My boyfriend does a lot of little things that stress me out. I’m not sure if I’m being oversensitive or not and need to figure out how to just let some of them go without bringing them up. When I do bring them up, I often go about it the wrong way so that he gets defensive and then it’s hard to resolve.
I’ll give a couple of typical examples
I work at a secondary school. The other day we were at a supermarket on the same street as my school (so I nearly always run into students/parents there). Bf grabbed a zucchini and started moving it towards his crotch to act like it was a dick. I panicked and got tunnel vision to just make him stop as soon as possible without making a scene so I just quietly repeated ‘stop stop stop stop stop’ until he did. I was then kind of checked out for a few minutes as I’d kind of turned off my emotions so that I wouldn’t make a scene in the supermarket.
When we got home, I tried to bring it up. I said ‘I really stressed when you do stuff like that near my school’ he said ‘I didn’t even put it near my crotch, I stopped before it got there’ I said ‘can you assure me stuff like that won’t happen near school again?’ and he got defensive and said ‘I already did.’ While I don’t remember him already saying it, I think it’s absolutely possible that he did, as I was quite zoned out in the minutes after it happened and probably wouldn’t remember.
We were then arguing about other stuff a few days later – I’ve been feeling really disconnected lately and haven’t been wanting to have sex. He’s super supportive and understanding of that, but wants to make sure that I’m prioritising working on it as it is an important way for us to connect. I was saying I struggle to feel connected when we’re not on the same page about things like the zucchini incident: I feel really stressed afterwards and like we’re not on the same page and like he’s not being considerate. He said he was actually trying to be considerate with the zucchini thing; that’s why he stopped moving the zucchini before it actually got to his crotch. He said he’d stopped and considered the fact that I get stressed with stuff like that around school, so he did it in an area of the supermarket where people probably wouldn’t see, and just acted as though he was going to so it would be a joke between us rather than actually doing it. In my memory, he didn’t say that at the time though. IDK, I still find it not that considerate as he knows I don’t like that kind of joke in public, but I probably should give him credit for trying.
I’m really struggling to trust him. I trust that he’s not going to cheat on me, and that he’d never actively try to hurt me. But I struggle to trust him to behave in a way that doesn’t stress me out over stuff like the zucchini incident, struggle to trust him to take accountability and not just get defensive if I bring something like that up.
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We’re going to have a big chat tonight, as he wants me to promise him that I am committed to trusting him and trying to work on our sex life. He thinks that if I trust him more, when I bring up things like the zucchini incident, I won’t be doing it with an assumption that he’s done something inconsiderate. We’ve been talking about breaking up; I think we both don’t want to as we love each other, but we can’t go on like this with the trust issues that I have.
tl;dr I’m trying to figure out how trust my bf and hold onto a positive narrative of our relationship even when something bad happens. I’m trying to figure out how to not be so accusatory when I bring issues up so that my bf won’t get so defensive and we can reconnect after stressful incidents instead of fighting about them.
1 comment
But he did do something inconsiderate. Even as a joke, a joke about doing something that would hurt you is not a good joke. It’s like people who raise their hand to hit somebody and then laugh at someone for flinching. A joke of harm is still a form of harm. He shouldn’t be joking around with stuff that would hurt you. And what you describe is a trauma response. He needs to understand that he is traumatizing you. He is endangering your mental health. So, what he needs is not just to avoid things that would cause you issues with your job, but the threat of things that would do so as well. If he can’t agree to that, then he’s a pretty crappy person. It’s not funny or fun if you’re being traumatized. If making bad jokes is so important to him, then you two are incompatible and should break up.