My boyfriend 30M and I 31 F have been together for 7 months. Since I've been with him he's always late to work in the morning regardless if he stayed at my place or stayed home. He usually is late by 30 mins to an hour. He is 30 and has a job as a co op /intern. He goes to school for engineering. It seems like a great job and opportunity and I think it's great he's doing that for himself. He goes to school for 3 months and doesn't work since it's full time, then for the next 3 months he works at this job and this happens throughout the year. He's able to do this because his dad lets him live at his house and doesn't charge rent.
He has recently asked me if I wanted to live with him. While I don't love the idea of living with his dad he's a nice guy and he wouldn't charge me rent either so I thought thats a nice deal too. Plus I wanted to see what it would be like to live with my boyfriend.
My issue is that whenever I try to bring up my feelings to my boyfriend about almost anything 90 percent of the time it offends him. It's a near daily occurrence. I cry myself to sleep at least a couple times a week minimum. Or cry at some point during the day.
I've tried to say things nicely, calmly, and communicate in a healthy way. It doesn't seem to matter. He will end up becoming angry or roping me into a fight when I never wanted one. Although lately I am trying very hard to control my emotions and not let things escalate. Which has been liberating.
Here are some examples
– I was trying to be more affectionate and flirty. I noticed he didn't seem to reciprocate. I calmy communicate that I notice he doesn't seem to be flirting or being playful with me. He gets offended and says something like I always have a problem with him. I ask him not to take it personally. He's pretty annoyed and offended for minutes. I remain calm and he eventually says "okay so you saying you wish I was more affectionate is an invitation to be affectionate not an attack?" I say "yes… exactly."
Which that's great he realizes this.. But I dislike that there has to be minutes where he is seemingly offended versus saying "oh baby I don't want you to feel like that! Come here give me a hug. I love you so much you're so beautiful". For example. That would be so attractive to me! And make me feel safe and loved.
Example 2 – He played his videos games until he fell asleep in the spare room. I woke up and went in there and noticed he fell asleep and never came into the room to say good night or cuddle. He wakes up from me coming in and I explain that I wish he came to cuddle or say goodnight. Instead of just saying "oh sorry my love I didn't mean to leave you hanging" and heading to the room, he gets really offended.
He says he's allowed to play games. He wasn't even playing that long before he fell asleep. I always am nagging him and have a problem etc. I go to the bathroom and come back and he's turned on the game again. It's 4 am. I was hurt that after I woke up to find him in the room and said essentially I want to cuddle he turns the game on.
The next morning I wake up at 10 am it's the weekend and he's playing his game. Okay fine. Until 10 am turns into playing until 4 pm. I didn't complain the whole time until it got to be around 4. I was a bit sad because the previous day he said he would take me to this cool place where you can pick your own flowers outside. But they close at 6 pm. By the time he mentions it again it was 5:30 pm since he was gaming all day. So I didn't have enough time to get ready to go to the flower place.
I explain that this isn't a huge deal since we can go another time but that I was a bit sad he didn't try to take me earlier. He sort of laughed and says he didn't realize the time. I say I am concerned the gaming will turn into an issue and he says he won't but that occasionally he would like to play all day. I didn't try to talk further about it. He says he is prone to a gaming addict but he's more in control of it these days I guess.
Another example – When he is in school he says he can stay up until 1 am. His choice not mine. He will stay up on his phone or gaming occasionally talking to me on the phone. Now currently he is working, not in school. But he still stays up quite late even though he has to work and like I said before he's always late. Even if I am not around.
We were laying in the bed at around 12 am and he lays on the pillow saying he is going to bed. I said "oh really? It seems like you stay up later when you play the game." This triggered some sort of catastrophe. He gets all irritated saying he is entitled to 8 hours of sleep and I need to let him sleep and stop trying to refute his sleep. Used some big word called extrapolating at some point. Just was speaking to me like I'm a whole stranger. Very annoyed at me.
I tried to explain that I don't want to keep him awake I just thought he could stay up later. He says that's when he is in school. I say oh okay it's just a misunderstanding then. I try to explain that I'm not mad and the reason I said anything is because I like to hang out with him. But yet he's still angry saying again I need to stop trying to "prevent him from sleeping". I was trying to resolve and close up the conversation.
I want him to get sleep I don't wish to keep him up. He even tried to blame me for him being late for work. Which isn't true at all…. That is not my fault he is late constantly. His dad even texts him in the morning saying to wake up. I am honestly just going to start sleeping sooner myself so that he can never blame me for his lateness again. (And the funny thing is that he's very aware he's late whether I'm around or not he just wanted to blame me in the moment.)
This made me feel even worse. Then he threatens to go sleep in the other room. He does this often whenever there's a small issue before bed. I try to do and say stuff to resolve the issue since I don't wanna go to bed angry at one another. Eventually he calmed down and went to bed next to me. But I just felt so hurt.
Another example – I was on a situation where I asked him to borrow some money. He says yes. But he doesn't want to send it to my cash app from his bank. So he was trying to figure out how to send it from his credit card. I say can't you just send it from your bank? (Trying to think of ideas to help) He explains he doesn't want to do that because he doesn't want his dad asking him a bunch of questions. His dad has access to his bank account and I guess he's already asked "what is cash app who are you sending money to?" Or something along those lines.
I come from a different background I guess because my mom has never been on my bank account. In the past when I borrowed money from her she hardly asked any questions and just helped me. She never was too invasive. So for me I found it kinda weird and was concerned that his parents are over bearing or controlling. So I asked why his dad is on his account and he says because his dad helps him. I explain why I found it kinda weird. I also did say it seems immature. (That was my mistake I shouldn't have said that).
He gets very offended and says that if I am asking to borrow money I shouldn't judge how he helps me. Which I wasn't.. I was just expressing that I thought the parents involvement was a bit weird. I apologize for saying it seems immature and I explain that I just come from a different type of family I guess and I explain I was concerned for him. He says it isn't controlling on his parents end and if they wanted to be controlling about it they can because he's using their money.
He starts saying that any money I ask to borrow from him is actually his dad's money, even if it was money my boyfriend earned from work, it's still his dad's money technically since he owes him money. Also when I explained it was weird or immature he says something like "no we aren't going to take money from "Ted" (his dad) and complain about it.
He at some point when he was angry states that he doesn't want his dad looking at his account noticing he is sending me money and his dad would say" oh so I'm helping out this person too". The way he said it made it sound like I was some unwelcomed stranger stealing his dad's money. I felt hurt he referred to me as "some person". His dad is super kind and nice to me too so I don't think he would even think of me that way!…
The whole thing made me super uncomfortable and made me not want to ever borrow money from my boyfriend again. I did not realize I was "taking money from his dad". So I don't plan to. I kept trying to resolve the situation explaining that we just grew up differently, I'm sorry etc. He did eventually apologize for being so mean and angry about it all.
Anyway those are some of the recent events. My main issue is I just find it really hard at times to come to him with my feelings or a problem. He has also said I "nag him" when I try to bring something to his attention. I really don't agree but have tried to see it from his perspective. I feel the things I bring up are just normal things. And recently he even apologized and said most women would ask for these things and he's just been grumpy etc.
He will apologize and have "realizations" but then go back to acting the other way and somehow forget about the conversations we had where we resolved things or he apologized. It's just confusing.
TL;DR!
Boyfriend often gets annoyed when I bring anything to his attention that he is or isnt doing and takes it as a personal attack. Basically me being upset makes him upset 90% of the time. Not sure where to go from here.