I (f19) have been with my boyfriend (f20) for 3 months. He recently sent me a tiktok that said that men do not open up to their girlfriend/wife because she’ll feel hurt by it and it will turn into consoling her about her hurt feelings. I asked him if I’ve ever done this and he said no, because he doesn’t really open up to me. He says he doesn’t because he feels like I will get upset, and he will absolutely have to console me. He also said he thinks this way because of how I suck at regulating my emotions (but this is only in times of distress, like when I had a final project due and was struggling and my grade really needed to be good for that class).
Now, to be honest this DID absolutely hurt my feelings because he made an unfair assumption about me and ran with it. Sometimes my feelings do get hurt, but the whole having to console me is absolutely false. He h as only ever had to console me about my feelings when I was dealing with my own problems. The only time I can’t handle my feelings is also during my own problems where again, I feel in distress.
But even though he hurt my feelings and I felt that his assumption was unfair, I didn’t tell him that. I told him that I wouldn’t make his time of opening up all about me and how I feel. And he just said okay and move on from the topic.
How do I make him feel more comfortable opening up to me when he’s already placed a false assumption on me?
TLDR: boyfriend said he doesn’t open up to me bc he assumes my feelings will be hurt and he will have to console me about it. How do I make him feel comfortable opening up when he’s already placed an assumption on me?
12 comments
Didn’t you post this already?
You may not be able to get him to open up. The only thing you can do is listen to him when he does speak up. Be present, don’t try to fix it unless he’s asking for advice, and just listen. I think most of us want that in a partner.
If your boyfriend is sharing and buying into this misogynistic crap, he is too young and immature to be in a relationship.
I think problem here isn’t getting him to open up; it’s how to fix his slightly to moderately misogynistic ideas on how communication works in heteronormative relationships. In my relationship, I’m the dude and yet I’m the one who has deeper, more ranging emotions and a desire and need to communicate them. My partner is more chill unless there’s a miscommunication or an issue that’s arisen, and even then, I’m the usually the one who does the emotional labour and communication to get us back on track. So, the reality is, yes, we get socialized into certain roles, but we still are each who we are.
This leads to the really crucial issue; your partner has told you that he would rather value the wisdom of stupid tik-tok videos or conventional wisdom than see you for who you are or try to develop his own communication style with you. Again, this is why I work well with my partner: we both have atypical, very open ideas of how relationships are supposed to go, and so we don’t assume anything, talk it all out and work together on what works for us. This makes me feel seen, heard, and appreciated. At other points in my life I’ve tried dating women who have more typical ideas and assumptions of how things are supposed to play out… To the last, they’ve all been fiery shit shows. They assume and expect that they need to act a certain way, and that I think and feel certain things, and I end up getting confused, hurt, and eventually resentful and then break away because they not only don’t know what I’m thinking, feeling, or why I’m acting the way I do, *it doesn’t even occur to them to ask because they think they already have it all figured out.* When I do try to speak from the heart or to try to overcome the gap, they look at me like I grew horns or am speaking unintelligible gibberish and the situation just gets even worse. I’ve learned to just keep my mouth shut, or speak lightly/with enough ambiguity that people at least have to pause to think about what I’ve said/to make sure I don’t say statements that can be easily misunderstood.
The long shot of this is, not being with someone who sees you for who you want to be and lets you feel heard and understood, is painful and will eventually lead to miscommunications and resentments. Maybe the way to phrase it to your boyfriend isn’t to ask him to open up, but for him to just try treating you as your own person and see how it goes, that you don’t want to be seen as just a cookie cutter ‘average chick that you can hear about from randos on tik tok videos’. Just my two cents.
I can’t speak for all the women but in my life I’ve come across women that have made my feelings about them and the video your referring to is correct in some situations
But as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that people who invalidate your feelings are worth speaking to so you just have to give him time and when he wants to speak out he will
Why are you expecting so much from him at only THREE MONTHS?
It’s kinda funny you proved the point of the video while he was explaining the video.
girl he‘s shoving a huge red flag into your face and also you can‘t *make* someone open up to you.
Wtf, he sounds hella immature and you should leave him. He’s turning you into the girl who’s just supposed to take his crap and if you feel any sorta way about it, you just have to shut it for his peace of mind— to be his “peace.” When he don’t wanna give you any peace by speaking your mind. You’re going into the territory of you having to be his girl that lets everything he does slide, despite that it makes you uncomfortable.
Guy here.
Probably gonna get flamed for this but this is the reason why guys are afraid to open up to women: – we fear you will lose respect for us.
Sound crazy or paranoid or driven-by-trauma? The last answer is the correct one. Tons of guys have stories about how they got a little vulnerable with a girl and her attitude towards him totally changed – ant not in a good way. Distance, coldness, and attraction flatlining. Usually this is because the girl just wasn’t that into him, but that’s the reason why guys don’t open up.
The other reason is because some girls have a nasty tendency of taking that kinda stuff told in confidence and throwing it back in our faces during a fight. Not every girl does this, but there’s enough out there who fight dirty to make a guy ask himself whether or not you can be trusted.
In some ways it’s a bit like the mirror image of guys and girls and sex. Guys don’t appreciate that sex for women places them in a much more vulnerable position, so she needs to know that you’re not psycho, or that you won’t ghost her, or get weird on her. With guys, it’s the same kinda thing when it comes to emotional vulnerability – our walls exist for a reason, and they come down for the same reasons.
Patience, understanding, empathy, and Active Listening.
>He recently sent me a tiktok that said that men do not open up to their girlfriend/wife because she’ll feel hurt by it and it will turn into consoling her about her hurt feelings.
There was a menlib thread about this. There were a couple of users who missed the point
>asked him if I’ve ever done this and he said no, because he doesn’t really open up to me. He says he doesn’t because he feels like I will get upset, and he will absolutely have to console me.
How are we in this thread OP?
How does this thread exist?
He basically opened up a *teensy* bit and now your feelings are hurt and now he has to console yoy.
Some people don’t like to open up.
Just because you are a couple doesn’t meant he **has** to share every single detail of what’s on his mind.
And if you’ve demonstrated that you can’t regulate your emotions, albeit in a situation much different than this, maybe he’s just reluctant to believe that this won’t be the case when he opens up?
Nothing sucks more than opening up, making yourself vulnerable, and then having to put your feelings aside to coddle the listener who was offended/got upset. So if he does open up, please, for the love of all that is holy don’t steamroll it.