For context we’ve been dating for 5 years almost and I have afro hair and he has afro hair (this is important) and he has two game accounts. His main one he uses he dresses up as a girl and his original account that he has had for longer is a male like he is but he plays on his girl account most often because he has more valuables on there & he says people are nicer to him on the account where he is a girl and it’s whatever to me I don’t mind
But the problem starts yesterday when I asked about how he dresses his girl avatar. He makes his male avatar have black hairstyles but I noticed it wasn’t the same for his girl avatar so I asked him about it and there was a reason behind it
He said he does that to represent his family since his female relatives have hair like that and he said he’s always represented made his game avatars represent his family in a way like when we played another game where we originally met and he made his character have one gray eye because his brother is blind in one eye
He also said if he was a girl hed have that hair type because the woman in his family have their hair like that and I asked how can that be if you have hair like? Why would it change and he said because of biology and how the black gene is stronger and the men on his family have afro hair and I always hear people say this but it kind of disturbs me because I come from a very racist family and they always tell me I should straighten my hair to be more feminine, at least get textlaxer or something to be more feminine but I always say no and my mother believes in that saying too and she’s white my dad is black but they always say that
Now initially I was taken aback Because I always hear this followed by something racist, it’s never followed by any studies and to me it often sounds like something to justify texturism when it comes to hair but I was the one who asked I just wonder why that’s the thing he notices about his female relatives instead of something more distinct like the one gray eye thing he did for his brother or how he changed his color pallet for his avatar to fit a guilde his brothers made before we started dating
I was like ok that’s cool just wondered and just noticed that and I was kind of silent after that because I was just thinking about it. I appreciated the fact that he told me and were in voice call and I didn’t have much else to say after that and I’m not normally silent unless I’m thinking but he noticed and asked me what was wrong and i was thinking my feelings kind of aren’t justified since he explained it to me and we just talked about it but I had more questions and I just told him I was fine and I’d rather take a nap but he kept asking me over and over so I decided to ask questions regarding that
I was asking if he’s implying that this hair type is masculine to him and he said no and he’s not a hair expert and he tried to make me feel better by saying “I wore my avatars hair frizzy once” and he was referring to a hair style he put on his avatar once.. it wasn’t even afro hair it was larger curls and it was fluffy but definitely not frizzy and that made me feel worse and I just said “how could that be frizzy? If that’s frizzy what do you think about my hair?” And he said he didn’t mean it in that way and he was using different words instead but I was just feeling hurt because he doesn’t always make his character stay the same and make sure it represents his family he’ll just change it whenever sometime but it just feels like exclusion because he doesn’t always take his avatars so seriously, he also says that he only looks at length instead of hair texture but there is also long afros because the game im talking about let’s the community mostly make items now and mostly wears black nearly straight hair so I could understand if color was the issue but he mainly wears black hair
Anyways after that he got annoyed and said he’d rather talk about anything else and I get offended too easily, and since I said I would go to bed anyways I might as well do that and he kept shushing me and telling me to go to bed and he just kept cutting me off to say goodnight.. so I said goodnight and hung up
I was texting him tho because at that point I didn’t feel like sleeping and I was just pointing some things out like why would you ask me to talk if your going to get mad when I do? And he says I cought an attitude and he said I was speaking faster and louder and I can understand how that’s annoying but I was getting emotional so my tone was changing but I felt like he was getting more verbally aggressive with me and started cussing and that makes me uncomfortable
When he kept asking me to talk about it I did apologize in advance in case it was annoying, he can do whatever with his avatar but I was just expressing how I feel and now I feel like he’s mad at me so I hung up
He was also upset that I hung up because we always stay on call and I never leave when I have to go to sleep, I really didn’t think about that when I hung up I just felt like he would get more upset if I stayed because I didnt feel like sleeping anymore and he just kept cutting me off so I left
I did also text afterwords and he said I don’t have to keep talking so I did eventually stop.
I try to go to sleep for three hours but I couldn’t really sleep because I felt sick and I just wanted to see what he’s up too probably thinking wow three hours later and your about to see what he’s up too? Clingy 😠but it’s his day off of work and I wanted to make things better because we were playing a game before that and I wanted to see how far he got in the game and see about playing something else but I realized he unfriended me, took me out of his bio, and blocked me on discord and saying he’s done. Keep in mind we’ve been dating for almost 5 years and I didn’t think this was that serious and he’s never done anything like this the whole time we’ve been together so I was thinking wtf and we spoke on multiple platforms like discord but I saw he blocked me and just said he I can contact him via emails if it was urgent (??) And he was done.
I noticed he didn’t block me on steam and he was playing games and I messaged him on steam but he made sure to unfriend me and said ‘test’ to see if it went through and he said sorry I didn’t think that would go through so he was really about to end everything because of this..
I was sobbing because I was thinking this is so dumb and I shouldn’t have listened to him when he asked me to speak because I just feel like he gets pissed and I just wanted to talk and I was begging to just talk and we finally did
He just sounded annoyed and said he should just focus on school (idk jow I was distracting him because we’re long distance and when he does school he’ll either say we should talk later or says I can mute myself if I did want to stay in call and he always says school is more important and I never would try to make him not focus on it) and he said he just wants to focus on working and at least he has his brothers he can talk too
I just felt like I did something very wrong at this point and kept asking him why would he throw away 5 years this quick and he said because Im too sensitive and no matter what he does I always have a problem and I never make him feel appreciated and I’m just like everyone else who tries to censor what he says.. and I only asked him not to use certain words three times in the 5 years we’ve been together and two out of those words I’m ok with him using now but he cut me off saying he doesn’t give a shit and that’s still censoring him like everyone else nowadays and he at least he wants to say anything he wants in a relationship and I said I was just expressing how *I* feel and I’m not telling him not to say it because of anyone else it’s because I feel uncomfortable with it but when I was explaining why it’s generally not a good way to describe afro hair I was bringing up other people as an example because it’s commonly agreed on that it’s not a good thing to say so I said fine I won’t do that anymore I’ll only bring up myself and why I’m uncomfortable with it.
He still insists that that’s censoring and I told him I’m never like this when he tells me a word is demeaning, I handle it totally different. He said the word boy is demeaning one time I said it to him and he explained it so I said oh ok I won’t say it again and I don’t and that was that but when I asks he acts like I tell him to get a notebook, write it down and threaten him if I hear him saying it and he says that’s how he feels.. the most I do is cry or talk louder and quicker because when I cry my words come out incoherent and I speak louder so he can hear me because when I’m crying he often says what?? And sounds very annoyed
He also said that I’m contributing to the problem of men never being able to speak about their feelings when all I’ve ever done is ask him how are you feeling? And I’ve begged for him to talk to me about anything he may be feeling and not to worry about not “seeming masculine” in my eyes because I love him for him
I said we normally work past things but I crossed the three strike rule he has for relationships but I can’t help but feel I’ve crossed those strikes everytime I said I didn’t feel comfortable with him using a word because I only said I’m not comfortable with a word three times and I always tried to explained why but he gets annoyed and it ends up becoming a huge fight where he says I’m concerning him
He tells me im too much like the younger generation getting offended over everything and we can just find different people but at this point I’ve been throwing up and sobbing since I’ve seen what he said and he just seems annoyed and for a long time it felt like I was bargaining with him on why he should stay but eventually we loosened up and were laughing (idk lol that felt impossible) but now he said he’s ok with dating me but I’m still gone from his bio on the game that started all of this.
I get I can come off as insecure, but please be mindful I’m especially sensitive about the comments and terminology used about my hair because my mom calls it “frizzy and undone” very often and went on a very racist tangent not too long ago about afros looking dirty and everytime I have my hair out of the bonnet even if it’s done and it make me afraid to wear my hair out even if I’m in the house leading me to wear it in a bonnet most of the time.. he says I judge him based on what everyone else does but I just find it ironic he says this and then brings up my entire generation so it feels like I’m getting punished for simply saying I’m uncomfortable with it because I guess people do that too much now.
In the end, I got what I was crying for (to be with him again and to just talk) and it’s been a day since it happened but I feel so stupid. I quit my job that i was working at so I could come up there and see his parents because his mother isn’t racist and is so much nicer sounding, he’s always sent me stuff and helped me with things I needed because my household doesn’t have much of anything at all, I don’t even have a washing machine so I’m thankful for everything he does not to mention I break things often and he gets replacements and I’m so thankful I have him in my life and I just love him as a person but he said doing what he did wasn’t easy, and he feels like the relationship is becoming toxic and he has to cut it off because he didn’t think I would but we have a lot of fun talking otherwise but if he generalizes me so quick for me telling him that something makes me feel uncomfortable how can he love me? his counterpoint is why should he have to change to make everyone else feel comfortable and he should know how I mean it because he followed it up by saying i don’t mean it in a bad way and I get the last part but I don’t understand how someone could be so mad.
I’m very sorry that this is long and this is all over the place but I’m very hurt right now even though we’re together again and I’m not even sure how to proceed
TL;DR my boyfriend got upset because I questioned his avatar, broke up with me but after I contacting him after he tried blocking me and we’re dating again but idk how to feel.