Tl;Dr my bf (M30) and I (f29) have been dating for 2 1/2 years. I try communicating my needs and boundaries but I feel like he doesn’t listen or put in effort. What ways can I communicate better to get him to listen?
Over all we have a good relationship. This makes things frustrating for me. For the most part he helps with the kids, things around the house, and cooks. However I have to prompt him to do so. I try to communicate that I need help with things more, need him to take initiative, not wait for me to tell/ask him what to do. I work, do most of the running around, plan family things, clean, cook, get groceries, take care of finances, etc.. I have said how I need him to step up. He will for a bit than back to where we started. Even “bedroom” stuff. He will say he wants me, be turned on, but doesn’t put in effort to do things.
Or I’ll set boundaries like I need alone time for a bit. Yet he will interrupt me during that.
I have said that I need more help with things and I hate feeling like a manager. But it keeps on repeating. How can I communicate to get through to him?
3 comments
For the house chores or cooking, maybe a schedule would help. That way it can be done on a repeatable basis. Like Sundays can be the day he is meant to clean, you cook X week and he cooks Y week. And so on
I’m so sorry you’re feeling this way. It sounds like you’ve been trying to communicate your needs and boundaries to your boyfriend, but it’s not really getting through to him. You’re putting in so much effort and handling so much, and it’s just not fair that you have to prompt him for basic help and he still doesn’t listen or put in effort in the “bedroom” either. It’s frustrating that no matter how many times you try to talk to him about it, it seems like things just keep going back to how they were.
I feel you on feeling like a manager, you shouldn’t have to do that in a relationship. You deserve a partner who is willing to listen to you and put in effort to make things better. It sounds like you need some support and understanding, and it’s not happening from your boyfriend.
I don’t have all the answers, but maybe try to have a heart-to-heart with him, make sure he’s really listening to you and try to express how you’re feeling. Let him know the impact it’s having on you and the relationship. Maybe try to come up with some solutions together on how he can step up and help more. It’s not just about him doing things for you, it’s about him being a supportive and loving partner.
But, girl, if it just keeps repeating and he doesn’t make changes, you gotta do what’s best for you and your emotional wellbeing. You deserve to be happy and feel supported in a relationship. Don’t settle for less.
The word “communicate” is employed as a thought-terminating cliche.
In this case, you’re pretending that your boyfriend isn’t able to understand you, which is what it would mean to have a “communication” issue.
He understands you fine, he just doesn’t want to do the things you’re asking.
When you say you need help, he understands that you’re saying that you’ll be frustrated if he doesn’t help. He probably understands that you’re saying the relationship will be damaged if he doesn’t start helping. He understands all of the words coming out of your mouth, your communications are crystal clear.
But he doesn’t want to help. That’s not his priority. When he doesn’t help, and when he only helps when directed, he is also sending a 100% clear communication back to you about *exactly* what his priorities are.
When you instruct him to “help more”, you’re doing the equivalent of telling a person who is stood outside in the middle of the day to believe it is night – it’s not possible to tell a person who can see the sun is in the sky that it is night and have them truly believe it, and it is not possible to tell a person who believes it is your job to do the domestic work to believe that it is actually their shared responsibility for exactly the same reason.
What you’ve become is a nag. That’s not your fault – it’s a manifestation of the fact that you don’t comprehend how minds work. You don’t comprehend that you can’t simply instruct a person to believe something, and as a result you try an ineffective strategy over and over again, saying the same thing and issuing the same command – that’s nagging. It’s completely useless.
I suspect you will understand your error after reading this – well, once you do you can change your approach. Whilst you can’t tell a person what to believe, you can tease out and re-evaluate their reasoning with them. What you need to do is sit him down and ask him ***why*** he does not view it as his responsibility to clean the house. You need to sit him down and ask him ***why*** he is happy to wait until you direct him.
If you do this in an accusatory way, he will confabulate answers – this means he’ll defensively make up lies that he doesn’t even know are lies. You really have to ask, in the absolute spirit of curiosity, **why,** and take whatever you hear as the likely truth.
In that initial conversation, you should have no objective of changing his view – for one, a person’s view cannot really update until they’ve slept multiple times after accepting a new line of reasoning. You should do nothing except try to understand why, on a mechanical level, he believes those things.
Once you understand why, go from there – after that conversation where you really tried to access and understand his reasoning, after you leave that conversation without trying to change anything, he will be stunned. That will be the most he’s ever thought about that topic in years, and I assure you he’ll still be thinking about it by the time he goes to bed. You might be surprised at the results of that alone.