I tried preventing my boyfriend from leaving during an argument, was it still wrong?

[Anonymous]

He wanted to step out and I hated that. I tried blocking the door with my body and lightly pulling his left wrist to stop him, telling him he's not going anywhere.

He managed to push me out of the way and left. The relationship has been going sour lately but now he's claiming to have felt trapped and held against his will when I did that. I just wanted him to stay and work things out. Was that still wrong?

[quaranta]

It was wrong, but not "dangerous" at least, I don't think it's something to deeply condemn generally, but it depends on the context, and in some cases it could be actually really bad.
Either way he did express he didn't like it, and still, his word counts more than ours, because the way someone lives an aggression is generally always legit.
However you did that for a reason, I don't think you usually trap people during arguments, but I assume you had frequent arguments in your relationship, faced with poor communication skills both sides, which leaded him to get an avoidant attitude when facing them, relying on the fact that sooner or later the dust settles (but that never settles for real if things aren't solved).
So the solution here is not to decide if you did right or wrong, but to fix the problem behind: with that action you communicated to him (aggressively) that you have enough of him escaping from problems and that you need him to be more responsible/present/participative/transparent when you expose a problem, concern etc. So this is what you want (regardless if you are right or not, he might leave because of avoiding his responsibilities, or he might leave because you're obsessively passive aggressive never having enough and he wants to escape the torture, I can't know).
There is for sure one who is more at fault than the other here (and I can't know who), but determining who, is not the point in front of severe communication issues that lead you to use aggression to counter them.
You are going nowhere if you both don't stop and work on cooperating to communicate better. This episode should be seen as a symptom that your communication issues crossed a line and that's time to either address them efficiently or face the miserable destiny of a turbulent end of the relationship, and such events shouldn't become the norm and shouldn't repeat.

[MoniqueTLC]

Women and men respond differently to emotions/conflict. We, as women want to talk about things straight away, and sort it out immediately, whereas men need time to process things and think before they want to respond (not everyone, this is just a general difference that comes into play).

He probably felt like you didn't respect him and his decision, and tried to force him. Give him his space. All you can do now is reiterate to him that you apologise, you just wanted to resolve the argument there and then, and did not consider how he felt or what he wanted.

When he's ready, I'm sure he will interact more.

[Anonymous]

Yes, you were wrong. Let him go and cool off.

[Asker]

Ok. I hope he's ready to talk in person or on the phone eventually. The this moment, he's only communicating via short texts. He hates what I did and felt that was similar to assault.

[Opinion Owner]

Good idea, but don't rush it.

[spartan55]

Yes it was, you sound like a psycho.

[Asker]

I just wanted to work things out. I thought things were eventually going to get better.

[spartan55]

Most people and about 99.9% of guys need a cooling off period.