Called the Police
My girlfriend and I had a couple of nasty conflicts early this year, but managed to get past that and rebuild the relationship. Things got stressful again in recent months, as I lost my job while she is struggling with two part-time jobs and a difficult semester of classes. One of her five classes is an online Finance class which I have been doing for her. I do all the problem sets online and take the tests online, so she can focus on her other four classes. I am also tutoring her in Quantitative Analysis, which is kind of silly because I never took that class when I was in college, and I don't use quantitative analysis in my career, so I don't know the material any better than she does. But I am somewhat good with numbers, so I study each chapter and then help her through the homework and help her study for the exams. It's tough, because some of the material isn't even in the textbook and is only covered in the lectures.
This morning, we were rushing to finish a difficult problem set that was assigned two days ago and due this morning. We were 90% done but only had about 20 minutes left before she needed to go, when she stopped working on the problem and started blaming me for not being better prepared. I tried to get her to re-focus on the problem. She needs to pass this class to graduate, and she is going to fail this class if we don't get about 90% of the remaining points in the class. She kept nagging me to apologize for not being better prepared and I got impatient and told her to stop acting stupid. She got mad, I called her more names, and then she started throwing my stuff on the floor. Just a big stack of blank notecards at first, then papers and small objects like pens and pencils. I told her to leave, so she walked out into the next room and started throwing more stuff on the floor. I told her to leave or I would call the police. She continued to throw stuff on the floor. I tried to push her towards the door and she warned me that I had just committed assault. I let go, and she started throwing stuff on the floor in the kitchen. Nothing breakable so far. I started throwing her stuff outside, including her laptop. She refused to leave and kept throwing (non-breakable) stuff on the floor, then started throwing weightier objects down the basement stairs. I called the police.
Once I called the police, she stopped throwing stuff on the floor, but still refused to leave. We talked a bit more calmly then, and I got dressed in warmer clothes under the assumption that I would be going to jail for assault. She told me that she would press charges.
Two police cars arrived. One officer talked to me outside while the other one talked to her inside. I told the officer honestly what had happened, without trying to make myself look good. I concluded by apologizing and saying that she and I are both stupid people. I also told him that we are both going through a tough time: I'm unemployed and she has a heavy load of work and school.
The other officer helped her pick up her belongings and they made her leave. The officer talking to me advised me to talk things over with her on the phone before seeing her face to face again. Nobody got arrested.
While I was tossing her stuff outside, I started to feel ashamed about the whole situation, and even sorry that she was under such stress.
Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.