My boyfriend (22 M) is taking me on a trip to a beautiful state. There are lots of lovely hikes there, and that’s all he wants to do. He wants to do 30 miles in 3 days off of almost no sleep. He also wants to camp two nights to do this.
I (23 nb) have ehlers-danlos and POTS, and quite a few places where I have tendon damage. I can go on hikes, but too much elevation and too much distance hurts and often makes me pass out.
This is obviously frustrating for me, because I’d love to see all these pretty places. But he’s quite accustomed to difficult hiking and backpacking and the repetitive movement can go from healthy to unhealthy quite quickly for me. I was prepared for one long hike and one night camping on this trip, but he kept adding more. He also wants to add more hikes beyond this initial plan. But being in the middle of nowhere and injuring myself/ passing out seems terrifying to me.
Every time I bring up the fact I think I need to space the hikes out more or plan shorter/ easier activities, he kinda laughs it off and shuts me down. It’s getting really irritating. I’ve also suggested we stay in town for a couple days and find some climbing gyms /museums (this is much easier on my body and we both enjoy these things) but he laughs this off a bit too.
Writing this out he sounds like a real jerk to me. But maybe I’m being dramatic and I can just opt out if it’s too much and stay alone in the car in another state for hours while he hikes.
This is clearly stressing me out and I’m not sure how to approach the situation. I’m also on the spectrum and have a difficult time communicating.
Any wisdom here would be appreciated. I’m at a loss on how to communicate to him that this is genuinely dangerous because he doesn’t believe it is.
How can we communicate with each other in this situation? I want to be excited for the trip we are going on but I’m just feeling nervous I’m going to be in a bad situation.