Reminds me of a conversation I had with my partner the other day. I found myself getting upset because I felt that he was responding to something I was interested in, with a neutral/dismissive attitude, and I felt sad as a result. I expressed this to him, and he said "I'm trying to respond as best I can babe, I understand this is interesting to you and that's great, I just don't have anything more to say on the topic personally. I don't know why you're feeling upset about it, but I love you and I am doing my best."

My partner and I trust each other, and I knew what he was saying was true. So I had a think, because I couldn't figure out where my emotions were suddenly coming from. Then I realised that the emotion I was feeling was not actually caused by him, but was an automatic response to a tone of voice my mother used to use constantly when she would dismiss anything I was interested in. And not only would she dismiss it, but she would make out that I was a bad person who was hurting her by bringing up something that she didn't like. That caused a lot of guilt and shame for me growing up. So I associated that tone of voice with my mother's emotional abuse. And even though my partner didn't mean to be dismissive when he used that tone of voice, I automatically associated that tone with dismissiveness, subconsciously.

Figuring this out, I told my partner, and we grew even closer. He validated my feelings about my mother's abuse, and I apologised to him for overreacting to a benign comment. We understood the causes of our little misunderstanding, and felt we grew. <3