pan6467

We have a place called "Drop-In", it's where drunks can come and sleep of their drunk or high. It's also a place where the police departments in Summit county can drop off public intox's, drunk and disorderlies and so on.

Tonight, the Akron Police Department dropped one off. He was extremely drunk and high on crack. He was belligerent, mean and somewhat threatening to other clients. I, being the only male working was called in from Detox to remove him to the front lobby and wait till the police could come and take him back.

We walked up him behind me, because our rules are somewhat fucked up giving even the worst of clients the right to follow us even as we escort them out. As we walked he called me names and pretty much tried to push my buttons. But, I smiled and ignored him.

We got to the lobby and I showed him a chair and stood at the reception desk to await the police.

As he sat there, he called me his "white nigger" and continued to try to push buttons, as drunks do. I smiled and asked him if he was happy knowing he would spend the night in jail. I never showed anything but a smile and tried very hard to try to change the subject to sports or something that would not be a hostile subject.

This young man of 30, decided he couldn't get me to lose my temper so he walked over to me and put his forefinger and middle finger to my temple and made a gun sign. Then he said, looking me straight in the eyes.... and anyone who has dealt with a crack head knows the emptiness and violence that can be in those eyes... "I'll be out tomorrow, I'll still sell my crack, wear my gold and where will you be, dead" as he collapsed his thumb.

I walked to the doors separating drop in from the lobby and yelled for my co-worker to call 9-1-1.

The client returned to his chair and said over and over again, "I own you." Which is not a term of endearment.

Roughly a minute later 2 co-workers, the nurse on duty and a fellow counselor came up to see what was going on.

By this time, knowing the police do not search the people they drop off and having seen in this guys eyes that he wasn't playing , I told him as nicely as possible, without raising my voice to, "shut the fuck up."

To which my co workers quickly relieved me and I walked back to Detox.

When the police came I had to go up and talk to the officer, who informed me that this young man had warrants out for his arrest and that the cop who dropped him off never even ran the guy's name. As I told the cop what happened the client stared at me telling me he "lived just around the corner" and am I sure I wanted to say anything."

Work was a little tense afterward, I admit I was scared. I have been robbed at gun point, had real guns in my face by people who had had bad dealings with me while in my addiction, I have even pushed people's buttons enough to where they fought me, but I can count on 1 hand how many times I was truly frightened for my life. This was one of those times. Again, for any of you who have dealt with crackheads know, the drug changes them and another person's life truly doesn't mean shit to them. When they are using they will get truly violent for no reason.

When I got home to tell my wife she freaked over my telling the client to shut the fuck up. She berated me (in a non yelling voice) how I was wrong to say such a thing and laughed when I detailed how he put the finger gun to my temple.

I love my wife, I care very deeply about her, but instead of her showing caring and being happy I wasn't hurt she told me how I was fucked up to tell the client to shut the fuck up. This to me shows, that maybe my wife has no respect for me or my feelings, for God's sake someone threatened your husband tonight and you berate him (in a non yelling way). Drunk or not, cracked up or not.... this person could have had a real gun or knife on him and I was up there alone with him as he threatened me and put his hand on me and you're pissed off that I later told him to shut the fuck up?

Something is very wrong with this picture. It's a bad nightmare, it isn't real. a wife would never say that to her husband after he was threatened.....right????? A wife would tell her husband how much she loved him and how happy she was he wasn't really hurt..... right? She wouldn't go to bed with her last words being to her husband, maybe we just shouldn't talk anymore ever...... right?

Right????????????

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

girldetective

Not necessarily. Obviously.

Im glad youre alright; please stay that way.

__________________
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons...be cheerful; strive for happiness - Desiderata

G5_Todd

dude that would piss me off to

i agree with you

__________________
"....and when you men get home and face an anti-war protester, look him in the eyes and shake his hand. Then, wink at his girlfriend, because she knows she's dating a pussy."

-General Franks

uncle phil

i've said it before and i'll say it again: are you sure you're in the relationship you want to be in?

__________________
"We were wrong, terribly wrong. (We) should not have tried to fight a guerrilla war with conventional military tactics against a foe willing to absorb enormous casualties...in a country lacking the fundamental political stability necessary to conduct effective military and pacification operations. It could not be done and it was not done."
- Robert S. McNamara
-----------------------------------------
"We will take our napalm and flame throwers out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches...
We will leave you your small joys and smaller troubles."
- Eugene McCarthy in "Vietnam Message"
-----------------------------------------
never wrestle with a pig.
you both get dirty;
the pig likes it.

Redjake

1. This is horrible - I am sorry you had to go through this. I'm surprised you were able to keep it together (anger & nerves both). You must have seen a lot of shit in your life to not react to what he did.

2. Your wife should be 100% supportive and certainly not berate you for mouthing back to him. Also, laughing at you when he put the finger to your head?? Is she in high school or something? That isn't funny!

__________________
Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

ratbastid

She wasn't there, dude. She doesn't get it. That's okay. Relax.

They were just words. You're the one doing the concluding about her respect for you. All your "should" about her doesn't make any difference at all, except to raise your blood pressure.

And you know that, really, from your 12-step work. But sometimes we need to be reminded, and that's not a problem either.

Sorry about the incident, but it sounds to me like you handled yourself well. Have you got it set up with the police to keep an eye on the guy, and to watch your back for a while?

Anormalguy

Your wife could have (should have?) initially given you the support that you needed, waited the appropriate amount of time for you to calm down, then gently mentioned the mistakes she thought that you had made.

As Redjake posted, her laughing about the finger-gun was totally inapproriate.

__________________
In a society where the individual is not free to pursue the truth...there is neither progress, stability nor security.--Edward R. Murrow

noodle

Not necessarily, right. Someone who really loves you should always tell you like it is.
Do you want her to lie and tell you you did great if she doesn't believe it?
The situation was fucked up from what it sounds like.
But ratbastid is right, she wasn't there.
You called her, described the situation and she gave you her response.
If it wasn't the one you wanted, tough. That's the way relationships work.
You need to talk this out if it continues to bother you or accept that her response is hers. Period.
In my opinion.

__________________

braisler

Also keep in mind that her laughing at the finger-gun incident might be her way of dealing with an unknown and uncomfortable situation. While this area is within your experience, it is likely outside of hers. She may have been trying to defuse the situation for herself. I agree that she could have/should have handled it better with your feelings in mind. I think that after some time has past, it might be constructive for you to revisit the situation with her, explain how her responses seemed callous or wrong to you, that they hurt you or made the situation worse. If she sees it from your perspective, she might change her responses in the future.

Best of luck and please stay safe whatever you have to do.

__________________
---
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
- Albert Einstein
---

Fotzlid

To me, this...

...is the most telling statement. She is just picking a fight for the sake of picking a fight.
I don't know you very well but I think uncle phil asked the right question.

Lasereth

Depending on how you told that story I can see your wife's reaction as being common. If you look back at it, you did tell a drunk drug addict to shut the fuck up because he pointed a finger-gun at your head. I know it was waaay more serious than that, but to someone who didn't experience it, it could sound trivial.

BTW the officer that brought him in and didn't run his name -- that is terrible police work.

__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

genuinegirly

I'm glad to hear that you made it through the experience without a scratch.

I'm sorry that your wife is not offering the support you expect from her. Please speak with her about it and seek counseling if you see it as a disturbing trend, rather than discussing it behind her back.

__________________
"Sometimes I have to remember that things are brought to me for a reason, either for my own lessons or for the benefit of others." Cynthetiq

"violence is no more or less real than non-violence." roachboy

Daniel_

She's angry with you because you embarked on a path that could take away something she values very highly: YOU.

By fighting with you she's trying to apply pressure to stop you getting into that situation again. She hopes that if you are mad enough to face up to a loony with a gun, you will not be mad enough to get into a situation where you could go home and have to have that argument.

In essence, whatever else she feels, you are her comfort zone and you are her point of safety so she is not prepared to lose you over a valueless drug addict who would have left if you had no confronted him. Therefore she fights with you. It's counter-intuitive, but totally logical.

__________________

╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

Strange Famous

In your place I would have said a lot more than you did, certainly.

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Glory's Sun

I'm going to pretty much agree with Daniel_ on this one.

Everyone reacts to things differently. You know that from experience.. she may have just been scared deep down and that's how you handled it.

You do need to admit that if it freaked her out, you're blood pressure can handle the not having support better than worrying about your wife all day and night.

alicat

Pan, I feel that asking what "a wife" would tell "her husband" blank blank blank, isn't really answerable. We are all different people and none of us really know what anyone else's "true" relationship or marriage is behind closed doors.

I myself worry every freaking day about my husband from the moment he leaves at 4:30-5:30am with an hour drive to work and back, to when he comes home 12-14 hrs. later. He travel's a lot for work and I worry constantly. Sometimes he gets to a plant and is caught up with work or, if he rarely has a co-worker traveling with him, he is distracted (happy to have company and not thinking about home) and forgets to call me and update me on his hotel room # or even if he's okay (I always track his flight's, so I know he landed safely).

I admit I can go off the deep end sometimes if I haven't heard from him. Especially if an airline has crappy updates on delay's and flight status. If hubby is fine on his end, he doesn't realize how worried I am on mine and can act like it's no big deal when I finally get through to him. I admit that sometime's my worry can instantly transform into anger towards him when I finally get contact with him.

My concern for you is you saying that her last words to you before going to bed were "Maybe we just shouldn't talk anymore ever". In my 20 yr. marriage, we've had rough times but never such a brick wall statement to each other as that. Only you can determine if that is a much bigger problem in your marriage or a one time response. My explination in the previous paragraph was to point out that maybe that is her irrational response to the thought that her love has been in danger and maybe put himself in MORE danger by the way he responded.

You work in that environment day in and day out, you have a base ablility to judge a situation and respond according to your experience. It seems to me that even YOU were spooked and upset by the experience, therefore I have to ask how you think she should've responded?

Ali

__________________
'Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun, The frumious Bandersnatch!'--Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll

"You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late."--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Charlatan

I am with Phil on this... are you sure you are in the relationship you want to be?

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

roachboy

it's really hard to evaluate the story, pan, because writing erases tone and any number of other situational cues that might enable you--and any of us reading it even more---to make a nuanced response to your question. fact is that you've got two main interpretations of the interaction with your wife in the thread---one which reads it straight, in the way you present it and the other which reads degrees of psychological complexity into her response and so makes of it a reaction to anxiety or to its discharge.

those are the two main options that occurred to me as well as i was reading the story.
thing is that each read would push you in a different direction concerning your take on things.
but reading the story, there's really no way for any of us to *know* even what the conversation was "really like"--we have a pretty clear idea of your reaction to it---but not of the extent to which your reaction is a particular interpretation that comes out of the stress of the situation you found yourself in at work.

so in the end you have to choose how to see this.
noodle is right: phil and charlatan are right: others who have posted are also right insofar as we're all at a remove and responding to the way in which you wrote the story.

this is in no way a criticism of the story either...it's more a word of caution. if you're looking for relationship advice on this basis, you should take all this with a grain of salt. obviously. if you're looking for a vindication of your response to all this, you have it. but if you're looking for something deeper than that, the ball's still in your court.

i wish you well, comrade.
the detox encounter was obviously problematic and resonated with other stuff, so that when you told your wife the story you were probably looking for alot that had as much to do with those circuits within you as with the surface of the story.
but i don't know what to tell you about that.

i'd prefer to know more before exiting wishy-washy ness

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

pan6467

True, we don't always get the responses we expect or want. It's tough. I wrote the OP to get others opinions because I expected one response and got something different and it hurt. So I wanted to see if what I felt was normal.

Relationships are tough and understanding one another takes effort, time and hard work. This is an example of that. I wanted to see if I was right in being hurt, in any relationship you get hurt and you have good times.... you just hope the good outweighs the bad.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

MSD

Wasn't there another recent incident you posted about where your wife reacted to something in a way that really upset you? It's not right for someone in a committed relationship to hurt their partner by disregarding their emotional well-being. You need to talk to her about understanding things from your perspective, and if this is a symptom of a greater problem, perhaps seek counseling so that a professional, experienced third party can help you make sure you're understanding each other on the same level.

Strange Famous

Obviously its hard for anyone here to comment on the exact details of a married relationship: but I would have throught the wife would be pretty grateful this guy kept his cool. Many people if insulted like that would have taken the guy aside and beaten the shit out of him. Drunk people fall over sometimes, dont they?

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

alicat

I'm tired so this might not be thorough but I thought it was relevent to this thread.

My hubby's car is in the shop so he is borrowing my Dad's RAV to get to and from work (he leaves between 4:30-5:30am).

This morning he left late for work, around 6am, and we in Michigan are getting slapped again with snow and very low temps. About 10-15 min. into his hour drive to work, he hit a patch of ice under the snow on the highway. He skidded sideway's and somehow managed to miss two other cars before he went off the road into a 6 ft. ditch.

I assume despite taking out a 3" sappling with the front bumper, that because he was ok, he called me instead of 911 immediately after he came to rest. It was 6:21 and I was dead asleep but I bolted awake at his ring tone.

I answered and he related that he'd gone off the road and was in the ditch. I asked where he was and was my Dad's car okay? We talked a couple of minute's and he said "aren't you going to ask if I'm okay?". See, the biggest worries I have in my life are for my husband, sister and dad's safety and health. It never dawned on me to ask if he was okay because, hello, he'd called ME not the police (and was able to), so I assumed he was perfectly fine. (He was able to drive down a bit and up onto the road).

As the day went on I realized just how callous my reaction must've seemed to him (a little smidge of defense is that I was half-asleep, just a smidge). As soon as he walked in the door tonight, I gave him a big hug, apology and the explination of my reaction.

I think this in some small way, tie's in to Pan's wifes reaction and to what I said in my first post. Again, I'm tired so sorry if this doesn't seem as connected as it does in my sleepy brain.

__________________
'Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun, The frumious Bandersnatch!'--Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll

"You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late."--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nisses

Pan,

It's a reaction I could/would get from my father when I was still living at home as well.
Instead of checking/offering support, the berating is something I grew accustomed to.

It's more the fact that it happened, and that you should not have done such a thing. He reacted this way especially since it's something after the facts, and apparently you lived through it. An impulse because he did care, and knew I was smart enough to not put myself in those situations.
If the situation was still going on, it would probably be a different reaction. However the reason for the reaction would still be the same.

It's something I have done in the past as reflex with my gf as well...
I've since tried to bite that back and do offer support at the very least at first, if the berating is still warranted after that.

As said before, we're all different people.

However the last part about not talking at all anymore... that does sound very odd indeed, for people you care about.


As for the drunk: I would pretty much have handled that the way you did. Down to the STFU even. You're not alone in that at least


However, keep in mind that he was drunk. I would watch myself a bit for the coming days, but once sober (if he even remembers) he's not likely to actually attempt anything.

__________________
Moderation should be moderately moderated.