I am a 27F and my boyfriend is 30. We’ve been together 8 months and recently he’s noticed how quiet I am. I have A LOT of anxiety so that causes me to not talk a lot. He likes to talk and will tell me about random things or just have random banter. I will usually respond with “yeah” most of the time cause my mind just goes blank. I feel like we had a lot to talk about in the beginning as we were getting to know each other and now it’s getting harder for me to engage in conversation. It seems very easy for him to just talk and for me it’s very hard. It’s not like I don’t want to talk to him but everytime he doesn’t speak to me first I know I have to say something and I get really anxious and my mind goes absolutely blank. I’m getting really scared about this because he has also mentioned it several times to me and I don’t know how to fix it.
I feel like I can talk to him better in person rather than texting or over the phone but we had a phone call last night and it was filled with awkward silences and it made me panic so bad. Any advice? And yes I am in therapy for my anxiety.
td;lr having a hard time engaging in conversations with my boyfriend
2 comments
I used to have bad anxiety problems. Therapy only can take you so far when you are crippled with fear.
Get a strong medication for anxiety. It will be a huge relief once you get the right one and right dosage. I had a girlfriend who went from barely able to speak to freely telling co-workers to fuck off.
I take a daily dose of lexapro with xanax for the occasional breakthrough anxiety.
I went from stressed out PTSD war veteran with a penchant for hostility to a fairly calm, happy person.
I was in the same boat. It mostly stemmed from my low self esteem and lack of confidence in my own opinions. I never wanted to be “wrong.”
What really helped me was putting aside distractions when we’re talking. When my mind blanks, I may ask him a question or ask him to repeat himself to give me some processing time. Otherwise I may just straight up say “I need to think about that, can we come back to this?” A lot of the time we’ve found that by allowing me more time to think things over I tend to be more talkative and confident in my opinions.
Its hard. It really is. He loves discussing movies and half the time after we watch a movie he’ll ask me what I thought and I’ll be “it was good” or “I liked it” and he wants a deep dive. I’ve learned to respond with “I liked it, my favorite part was when…” or “it was really good. What did you think about…?” If you don’t have much to add give him something to run with.
If there’s silence just let him know you’re thinking it over. Give yourself time to formulate what you want to communicate. If he’s a good guy and cares, he’ll understand. It may be a good idea to sit down a figure out how you prefer to communicate so you’re both on the same page.
Conversation for us anxiety prone people takes time and practice.