My (27f) boyfriend (39m) acts like things are fine and nothing happened when we have a disagreement over conflicting wants and needs. I moved to his town, and badly miss the city I lived in. He is unwilling to live anywhere but here. This is probably our biggest conflict of interest, but we have some others and anytime I bring things up he just dismisses it and moves on doing a mundane task (getting up to go to bed, playing on his phone, shuffling things around, etc.). I really love him but his style of acting like everything is fine is really clashing with me because 1. I’m unhappy with where we live and trying to find a compromise 2. He acts like everything is fine when this is affecting me and I’ve expressed that. Is there another way I can approach this? Starting to feel like a lost cause.
TLDR: every time we disagree my boyfriend acts like things are fine and doesn’t want to find a solution.
6 comments
Of course he doesn’t want to find a”solution”.
He’s happy with how things are and finding a solution that makes you happy might mean giving up a little of his.
You moved to be with him. You are not happy.
He isn’t going to do anything the least bit uncomfortable for him to make you happy.
Start job hunting and apartment hunting back where you lived snd were happy before.
First off sorry for this. Us guys have a way of putting off things that we think we can deal with later. If you put off sex will he listen? Not saying to do that, just using as context.
Your approch should be to talk to him when he is actaul listening. Like going out to dinner or some where with out distraction. Give him a ultimatum, say listen, I came here because i love you. You need to listen to my feelings or this will never work. Give him a little more time to adjust.
I myself adjusted when my wife told me off after we get married. We had to make adjustment and compromise to be able to make us both happy. But i dont think he will move (town). Some of us are set in our ways
You have to be direct, “This problem is still not solved, and we have to solve it.” Then if he does not participate, you tell him the best solution you can come up with with and say, “Okay, since you aren’t helping, the best option I have is X. Are we going to do that or do you have a better idea that actually solves the problem?” and make him either commit to your solution or offer up other options. If he does not do either, then you solve the problem in whatever way you have to that is under your control, even if it means moving away from him. If he refuses to have a relationship with you, then you have to accept that.
To me, it sounds like he knows exactly what he’s doing. He likes how things are, and he’s hoping if he puts you off for long enough, you’ll give up. This is a terrible way to handle conflict. And at his age, I doubt he’ll change.
You chose to move somewhere you knew he didn’t want to move from, and now your complaining about it?
>I moved to his town, and badly miss the city I lived in. He is unwilling to live anywhere but here
Well, if you talked about this before you made the decision to move there, what did you really expect? He doesn’t want to compromise now just like he didn’t want to compromise then. If you can’t deal with living where you live right now then move out. He’s not prepared to do anything about it.