I'm wondering where everyone's line in the sand was/is while in relationships. What's enough to make you want to act out in a big way around men, either getting up in their faces and telling them about what they're doing and defining the problem in BLUNT terms, or just door slamming them and walking away?

I've had several instances of both declaring war and door slamming over the decades, but they all form a pattern. Basically, I never care enough to try to control anyone else, but the moment someone tries to control me, it is WAR.

The first pattern is thinking any of my preferences are only temporary, and that a man has any right to change anything about me. Nope, here's where I dig in my heels, get more stubborn than any mule, super hard-headed, and insist on my own way, especially if it's a matter of taste. This is absolutely about power, control, dominance, not respecting me just as I am, trying to exert petty control. I figure by this point, putting my foot down means I have nothing to lose, and the guy will bugger off soon enough anyway once he sees I have a mind and a spine, and can't be manipulated. Never fails, they leave quickly. It's about manipulation, not care, not concern. I'm no Galatea; you, sir, are no Pygmalion.

The second pattern is behavior that's sexist/misogynistic. With my first LVX-husband, he had very blue-collar ideas about me as the female doing the second shift, ie working all day, then cleaning from the moment I got home. At first, pickme and Good Wife that I was trying to be, I tried to step up, but it got pretty overwhelming pretty quickly. At first I was in grad school (and outpaced him by TWO degrees), then I was a first-year teacher (who was being exploited: three classes of HS freshman English, a 200-pg yearbook, plus five issues of the student newspaper, as a FIRST YEAR teacher. They needed a warm body; I needed a job. I had chest pains that year at 26.) My LVX played dumb, did chores haphazardly so I had to go behind him and do it right; it was performative incompetence, so I'd step up and he wouldn't have to. This is planned manipulation, make no mistake. Eventually I simply gave up trying to keep HIS house (not OUR, house, HIS rent house) clean. I cleaned up only after myself, and eventually the house stank, so it was a Pyrrhic victory. I simply wouldn't be controlled, or have affection doled out based on how much housework I did... which he did perfectly well before I came along. So transactional. I was disgusted.

The third pattern is talking only to other men, or lobbing only softball questions to women, or even worse, tuning out when women are talking, tuning in when men talk. When younger, I'd fight to be heard and understood (cOmMuNiCaTiOn), because I was young and egotistical and naive. I simply was always treated as a person who mattered in my family of origin, so I found it incomprehensible to be ignored out in public by men, so I'd fight and scrap to be included in the conversation, to soothe my pickme ego. These days, hell, for decades now, I size these men up, know immediately they're highly insecure, threatened by me as an outspoken, intelligent woman, emotionally and mentally limited, and more than likely sexist, misogynstic, probably xenophobic and homophobic, too, and just leave them be. My late second husband and I had an academic acquaintance of his who did this. We went out to dinner, the three of us (for some reason the guy's wife couldn't make it), and the guy proceeded to talk 99% to just my husband that night, about things I knew nothing about, so I couldn't contribute anything. Whenever he did ask me something, it was a one- or two-word answer, about something I don't even remember, just generic, innocuous, etc. I was pissed, and got out my phone; my husband noticed, and he smiled at me, which indicated yep, he saw, was amused, knew what I was doing, and we'd talk later. We ended up dumping the guy, because of that behavior at that dinner. No loss.