I feel like my (29F) boyfriend (29M) LOVES helping other people, and it's becoming an issue. We've been together for two years, and it's starting to feel like all the kindness and compassion he used to show me is now reserved for his friends, his family, and total strangers. If I ask for help with something, it's like pulling teeth. Total nightmare. Takes days, weeks, months, to the point where I just do it myself and I've largely stopped asking for help with things. But if seemingly anyone else needs him for something, he flies out the door. It's starting to feel like he's done proving his kindness to me, and needs to keep proving it to other people? Does that make any sense?

This has all come to head for me because we went to a mutual friend's party last night and as we were on our way out, a man who is a total stranger to us asked if we could give him a ride home (he wasn't drunk, just hadn't come in his own car). Normally I would say yes, but I got a bad sense about this guy, and since I was driving and it was my car, I kindly said no, sorry. My boyfriend flashed me a look of rage and sure enough, when we got in the car, he was angry with me for telling the guy no. He told me I was really rude and made him look bad in front of his friends. (I'll admit, it probably would have been perfectly safe and fine to give this guy a ride home, but, as I explained to my boyfriend, I just got a bad gut feeling, and I didn't feel bad saying no because there was no risk the guy would be drunk driving).

Anyway, it's made me realize that he does this kind of thing all the time. It's like we're not allowed to say "no" when someone asks for something. And I end up looking like the spoil sport and the bad guy. I thought about this in connection with his weird need to help everyone but me, and I now feel desperate to figure this out, if I can. I love my boyfriend, but lately, I don't like how he makes me feel. Past efforts to communicate with him about the issue have ended in him huffing about how I'm just jealous that he has more friends than I do (definitely not the case, lol) and that I must be a selfish person to try to make him feel bad about being a kind, helpful person. But I'm not trying to make him feel bad!

How can I communicate the issue effectively so that my frustration is clear and I don't make him feel like I'm trying to infringe on his life and his friendships? Your advice is appreciated.

TLDR: My (29F) boyfriend (29M) loves to help other people but the same kindness doesn't seem to extend to me anymore.


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