I am sick to death of my boyfriend constantly feeling like everything is a challenge. If I don’t agree with him or want to discuss a topic for 30-90 minutes; mostly him ranting, interrupting and shooting down every thing I say, then I’m met with attitude or what feels like antagonising.
It’s 3am and we were about to go to bed just as I was scrolling and came upon a video about narcissists. I wasn’t even listening, it was a 10 second pause as I put my hair up and scrolled on. He asked me a simple question about whether narcissistic people could take medication and ‘get better’, which I shared my very loose opinion on. He then compared narcissism to the mental illness I have and said there were similarities along with his opinion on it. I disagreed and said I didn’t believe there were similarities but not every case is the same, so maybe some people are, which was shot back with “well when I looked on Google, all doctors said there definitely is”. I knew this was a slippery slope so just asked if we could agree to disagree on it, both views are valid and that I wasn’t in the right headspace to be comparing illnesses, please could we just go to bed as Im exhausted. He would not drop it, he was blowing up at me “what the fuck, why are you so defensive, sensitive, whats wrong with you etc” and I just shut down into stonewalling (obviously bad on my behalf, I know!).
Any advice on how redirect a conversation or how I can suggest a way for both parties to have their say, but for it to not escalate every time into him spiralling and me going silent? I feel no matter what angle I try to take, it always goes into a full on rant and without going into other details, I am totally done with wanting to even talk to him any more at this point.
TLDR; conversations always lead into huge discussions and I don’t know how to have a normal conversation any more. Any advice appreciated.
13 comments
Why the fuck are you with him? He sounds exhausting and abusive.
You shouldn’t have to tiptoe around everything to appease your partner. I’d rethink the entire damn thing, if I were you
I mean… he sounds like the worst. You probably aren’t compatible if you view his communication style this way. You deserve to be with someone who comforts you and loves you- not someone who wants to fight with you.
>I feel no matter what angle I try to take, it always goes into a full on rant and without going into other details, I am totally done with wanting to even talk to him any more at this point.
You’re right that it doesn’t matter what angle you take.
You feel exhausted *because he wants you to feel exhausted.* How you feel isn’t an accident. It’s the exact reason he’s doing it all.
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>he was blowing up at me “what the fuck, why are you so defensive, sensitive, whats wrong with you etc” and I just shut down into stonewalling (obviously bad on my behalf, I know!).
No? Stonewalling is bad if someone’s trying to communicate with you in good faith. Not if someone’s being a huge jerk.
I would talk to him about it at a time when you’re not in a back-and-forth. Tell him what you’ve noticed about his conversational style and how it makes you feel. You can ask him to work on being more receptive when you’re trying to close a discussion.
But honestly, I’m not too hopeful because it seems like he doesn’t actually want to be in conversation with you, he wants to dominate you verbally. Which is not good.
Yeah you deal with this by dumping him. He’s full of shit and totally disrespectful of you.
How utterly tiresome. This guy is a bully and a bore. And he’s making himself feel good by making you feel like shit. Let me be clear on that last bit. He enjoys making you feel bad. It’s not an accident, it’s the goal.
There is no point in being with a guy who doesn’t respect you and doesn’t know when to just shut up and let you sleep.
No, there is no way to have healthy, productive conversations with him, because his goal is to belittle and condescend and trample all over you. You can’t have a healthy conversation with someone who is intentionally behaving like that. You need to realize that having a back and forth isn’t what he wants; what he wants is to WIN and to put you down doing it.
Stop dating him. Seriously. This guy doesn’t respect you and he’s pretty awful. Don’t think you can fix this by saying the right magic words.
It won’t get better this is similar to my old BF. Your break up is a break through
Please leave this relationship. Sounds like he lacks empathy.
>”what the fuck, why are you so defensive, sensitive, whats wrong with you etc”
**ITS THREE O’CLOCK IN THE FUCKING MORNING**
Thank you all for your replies, we had a talk about it today and he apologised. I explained my feelings and he understood why I wanted to finish the conversation, but told me that I should have told him how I was feeling and he would have understood more, plus not felt I was being dismissive towards him. I didn’t quite understand his view on being dimissed, as I had asked to speak about it later and that I just wanted to sleep etc, but said I would try to communicate my feelings better in future.
At the end he said we were both in the wrong, which ruffled my feathers a little, as I had made him feel like I was shutting down the conversation. He asked for an apology, which I refused to give. Small argument over that however he allowed me, for the first time in such a long time, to voice my opinion on why.
We are looking at counselling as it is not healthy to be living like this, and I do not want to stay in a relationship with bad communication. I don’t know what the future holds currently.