Recently, my boyfriend told me he hasn't been feeling happy and isn't getting his needs met. When I asked him why, he went through the list, saying he is enjoying his job, his family is fine, he wishes he had more friendships but that's okay. Then we got to me/our relationship, and he said "we have things to work on."
I feel like all relationships have things they need to work on, that's just part of being human and being in a relationship with another person. I had to kind of pull it out of him because he said he didn't want to talk about it, but I said that that's not how adults communicate, and we needed to talk it through. We had like a 2 hour conversation about all of this.
For context, we've been together for over 5 years. This is really confusing for me because most of the time, he is a really loving and attentive partner. I enjoy spending time with him, we have similar hobbies and lifestyles, my family loves him, he is kind and thoughtful with me most of the time, he is smart and generous and I really believe he has a good heart. I feel like he has things he needs to work on, for example he is kind of avoidant and isn't good at expressing his feelings and he tends to get frustrated easily and express it passive aggressively instead of talking about it.
For more context, I also feel like he has some low level depression that sometimes comes up. He has just achieved a big career milestone and I was worried that he would slip into a mild depressive episode because I have noticed that when he achieves something in his life, instead of feeling accomplished and happy, he might feel that way for a short while and then move into feeling like the accomplishment wasn't enough and he needs to do more. I had noticed this in him for about a month. I've also noticed when he gets like this, he sometimes displaces the frustration/discontentment onto me, which he acknowledged has some truth to it.
I fully acknowledge that I have anxiety and my own issues. I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder as a teenager and I have done a lot of therapy to work on it. It had a huge negative effect on me growing up and in my formative years, I was behind socially and struggled majorly with my self esteem. I sometimes wonder if I am high functioning on the spectrum. I am still more reserved and sometimes I struggle with being assertive or with my confidence, but I am miles ahead of where I used to be. I still go to therapy 2-3 times a month to work on these things. My partner has never been to therapy. So I feel like I am spending my money and my time and energy and effort going to therapy to work on my issues, but he isn't doing the same. He says he listens to mental health podcasts and is working out and eating healthier, but that's not the same as going to therapy in my mind. I feel like he does not fully understand or emphasize with what it was like to grow up with a severe anxiety disorder and how that affects me now, despite me trying to explain it. He will say something like, "Well I was shy in middle school and high school" like…dude it goes way beyond just being shy.
In this conversation, he said he wasn't happy with our sex life and that it is "boring," which I actually agreed with, and we had a decent conversation about what I can do to spice things up, because he feels like he has put in all the work to suggest things in the bedroom. This is pretty much true, as I had only been with one other person before him and I do tend to be hesitant to initiate new things in the bedroom because I feel kind of shy about it. (I was also raised in Evangelical purity culture). But I have never once, in almost 6 years of us having sex, turned him down, and I have a pretty high sex drive.
Then I asked him what else has been bothering him or what else he feels like we need to work on. He said that he wishes I were more outgoing or better at conversation. I asked for examples and he gave some examples of how he wishes I were more "fun,"-like he feels like when we do things, he is the one who is providing the fun, I suppose? I can see what he is saying, but it hurts my feelings that he wishes I were more outgoing. It's something I also wish about myself, but I feel limited in how much I can change that about myself. I asked him if he wishes he himself were more outgoing, because as I said earlier, sometimes I feel like he projects issues within himself onto me. He said yes, sometimes he wishes he were more outgoing too, but separate from that he wishes I was more outgoing. Some of the examples he gave were things like when he sees a couple out in public and one of them is dancing spontaneously, or the woman in the couple is making a joke and they're laughing together.
I cried during this conversation because some of this triggered me because my whole life, I have been worried that these things I dislike about myself-my soft spoken, quieter personality and my anxiety, would make me unlovable, and it felt like that was being proven here. I told him that exactly, and he said they didn't make me unlovable. I told him that I feel like I am more charitable and compassionate towards his issues (the avoidance, the mismanaging of his emotions, his passive aggressive behavior) than he is of my issues. I said I feel like sometimes he is overly critical of me in his mind. He said he accepts these things about me and doesn't want to change me as a person. But I don't get it. I feel like if you accept someone's flaws, that means that you don't hold them against them or criticize them for those things in your mind.
So I'm at a point where I'm thinking, why are you choosing to stay with me if these things about you bother you so much? Literally the next day after we had this conversation, he was talking about our future and potentially buying a house together. So it's like, okay, are you accepting me fully or not? I know I can work on myself and I am-I can work on my confidence, on saying what I am thinking more, on being more carefree and spontaneous. It just felt so hurtful that he was criticizing these aspects of my personality. I feel like sometimes he has this manic pixie dream girl image in his head of what a girlfriend should be, and he projects it onto me.
I did give him feedback during this conversation about things he could do better, including giving me more words of affirmation, physical touch, and communicating his feelings more. But I feel like 99% of my criticisms are him are criticisms of his behavior or lack of behavior, not of personality traits. I am just not an overly critical person. I don't nitpick people. I feel like I truly accept him and love him for who he is.
He acknowledged during this conversation that I am more mature than he is-that I take life more seriously and I am better at handling my emotions and communicating. I appreciated that he acknowledged this.
I could tell he felt bad for hurting my feelings and he was trying to be extra nice to me after, telling me I looked sad and asking me why, and I don't know how to tell him I'm sad because it feels like my partner, who I have built a life with and spent over half a decade of my life with, doesn't like me as a person. Or at least parts of me that I have a hard time changing.
TL;DR: boyfriend told me he doesn't like that I am not super talkative and not outgoing, and that he feels like he has to bring "the fun" in our relationship. I understand to a certain degree but i am also hurt and confused. What do you think? How would you proceed?