My boyfriend is quiet. He’s the first introverted person I’ve ever been with as I’m very outgoing.
A lot of the times he doesn’t respond when I talk, I’ll be making jokes or just trying to speak with him, and no response at all. I get he’s quiet in general, but it just makes me uncomfortable. I think I use more words by 8am than he does all day a lot of the time. It drives me nuts because I take care of our daughter all day whose a baby, so all I hear is goo goo ga ga all day, and my partner barely interacts with me. He works in sales (remote) so he spends a lot of his days talking. It just drives me nuts to hear him talking all day but when it comes to talk to me, nothing. When I ask him why he doesn’t speak he says, “I’m drained” so I just left him alone. After awhile, I asked if he’d like to cuddle, baby was asleep in her own space and he said no he was trying to decompress.
I’d also like to mention, we barely go out and do things together, he doesn’t like to leave the house much. When we do go out, it’s almost always ending up in a fight. He makes some rude comment. I’m starting to get really aggravated because I feel like every time we do talk, we are fighting because he says something rude. Yesterday, he got upset I wanted to pickup some stuff to bake with. Just talked down to me, when I confronted him, he said, “nobodies perfect”.
He wasn’t like this when we first started dating. Sometimes I feel like he gave me a version of himself that doesn’t exist. When we first started dating, we spent a lot of time snuggling and being close in every way, it doesn’t feel like that now. When I try to tell him how I feel, he doesn’t reply. We are in therapy as of last week. Not sure what to do. I ask him all the time how he is and how is is feeling, he says “I’m fine” and to stop asking. He never asked a how I am and when I mention that, he says he’s always thinking about baby and I.
Tl; DR – my boyfriend is very antisocial, quiet, he doesn’t talk to me much or respond when I’m talking to him, this isn’t how our relationship was when we first met. Not sure how to work through this
3 comments
You call him introverted, but you said that’s not how he was when you first met. What makes you think this is his personality and not a problem with your relationship? Does he not respond when speaking to anybody?
> It drives me nuts because I take care of our daughter all day whose a baby,
So it might be worth investigating if he’s depressed. The behavior your describe is consistent with some forms of clinical depression.
But man, I wish you didn’t have a kid so young, because otherwise my advice was going to be to break up because, honestly, what else can you do? If this is who he is, this is who he is.
That being said, the one thing you can do is TELL him that you need some adult conversation, so he’s going to watch the baby without you – once or twice a month, you’re going to go out with your friends, and he’s going to stay home with the baby.
When did you have your baby? It could be that he’s suffering from postnatal depression, otherwise it could just be depression. It’s worth bringing up to your therapist next time you seem them.