bf (35 m) says i (30f) make him feel like a monster when i react to some of the things he says

29 comments

1. I hate to pry, but it’s impossible to make any kind of judgement on what’s going on here without examples. He could be saying something that genuinely warrants that reaction, or you could be oversensitive, it’s just impossible to tell without know what he’s saying.

2. It sounds like you are just a sensitive person.

   If you have anxiety you can directly work on that with a therapist

   And you can work on sensitivity by exposing yourself to new and stressful things

   Let your boyfriend know that you want him to be able to express himself and not feel like he can’t talk about it because it might cause you to react.

3. I get how you feel. I’m the same way with my partner. I would say it’s a little bit on both your parts. He should be more cognizant of how he responds to you, since you are more sensitive. & you also may need to not get so worked up over each comment. If he’s sweet a majority or the time, I’m sure he isn’t looking to upset you. However, if over time you can’t seem to overlook or look past these comments and he can’t hold up his end, this may come down to a compatibility conversation.

4. What sorts of things does he say that gets this reaction? He could be saying terrible things and then gaslighting you, or you could be being over-sensitive, and it’s difficult to tell without examples.

5. Without more information it can go either direction.

   I will say though, that real relationships, with anyone, will never, ever be 100% sweetness. That doesn’t mean being rude or mean, but sometimes you just need to be able to talk to someone about feelings and thoughts that aren’t just super happy ones.

6. You need some therapy, kid, how do you want to success in life, if not even the people who love you can criticize you? It’s not a one day to another thing, but you need to live and learn from it.

7. No relationship has ever, or will ever be all all sweetness. That’s not a relationship. A relationship should allow both people to feel like they can be comfortable and not on 100 all the time, which includes emotions.

   Not saying that it’s ok to be rude or mean to your partner. But it’s unrealistic to expect anybody to be sweet and cheery all the time. Sometimes it’s even good to see your partner in that light because it can turn unhealthy if someone feels like they’re walking on eggeshells.

   You might be “over sensitive” for lack of better term. But I think it could also be that because you see your boyfriend as someone so sweet that it’s hard to respond correctly when he comes off as less.

   Work on that! Your bf is a person with all types of emotions, it could be worth it to have a deeper conversation about expressing them.

   Good Luck!

8. this happens with me sometimes. we usually clear it up after i say “hey are you feeling okay? your tone of voice just now gave me signs you might be mad at me” and he might say he’s feeling fine and didn’t mean to have a tone, and sometimes we figure out it was because he was hungry or anxious about something and we address that. it it happens to you this often it’s definitely not nothing. maybe try to change the way you address it? it could have something to do with an underlying trigger or trauma for you and that means it’s something for you to work on together. if theres anything you should absolutely ***not*** do it’s just say you’re being “too sensitive” and let it go

9. I think he’s offloading all of the emotional work that needs to happen here onto you, and not taking any responsibility for his actions. You “make him feel like a monster” with your facial expressions so you need to stop, but he doesn’t need to try to stop hurting your feelings?

10. There’s absolutely no way to tell how to feel about this without examples.

11. Does he seem concerned about how he made you feel? Or is it just an immediate DARVO each time where *you’re*​ really the bad guy for accusing him of being anything but a saint towards you at all times? I have to say I have this issue with my partner as well, and my attempts to address it usually mean me apologizing, we spend the whole conversation discussing how my hurt feelings made HIM feel, and the thing that hurt me never gets addressed or solved. I kind of gave up after a while and I just cringe and ignore the rudeness all the time. His tone and word choice is so regularly condescending and rude now that I basically don’t take him anywhere, so no one who cares about me has to hear the way he speaks to me on a routine basis. Because if they did I’d be one of those ridiculous women making excuses for the way a guy treats me, insisting that he doesn’t mean things the way it sounds, that’s just the way he is and it’s different trust me. I just cringe thinking about it. I’m honestly glad the pandemic destroyed our social lives and I don’t go out socially with him much anymore.

    I wish I had better advice. Don’t be like me I guess? Ideally, to resolve issues like this, it would require both of you to have some empathy, and acknowledge things without accusation. If you could tell him how something sounded, not tell him what his intention was, but just tell him the way it sounded to you. And he would need to be empathetic to that, rather than offended and be able to say something like oh sorry I didn’t mean it that way. Then you could both move on? He would need to be able to understand that an “oh sorry I didn’t mean it that way” isn’t an admission of trying to hurt someone, its totally the opposite, an unawareness of how something sounded, and the more willing he is to say a simple “oh sorry what I meant was…” the more believable it is that there was no intentional rudeness. If he goes straight to offended, it seems like he’s only thinking about his own feelings and trying to correct you so that he never gets hurt. It might be easier for him not to get offended as long as you don’t assign intentions to him, just stick with I statements and how you perceived something. That can be how you contribute to solving the issue, is by not necessarily dictating what his reality was. If that makes sense? It won’t work if he isn’t more invested in your feelings though, its not a communication problem you can solve on your own.

12. This is…very vague. Are these comments about YOU or like ‘the fucking TRAFFIC today’ being too aggressive for your tastes?

    Even if about you, is he sensible but just really direct and honest and doesn’t couch his language or does he express frustration about you and is objectively rude about it?

13. It’s hard to know exactly what you’re saying without examples but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that your partner be nice&respectful to you all the time. Obviously we all have bad days and will experience negative emotions but it’s still possible to feel your feelings without being *mean* to your partner. Tbh whenever I hear that a man is telling a woman she’s being “too sensitive” it’s usually because she’s having a reasonable reaction to being spoken to disrespectfully and he’s too immature to admit accountability. The fact that he “feels like a monster” is his problem to be honest. Idk the fact that you’ve been with him 3 years and only take offense to certain things he says sounds like he’s occasionally mean to you and you don’t like it not that you’re just an entirely too sensitive and over- reactive person. I don’t think you should have to harden yourself in order to better weather his insults I think he should learn to control himself and respect your feelings. Not to dramatize the situation but this is exactly what my abusive ex would say to me when I was brought to tears by him being (objectively) an asshole. The problem wasn’t him saying something disgusting to me, it was my reacting to him saying it that was the problem and that made HIM feel bad 😥 so then I had to apologize to him for being hurt by him HAAA. Just be careful OP, sensitivity isn’t a bad thing.

14. If you spoke in a harsh tone that bothered someone you care about, how would you react? Would you get upset at them for getting upset? Or would you express concern for inadvertently hurting them?

    I once had a person in my life who did what you are describing your partner doing. I described them as “drive-by insults”. It almost always happened when we were with other people. I’d be telling everyone a story, and she’d suddenly interrupt with a snarky comment. Ie, I’d be trying to tell a story about high school, and she’d interrupt to say, “oh, so last week?”. These comments were so sudden and out of nowhere, but she’d look so sweet and charming, so I’d go on, “uhhh…anyway, as I was saying,” no longer feeling as confident in telling my story to everyone.

    The first few times she did this, I didn’t know what to make of it. It’s only after this happened multiple times, always when I was trying to talk to a group of people, always a comment that was designed to make me appear childish or immature, always a sudden quick interruption that threw me off my story, did I realise this was an *abuse tactic.* It was her own way (amongst many others) of trying to put me down in front of our friends. It took me years to recognise it. But once I started recognising her not as a benign friend but a toxic individual what enjoyed putting me down, all her tactics, subtle and manipulative and they were, became apparent.

    The issue isn’t that you’re too sensitive. The issue is that you’re being bullied.

15. Please please give one concrete example of his literal words to you that caused you to react. I know it’s hard, and I can guess why it’s hard to be concrete about. I have a hunch about what’s going on here – I think there’s a hard truth about the situation that you’re having trouble taking head-on – but even one concrete example would help a lot.

16. You’re feelings and observations are valid, but you are trying convince yourself they aren’t. Instead of addressing his problematic behavior, he’s making you feel that your feelings are the problem. Did I get that correctly?

    I’ll just say this bluntly.

    You are actively participating in grooming yourself to accept abusive behavior. Rationalizing his negative behavior as something you need to accept, to push down your own feelings and feel guilty about how you feel – that ain’t it.

    This will extend into other areas of your relationship. Any decision you make which disagrees with his point of view will come into question as invalid because you are being problematic and making him feel like monster .Just know what your are doing to yourself, your mental health and your life.

17. without more details, a thing i encountered in dating was “i’m apologizing for making you feel bad for something you did.” some people can’t take responsibility for upsetting someone, so then the upset becomes the thing to overcome.

    people are able to moderate their tone. if as you say he doesn’t do this to anyone else? he can for sure choose when he does it.

18. It’s impossible to say whether he’s being rude or if you’re overreacting and tone policing without specific examples.

    If he’s watching the news at home and says “F*ck that guy!” when it covers a crime story or whatever and you freak out about it then yeah, I’d would say you were being overly sensitive.

    If he told you that you looked like sh*t and you cried or got upset, then obv he’s a jerk and your reaction was warranted.

    See the huge potential spectrum? Post is too vague. Regardless, maybe you’re just incompatible.

19. What are we suppose to do with this?

20. Hope you toss this one back into the sea, dear one (could be your mum, here). The fact that you don’t have this issue with other people tells me he is weaponzing his actions and his feelings against you while completely disregarding your feelings, acting like you’re wrong for feeling hurt when he, in fact, is saying hurtful things in hurtful ways. Not healthy.

21. Depends on what it is he’s saying, I guess. It sounds like he’s gaslighting you. If he’s saying something actually rude and you’re responding to that and then he’s turning it around on you like you’re the bad guy, that’s manipulation.

22. He’s making himself out to be the victim. You’re allowed to have a relationship where you don’t feel scared. I think my best advice is to talk to him about how you’re sensitive to tone and to come to an agreement about how you want to navigate this.

    My partner also tends to be sensitive tones and conflict. Sometimes I get upset (it happens) but a quick reminder from them helps me calm down a little and rephrase what I said in a way they’re more willing to listen. Communication needs to happen. It’s not always pretty, but both parties need to figure out a system that works.

23. I dated a guy like this. Keyword: dated. Past tense.

    Guess what? Now I’m going out with a guy who NEVER says I’m being too sensitive.

24. First off, you didn’t provide details about what he said. That makes it difficult to gauge whether the remarks were rude, mean or simply inappropriate. Secondly, you’re 30? I’m having trouble with that. You just “want sweetness”? Really? This is not realistic. People have flaws. They’re not perfect. We don’t live in Pollyanna land. Third and lastly, you’ve been together for 3 years and this just came up? Nobody has to “accept” any behavior that doesn’t mesh with them. Yes, you sound overly sensitive.

25. If you have to be this vague, it’s you.

26. > I don’t want a relationship where we speak harshly to each other. I just want sweetness

    This sounds very conflict-avoidant to me.

    There’s definitely a world where people can be too aggressive, but there’s also a world where it’s OK for people to act angry towards you when they are angry at you for something you did.

    You didn’t give us a direct example, but it SEEMS like when your BF has a problem with you he’s not shying about expressing his annoyance at you.

    IDK the specifics, but it is unreasonable for you to expect him to ALWAYS be sweet to you. But he also might be unreasonable with how aggressive his tone is towards you. We’d need more examples to know how to balance it.

27. Post a photo of yourself on r/roastme. It will humble you quick quick and maybe help you to not be so sensitive.

28. This reminds me of the partner of a friend of mine. On the one side he’s great, makes her pancakes in the morning, worries about her safety when she’s out and offers to pick her up from anywhere, makes thoughtful gifts. But. He is also a total grump. Makes snide comments as a joke but to me is comes across as nitpicky and mean. She laughs about it and doesn’t take it seriously. I know I would never be compatible with this kind of negativity but she is.

    What I want to say. Sadly, maybe you aren’t compatible enough. Nobody is TA here, only 2 people with different modes of communication

29. He’s gaslighting and emotionally abusing you.