TD;LR My boyfriend and I picked up a fight because I felt he wasn’t interested in what I was explaining.
Hi, this is my first post here and need some advice even though it may seem really stupid. My bf(m21) and I(f21) are in a two year relationship. I’m away for a week during holidays and he’s barely texting me as he’s studying, no problem. Anyway, I miss him, and I try to videocall him at least once a day.
We have a inner joke to say “nicey” (not this word but the best translation I could think of it) to refer something reaally amazing. He has admitted using that word as a default answer many times.
The thing is that he asked me about my day and I tell him about today, he says “niceyy”. I tell him the event I went last night, he almost cut me as I wasn’t finished saying “niceyy”. Now I’m kinda sensing he’s saying that as a default answer. I tell him about the earlier night, I went out partying with my friend (f21) and was explaining a story that happened yesterday. Again, he only answers “niceyy”. At this point I’m telling him that I feel he’s not listening to me. He claims he is, but he’s doing not effort to be part of the conversation. He tells me “What do you expect me to say?”…. that made me feel awful. He asked about my day, he didn’t make no effort to introduce himself to it and claims I’m making him do it.
We are kinda mad to eachother right now and I tried to explain that it made me feel he wasn’t interested, but he asks again what’s supposed to say more than that. I told him when someone asks about the day to another one the minimum you can do is create this sense of understanding and interest by participating in some way like “understand”, asking questions about it, feeling that you are really listening. How can I talk to him about this? I feel this is a very superficial matter and very immature yet it makes me feel bad. He’s been like that for awhile now, so it’s not exams stress.
5 comments
He should just stop asking
My partner also tends to not listen. I tell him some fact from my day and then later in the day he will act as if I’ve never told him (because he wasn’t listening). I think this is how men are wired.. they just tune out women sometimes. Maybe he is not a very good listener too. What helps is to limit distractions – tv, no talking when driving, no phones. Then he might be able to focus more on your words.
>He tells me “What do you expect me to say?“
Well, that’s where you respond “I’d appreciate if you tried to answer in sentences rather than just “nicey”, even if you don’t mean to that just makes me feel like you’re not very invested in what I’m saying.”
It’s not about teaching him to have a conversation; I get that it’s frustrating to you but he might genuinely not understand what the problem is, different people have different ways of communicating, and you’re going to have to express your issue clearly so he can do something with it.
> he’s barely texting me as he’s studying, no problem. Anyway, I miss him, and I try to videocall him at least once a day.
Why are you calling him daily when he needs to study? I suspect that’s why he wasn’t really listening, his mind is on what he was doing when you called. He’s not interested in your day right now.
You’ve been together 2 years, has he done this before
Just be kind to each other.