Yeah, yeah, I know, I should be grateful for a dude who likes to stay clean but hear me out.
My partner and I live together. We only have one bathroom. For the sake of our health, we have separate rooms for sleeping (but plenty of intimacy). (I only mention this because he can and does retreat to his room for privacy and relaxation.)
He’s great. I really love him.
Lately he’s sunk into a depressive funk. This has been going on for several months. It’s fine most of the time, I support him as best I can. In this funk, he’s started to take baths. He reads, listens to music, plays on his phone, whatever. Normal relaxing bath-time stuff. Mindfulness exercises that are great for mental health! Shouldn’t be a problem right?
Except these baths are 2-5 hours long. Several times a day. Every single day.
Every. Single. Day.
He does this on top of showers in the morning “to get clean”.
I’ll admit it, I’m shy about using the toilet with him literally right there, ass out, trying not to watch me tinkle. Usually the curtain gets shut, but it’s still kinda weird. And there’s no avoiding it when he could be in there for a straight ten hours with a small break for a meal (sometimes he just eats dinner in the bath though). We’ve talked about this aspect of things before, but he seems to get annoyed by my intruding on his peaceful sanctuary.
It sometimes even intrudes into my shower time. He will get frustrated if I ask him when he’ll be out at midnight or not to take a bath because I need my shower (same time every day). And I always have to wash quick, because there’s virtually no hot water... (He drains the tub and refills it with hot water if it starts to get cold.)
And... I have this medical issue that heat really helps. Usually I just dip into the bath for 20 minutes and it stops hurting. This has been impossible between him constantly being in the bath and using all the hot water.
I have found myself getting more and more frustrated with his bathroom usage time, but I understand it helps him improve his mental health. He’s been (understandably) sensitive to even the lightest criticism. How do I gently approach the situation and ask him to take shorter or less baths without further hurting his mental health?
tl;dr: Don’t know how to ask my partner not to take several 2-5 hour baths every day without worsening his mental health.
Submitted February 03, 2020 at 02:54PM by BathTimeHelp https://ift.tt/2SgAE28
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