[[UPDATE]] My boyfriend [32M] struggles with rejection and communication, I [30F] am at my wits end.

Original Post

Original Post tl;dr: My boyfriend only seems to be able to express his feelings when we are fighting, and often the fights come about as a result of him suppressing his feelings out of fear or rejection. I'm worried about the future of our relationship, because while our relationship is otherwise great, communication and honesty are super important to me.

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My first post didn't get a whole lot of attention, but some really interesting points were brought up that I thought might help others in a similar situation:

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-My boyfriend being from an Asian culture my have had more impact on our relationship than I previously thought. A user brought up the idea of "Ask Culture vs. Guess Culture" which hit the nail on the head in a lot of ways.

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-Another user brought up the idea of "showing the answer vs. showing the math." I feel like a lot of times he just tells me the end result of something or that he was upset after a long time, and I told him it's important for me to understand why things happen or what he was upset by, not just the end result after everything (ie. we had a situation where he was upset about ordering pizza, when it turns out the online ordering system causes him anxiety and I was only seeing the "end result" of that anxiety).

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-We had a long talk about how we view things and how it's really necessary for him to take the time to tell me his thoughts and feelings, and we decided dinner time is the best time for him to sit down and talk to me. Of course, a lot of these things will take much more time as well as trial and error, but we're already having issues crop up again and I'm worried about the future.

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CURRENT SITUATION:

After we had our discussion it seemed like we were on the right track with things. Now I'm staying with his family for the holidays and we had the same issue crop up, and again I'm feeling frustrated and confused.

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I caught a bit of a cold from a few days ago, and after resting up yesterday I told him that I really want to get out of the house and do something, but as long as it wasn't mostly outside (for fear of my cold getting worse again). I was feeling a lot better than the day before (back to 75% from about 30% energy the day before). While I said that I'd prefer to go out, I also said I'd be happy to spend the day in if that's what he'd rather do and asked what he'd like to do. He said he'd like to go somewhere, but we looked around and it doesn't seem there are many options indoors that we could do (we tend to do more outdoorsy activities when visiting his hometown). We spent part of the morning searching but after a time it seemed like we'd just stay in for the day.

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Around the early afternoon his sister called him (from across the house). On the phone I heard him say to her, "(OP) isn't feeling well and doesn't want to go out, so we're just going to stay in and rest today." When I asked what the call was about, he said his sister and mom wanted to go to the mall a few towns over and invited us to go. I asked him why he said what he did (about me being too sick to go) and he said that we had already decided to stay in for the day, so he said that.

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I was really upset by this for various reasons 1.) I had already told him multiple times that day I was feeling much better and wanted to get out of the house, pending it was somewhere indoors (you know, like a mall...) 2.) rather than asking me if I wanted to go he assumed I wouldn't 3.) we've had various instances like this where he assumes what is the best/right for me, and in most cases it's the opposite of what I want or would choose to do.

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This turned into an argument between us. Since this situation has happened multiple times (him assuming things and making choices for me without even asking me) I was really upset that it was happening again and nothing seems to have changed between us. I told him that it feels like he doesn't respect or trust me enough to make those decisions for myself, and it hurts even more that the decisions he makes for me are generally wrong. He told me that when he's sick he thinks it's better to stay in, and it was true that I was sick. I told him what he told his sister technically wasn't true and it's my decision in the end if I'm going to do something when I'm sick or not. I told him if I was too sick to do something I would have said that.

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For some reason during this conversation he brought up that the day before yesterday he felt like I was judging him and rejecting him. When I asked what he meant, he said that when the four of us went a few towns over we were planning to grab lunch and then go strawberry picking. I fell asleep in the car and when I woke up he asked me what I thought about getting Thai for lunch. Considering the fact that we had both had stomach aches the night before, that Thai place has spicy & oily food, and we were going to all-you-can-eat-strawberry picking, I said it probably wasn't a good idea and we should get something light instead. We ended up going to a cafe, having a good time, and enjoying strawberry picking. But he told me the fact that I rejected his idea of Thai made him feel judged and rejected. I felt even more frustrated because he asked me what I thought about Thai, then I told him.

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I don't understand how I can tell him how I feel about things without it possibly bringing up feelings of rejection for him (especially when he asks me my opinion directly, and I answer him honestly). I even asked him, "How should I have reacted when you asked me that, to not hurt your feelings?" He thought for a while and said that instead of saying no so harshly, I should have just gently suggested going somewhere else. I don't know how I'm supposed to know that in the moment, though, or know what's going to hurt his feelings until after the fact (also I didn't feel like I said it so harshly, I said something along the lines of "Thai is spicy and heavy, I think if we're going to go strawberry picking we should eat something small and light, right?). Up until he told me today, I thought we had just had a totally normal conversation and compromised on something everyone was happy with, but apparently not so in his eyes.

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So this is another messy and long post, but I just feel like starting off the first day of the year like this was not how the day should have gone. I feel like things should be more simple than they are, but his way of thinking internally and not sharing complicates things, and I'm very, very tired of it.

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My questions are:

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-I'm I being an asshole in this situation today? Something about the phone call situation triggered me back into other similar situations we've had and it just seems like he still has no grasp on why it's so upsetting for me to have him making choices for me, especially when I feel like I'm being clear about what I want or would do (ie. I wanted to get out of the house and go somewhere, saying I didn't want to go to the mall, or in a previous case not telling me that his grandma was hospitalized and that he wanted to go visit her even though if he had told me I would have 100% wanted to go with him).

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-How can I prevent him from feeling rejected or judged? In a case like the other day, I felt like we had communicated well and understood each other, but it turns out he still doesn't really feel that way. I only find this out after the fact, and I'm not sure what else I could possibly do to make things better.

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-How long does one usually wait to see their partner making changes? I am trying to be patient, but these issues have been going on for a year, almost a year and a half now, and they still happen pretty consistently (every two months or so). We keep having these ruined days or ruined weekends and I find myself fearing when the next one will be, simply because I haven't actually seen any progress in these situations.

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tl;dr: My boyfriend and I struggle with communication issues and, more recently, with him making assumptions about me and making decisions for me. I continually grow more frustrated each time it happens and am not sure what else I should do to encourage healthy communication between us.

Submitted January 01, 2019 at 02:58AM by ooo00O00ooo http://bit.ly/2TkzhOU