My boyfriend and I (relationship length: 4 years) live in a very expensive area. As a consequence, for the past two years we've been sharing a studio apartment. It's far from an ideal living situation, but we're hoping to move to a bigger place when our lease ends next year.
My boyfriend and I are both introverts, but he has much more of a need than I do for "truly alone" alone time. My boyfriend is an only child and opted to live without a roommate in college. I grew up with siblings and much prefer to live with a roommate. To me, there's not a real difference between being truly alone in the apartment and being in the apartment with another person when we're doing separate activities and not interacting. However, I think my boyfriend needs to be "truly alone" to feel really recharged.
Recently my boyfriend has expressed multiple times that he has a need for "truly alone" time that isn't being met. Intellectually, I understand why this is something that he would need. (His company operates from a coworking space, so he doesn't really have any privacy at work either.) While he could maybe be truly alone if he went for a walk by himself, I think what he really wants is time to do his chores, read a book, etc., but alone. (He also has some pain issues that make going for a long walk not a very realistic alternative.) However, I think it's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that I'm being asked to my own apartment for hours at a time on weekends and evenings. I'm sure it wouldn't actually be a hardship for me--there are plenty of places I could go (in addition to going out, meeting up with friends etc., I also like spending time alone and am happy to take myself out to dinner, on a hike, etc.) But something about the idea gives me pause.
I think my anxiety around the issue stems from previous relationships where I wasn't a priority/only mattered to the other person when it was convenient for them. In those relationships, I often felt like I was doing the other person a "favor" by not expressing my emotional needs--e.g., of course it's okay that you don't want to see me very often, don't want me to meet your friends, etc. I think I even romanticized it a little bit--I'm so in love with you that I'm not going to make any demands on you. Since then, I've gotten a lot better at recognizing those experiences as unhealthy, and my current relationship isn't like that at all. My boyfriend definitely prioritizes me and I know I'm important to him. But something about being asked to leave my apartment for several hours on a random night sets off alarm bells in my brain.
Has anyone had a similar experience? I want my boyfriend to have the time and space he needs to feel refreshed and recharged, and I don't mind spending less time with him than I currently do--we live in a studio, we see a lot of each other! I'm also totally fine when we spend time apart because we're on separate vacations, one of us is out for the evening, etc. But whenever he expresses that he'd like to have the apartment to himself on a certain night I feel sort of panicked and abandoned. I know I shouldn't take it personally, but for whatever reason it's been hard for me to shake off feeling hurt and unloved. Is there a way for me to think about/approach this that will make me less anxious?
**TL;DR: My boyfriend wants the apartment to himself sometimes. Intellectually I think this is reasonable, but emotionally it makes me extremely anxious.**
Submitted October 31, 2019 at 11:49AM by thoreauaweigh_99 https://ift.tt/2C2297Q
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