my neighbor has been screaming at her husband about how she hates the summer plans he made for them for about an hour now.
from all I understood, they are going to italy together for 2 weeks and he booked everything and she doesnt like the hotel he booked and argues repeatedly that she never said okay to that hotel.
i don't hear his answers at all, I only hear her, loud enough as if she was in the same apartment but only one room away. she interrupts him a lot and just kinda screams over him, i can tell he is answering because she gets louder to drown him out.
i dont know those neighbors, i only sometimes hear them in moments like this. or rather, i only ever hear her, either screaming at their child or screaming at her husband (funnily enough i only know about the childs existence bc he sometimes talks when theyre in the staircase. never once heard the kid scream or play.)
the walls of my house arent that thin. i dont doubt that they make other noise, but when she's screaming, i am forced into first row seats because i cant hear much else
and rn this makes me think: as the child of a woman who also decides to scream at the top of her lunges at me whenever she was even mildly upset, it is crazy that only at like 28 I started to realize that it is actually not normal to scream at people under absolutely any circumstance unless you are in danger.
like, I always thought arguments happen sometimes, and hadn't realized that the only times I got into screaming-matches was with my mother. I did have a bunch of arguments with other people, yes, and some arguments could get heated, but it never devolved the way it did with my mother, ever.
this isn't an issue with different argument-culture or temperament, it's a lack of emotional regulation and at this point I would even say if someone frequently raises their voice like that at their family or friends over non-threatening things, that's inexcusable abusive behavior.
hearing that woman through my wall makes me kind of reflect on that, and I personally don't think it matters how bad the stuff the husband booked were. I fear if I say this to the wrong person they will try to defend this woman like "what if he constantly pisses her off with how he does things and she is desperate".
But literally no amount of desperation or being pissed at your partner warrants the screaming. Yesterday's screaming was about the kid having a bad grade in school. Last tuesday she was screaming about the husband not going to the grocery store on his way home from work.
None of these situations are valid moments to be screaming so loudly that I, a foreigner with a vague grip on the language, know what you are screaming about. And it makes me think of all the things my mother has screamed at me about for sometimes hours at a time, and how I thought that was normal to a degree. Everybody screams at people when they're mad all the time, I thought.
And it makes me think I should really consider going no contact with my mother.
