, and the way they react fills me with longing. They scream with joy, they cry, they violently hug their partner. They express their happiness so obviously, and I’d love to get that kind of response. But I feel like Linda will just smile and say yes and accept the ring. And whilst that will be great, there’s part of me that wants more.
So I’ve been doing stupid things. I know they’re stupid and I know you will judge me, but most things are harmless.
I started when it was her birthday. Set up a space in our home laden with gifts and balloons and flowers for her, and when she walked in and saw it I fired off one of those things that shoots confetti and streamers everywhere. I did it fairly close to her, but she didn’t flinch.
She was pleased with the effort I’d made, especially as I was also cooking a romantic meal for her. She hovered round the kitchen chatting with me as I cooked, and when her back was turned I dropped the metal lid from one of our pans right behind her. We have a slate floor, and the lid made a huge noise that made me cringe, even though I’d expected it, but she just turned around to see what the noise was. She had her eyebrows raised, but that was the only expression of surprise she showed.
I felt stupid and mean for the cheap trick, but somehow my failure made me determined to do more. I know I shouldn’t have. It was childish and petty, not to mention unkind. But she just never budged. It started to piss me off, if I’m being honest. I was just lucky she was a patient woman, and didn’t seem to have any inkling that I was doing these things on purpose, although she did suggest it might be a good idea to make a doctor appointment, as I was quite clumsy recently.
My efforts ended one night after I’d had a few too many beers, and I went too far.
Linda had been working late, and I’d been moping around waiting for her to come home when I found a mask I’d worn for halloween, and it gave me an idea.
We had a large pantry in our apartment with a door that was clear glass on the top half, and drunk me decided it would be a really funny idea to hide in the pantry wearing the mask, and jump up when she came into the kitchen.
I know. Ridiculous. Even worse, I decided to hide my camera on the shelf in the pantry to film her reaction, with a vague idea of uploading it to Tiktok if it went well. As stoic as she was, she would surely react to a monster jumping up at her from behind the pantry door. Wouldn’t she?
I set everything up and waited, turning the kitchen light off. She came home not long after I’d shut myself in the pantry, and I heard her calling to me as she walked around the apartment. I had a chance then to call it off. I should have done that.
I heard her come into the kitchen, saw the light turn on, then heard her wandering around collecting stuff from the drying rack to put it away. When her footsteps got close enough, I jumped up, snarling and slapping my hands against the glass.
Childish as my prank was, I didn’t consider how she might actually react. Part of me hoped she’d at least scream, and part of me thought she’d just step back away from the door in her usual, collected way. What she did was a natural reaction for anyone, I think: She threw the object in her hand at the glass of the door towards the intruder that had sprung up to threaten her.
The object was a large, cast iron pan. I knew it was heavy, as I’d had to heave it up onto the drying rack when I’d washed it earlier, so it broke through the glass with ease. The round, blackened surface of the bottom of the pan approaching my head was the last thing I remember before waking up in hospital.
I suffered a concussion that thankfully didn’t cause any serious damage, but along with that I had sustained a broken jaw, a broken nose, a shattered cheekbone, and a fracture in the bone around my eye socket. I also had some lacerations from the broken glass, some of which required stitches but weren’t life threatening. Still. I had been lucky.
Linda was full of apologies when I woke up, but how could I blame her? She was deeply distraught, in her own way, about what she’d done, but as soon as they gave me a pad and pen to write messages I told her I forgave her, and asked if she could forgive me for the stupid prank I had played.
She stayed by my bedside as much as she could during my recovery, keeping me entertained and bringing me home cooked meals, and there wasn’t a day I didn’t despise myself for the idiotic stunt I’d pulled, and not a day I wasn’t grateful for this wonderful woman. It really put things in perspective: She may not be a hugely demonstrative woman, and she may not react in a “normal” fashion to many things, but she cared for me, and we could build an amazing life together.
Once I was home, she set about taking care of me even more. She wouldn’t let me lift a finger to do anything, even though I tried to fulfil my share of the chores, and rarely left me alone “in case I needed something”. She wasn’t around all the time, however, and when she finally left to go to the grocery store, I had the chance to go into the pantry and retrieve the camera I’d hidden.
I’d been anxious about her finding it. I’d hidden it well, but it would only have taken the shifting of a few items for it to have been discovered. She had forgiven me for my prank, but if she’d found I’d filmed it too, she would have been mortified, and rightly upset.
I had planned on simply deleting the footage I’d recorded. It was a painful memory of a moronic deed, but once I had the camera in my hands, I couldn’t help but give in to the desire to watch the moment I’d been knocked out. A morbid fascination, maybe.
The camera had filmed until the battery had run flat, and after I put in the charger I located the footage of me hiding it, and crouching down in the dark.
I watched through the camera’s unwavering eye as the kitchen light came on, illuminating a bright square above my head. I saw the clear outline of Linda through the glass as if she were on TV, moving around the kitchen, picking up the pan, and making her way to the cabinet beside the pantry.
And then I saw myself jump up. My darker silhouette blocked out most of the view of the kitchen, but I could see over my shoulder as Linda’s arm raised, launching the pan at my head.
She didn’t make a sound, no shriek or gasp, and as I fell to the floor she walked up to the shattered window and looked in at me, framed by the jagged shards.
Her eyes were wide, and her mouth hung slightly open, but other than that, her face told nothing of her emotions.
She opened the pantry door and looked down at me for a long time. Her head was down, so I couldn’t see her face. I counted the seconds on the camera as they ticked past, and she stared down at my prone body for nearly a full minute.
Then she bent down, and when she stood upright again she held the cast iron pan in her hands.
After another 20 seconds of her scrutiny, she turned the pan around so that her right hand held the handle, and raised her arm to waist height. Then she waited.
After another 15 seconds I heard a noise: My voice, raised in a feeble moan. Only then did she move again.
She only hit me once, but she put her whole arm into it, swinging from the shoulder, lifting the pan high then bringing it down. I heard the whistle of the pan travelling through the air, then the solid thud of it hitting my face. I thought I could even hear the crunch of my bones breaking, but my mind might have filled that detail in.
She didn’t stop to look at the damage she’d done, but simply went back into the kitchen. I heard water running as she presumably rinsed the blood from the bottom of the pan, then the clunk of it being returned to the dish rack.
After another 30 seconds or so, I heard her voice from another room, faint but clear, asking for an ambulance.
She has been at the grocery store for an hour, and is probably due back very soon. I’m not sure what to do.