Question: Should I continue to date someone whose emotional maturity does not match mine? Are the problems I talk about below simply a guy thing and will this change with age and communication?
Context:My boyfriend (22M) and I (23F) have been dating for 1 year now. He is quite nerdy and awkward and is not self-aware or socially aware (e.g., his mum would tell him saying that she really misses him, but he wouldn’t register it as a sign that he should call his mum after receiving such message). That’s not to say that he doesn’t treat me well. This is my first relationship and his second, so we are both quite inexperienced.
During the past year, we’ve had some conflicts (mostly due to very little things), but they have really drained us emotionally and made us question our relationship multiple times, even just days after our 1-year anniversary.
For example, when we first started dating, he always told me how much he hated his family and hated being at his parents’ place. We had only been officially dating for about 1 month when invited me to go celebrate Christmas with him and his family. I agreed to go knowing that I wouldn’t feel 100% comfortable and would feel a bit awkward so that he wouldn’t suffer. He ended up enjoying being there for the first time and actually wanted to stay for longer while I wanted to go home, so he told his parents that I was going home after staying there for 2 weeks. And one day after telling his parents I was going home first, he turned a 180 and said he really hated being there and that he wanted to leave with me. I tried to tell him that it would have been ok for us to leave together if that was our plan all along, but since we already told his parents that I was leaving on my own, it would be more appropriate for him to stay for maybe another week to spend some time with his family as I knew that his family would have loved that. And I also didn’t want his parents to think that I changed my mind about leaving first and all of a sudden forced their son to leave at the same time as me and be upset about it and that it would leave a bad impression on me. He then asked me why I cared about what his parents would think, said that he shouldn’t have to suffer so that I could leave a good impression, and called me selfish. But the only reason why I went with him in the first place was that I wanted to reduce his suffering, which was a selfless act.
Another example: He moved in with me early on because of his weird living situation at the time. Not long after he moved in, he needed some alone time but didn’t have the self-awareness to tell me that’s what he needed. So this one day he ran off to his friend’s and didn’t tell me until really late, and I was home waiting for him for hours as we spoke about having dinner together that night. It took a lot of asking to figure out what he was feeling during that period and he told me what he told his friend about things that he thought were problems in our relationship. I then realized that the things he told his friends aren’t the full story, and I tried to tell him that talking to his friends about our relationship problems isn’t the best as we are humans and most things we say are biased even when you think you’re trying to be objective. And subconsciously when we talk to our friends about these things, we are seeking validation, and we seldom talk to friends about all the good thing that your partner did for you, so you’d be painting a negative image of your partner in your friends mind, which is not good for the relationship, and it would make it really awkward for your partner to meet your friends. And I suggested to him that the better way to do it would be to talk about the problems with your partner first so that both parties could agree on what’s actually going on, and if one party would still like to seek advice then there is a more objective version to be told, which will be more beneficial in so many ways. Fast forward to a few days ago, we had a disagreement about this thing and he went to his friends, talked to them about our disagreement and emphasized that I didn’t let him talk to his friends about it without giving any context in which I suggested that, and my intention behind it. So his friend told him that that’s borderline abuse and that I was controlling. I brought up my thoughts on whether we should be talking to our friends about relationship problems, and he said that that’s just the norm, that your friends are supposed to be there to support you, that he should have the freedom to tell his friends whatever he wants, even if that means making his partner look bad. I asked whether he thought about how that would make it difficult for me to meet his friends, and he said, “sure, it would be quite awkward for you but should still be salvageable.”
It just seems like he isn’t able to look at the bigger picture and make decisions that are the most appropriate but simply does things that he wants to do in that moment, and this is really frustrating.
Thanks in advance.