I believe my (20) boyfriend (26) doesn’t respect me. He doesn’t want to see me pursue my dreams and only sees it his way, preventing us from moving on past anything.

I have been dating him for over 2 years now. We began as a long distance relationship between England and Ireland. It wasn’t difficult as flights never cost more than 50 euro and we could see each other often. Things were good.

A year ago, he moved here as I was refusing to give up my education for a relationship. At that point he respected that I wanted to pursue some kind of a degree. I come from a relatively poor background, nobody went to college and I’m the first in my family to have the ability to create a better future. Ever since I’ve began my first semester, my boyfriend would tell me: “ What’s the point of you doing this if you won’t go into employment due to your anxiety issues?”. That has greatly upset me and I’ve tried speaking to him about the issue multiple times with no luck. Yes, my anxiety has been awful over the years. But I’ve worked on it and Ive went from not being able to leave my room to being able to attend an undergraduate degree full time. It was an accomplishment for me. But he didn’t see it that way.

Things were going good for a while, but he just continued to shift in a negative direction. I would say something, he would ignore it. I would ask for something basic, he would say it’s effort and he won’t do it. Whenever I would get upset about something that he has done to me, I’d be told that it’s my fault and that I’m the one who brought it upon myself.

I’ve lived in student accommodation since he has moved here for my own security in case the relationship went bust and I’d have nowhere to go. Now that the semester is coming to an end I’ve to make the decision of coming back home or moving in with him. But unfortunately his behaviour towards me has really made things complicated. Don’t get me wrong, there are good times in the relationship, but sometimes the bad outweighs the good.

The thing that bothers me a lot is the fact that if I say something to him, it’s pretty much a ton of shit to him. But if he reads the same thing on google or someone else says the same thing to him, he will preach it like Gods work. He makes me constantly feel like I’m stupid, and no matter what I say to him, I have to have reams of proof to back it up before he even considers to believe me.

He doesn’t care about anything I bring up to him. He takes things so far when arguments escalate. I almost think he likes the thrill of sending me into a panic attack and watching me. He won’t do ANYTHING to help me until I’m genuinely choking because I can’t breathe. He won’t do anything until my blood pressure rises to the point that my body almost goes stiff. Before he even considers to do anything I have to be in a state that I’m almost being sent to hospital.

I don’t know what to do. Every time I try to get out of the relationship, I get promises that things will get better. I’m so naive and believe him because I’ve pretty much grown up with him. Every time I try to work things out, he just doesn’t respect me. Brushes shit under the carpet and expects me to be ok.

I’m sorry that this is a little all over the place. I just don’t know what to do.

TL;DR: I can’t get my partner to listen to me, he doesn’t think there’s any point in me going to college. There’s no respect in the relationship and I don’t know what to do.

Submitted April 28, 2019 at 03:24AM by NataIia http://bit.ly/2VvMp8h