Just wanted to start this off by saying that I’m young, inexperienced, and also an oversensitive overthinker (not a great combo lol), so I’m probably also at fault for some of this. Sorry about the long post – any advice would be really helpful! 🙂
*(TLDR at bottom. Post is cross-posted from* r/relationship_advice)
I (18F) have been dating my boyfriend (18M) for about a year.
The relationship started out great, and a lot of the time it still is really awesome. We had been friends for yeras before we started dating, and we share a lot of common interests and can talk for hours. We get along with each other’s friends and our friend groups hang out together a lot. We have never fought and when I bring up things that I want him to change, he’s very receptive.
However, in the past few months or so, I started noticing things that I don’t love about the way our relationship is. These are all small things and if I think about it, I can find reasons to justify each of them. It’s just that all of these things added together make me overthink and become a bit of a mess sometimes, and I can never figure out the line between me overreacting and him being unsensitive.
1. He doesn’t start conversations as much as he did when we just started out, and I totally get that school is busy and we’re both busy, but I just wish he would send me a text once every two days to check up on me. I can’t help but wonder if he’s putting in less effort. In summer, he took less than two hours to text back, but now he can take up to a day (to be fair, he rarely checks his texts and isn’t really a social media guy). We do have a 30 minute video call every night, but I guess texts throughout the day just hit a little different for me. For the last three days, I’ve been out on a trip and haven’t been in school, and he hasn’t sent me a single text except for replying to the tiktok I sent him. Not even a “have a safe trip.” I do know that he’s pretty busy lately (finals season), but I almost feel like he would find the time to send me a text if he really cared.
2. When we’re in a group, he doesn’t really treat me differently from the other friends. When we move from place to place, he doesn’t wait for me or check to make sure that I’m okay. At prom, we were walking together with both of our friend groups, and he went on ahead with his friends without noticing that I was stumbling in my heels and needed help (which, to be fair, my friends were also there to help but I just wish he thought to check up on me). Sometimes, when we’re all eating lunch together, he barely addresses me and gets totally caught up in other conversations or even talks to some of my friends more than he talks to me. When I asked him about all of this, he said that when we’re in a group, he sees me more as “one of the boys” out of the group rather than someone that needs more attention than others. This makes sense to me, but maybe I’m just self-centered -I still wish that he would treat me as his girlfriend in public instead of another friend in the group. For the prom thing, he acknowledged that it was his fault and said that he was totally caught up in talking to his best friend so he didn’t notice I was struggling. He also promised that he would be more attentive in the future.
3. He makes a good amount of jokes when he’s with his friends, some of which are about how hot other women are. His friend group could get pretty raunchy with their jokes and I usually think they’re absolutely hilarious, but sometimes they’ll say something like “xxx teacher is lowkey hot, would smash 10/10” and he would reply with something like “I meannnn \*shrug\*” or “welllll you’re not wrong” (this is never 100% serious and never about someone who he could plausibly cheat on me with, always teachers or celebrities). Honestly this sounds kind of silly and the fact that I mind it might say more about me than him, but I don’t know. Him making these jokes around me just makes me feel like he doesn’t care about how his actions affect my feelings.
As I said before, I really do love being with him and I personally don’t think a breakup is necessary. I think I just need advice on whether I’m overreacting, and how I can work to better communicate what I feel to him.
**TL;DR:** My boyfriend does small things such as not really texting me throughout the day, treating me less like a girlfriend and more like “one of the boys” when in a group, and making jokes about the attractiveness of other women. I can’t tell if I’m overreacting or if he crosses the line sometimes.
2 comments
As a relationship develops it moves on from thinking aboutb each other constantly to something more sustainable. This quote comes to mind, “Hold your love like a wine glass Not so tightly that it breaks And Not so loosely that it slips off”.
Through talking about things that upset you and the good things try and find the balance. This is something you could discuss before a social event.
For example at an event where you both know lots of people it may be acceptable for him to leave you for prolonged while he talks to his friends.
At an event wherevyou don’t know anyone you maybask him to staybwith you and ensure that you are not left out.
Not going to an event should also be an option, if you are not interested and don’t know anybody. It is also fine for you to sometimes go out with just your friends.
Don’t dismiss your feelings because they’re completely valid and this doesn’t make you self centered. You’re not asking for much, you’re not asking for some huge romantic gestures, you’re literally asking for the bare minimum – being treated as a girlfriend by your boyfriend.
You’re not one of the guys, you’re not just like the other girls in your friend group, you’re his girlfriend. No matter how busy he is he can spare 5 minutes to text you back or ask how you’re doing and how’s your trip going.
Now the only healthy and beneficial way to go about this is to communicate. If you just bottle your emotions up you’ll start to resent him or if you start a huge fight it’ll lead to nowhere. Sit him down and calmly explain to him how you’re feeling and how you actually want to feel and what he can do to get you there. And see if that improves anything, if it does great if it doesn’t at least you tried to communicate your needs and he showed you how willing he is to satisfy them.