My [20F] boyfriend [19M] has terrible conversational skills.

Hi, this is my first time posting despite lurking this thread for a while. Apologies if there’s any mistakes!

I [20F] have been dating my bf [19M] for almost 8 months. We met through a university org and really clicked. He is my first real relationship and this is the longest I’ve ever dated someone.

I like to talk a lot. As this is my first real relationship, it took me a long time to realize what made me happy and a month ago, I realized that conversations are vital for me. All my longtime friendships are still intact because we talk about everything and can hold conversations about social matters, our existences, etc etc. But with my bf, we’ve never really been able to hold these conversations because it’s always me initiating them and then talking. If we do have long conversations, it’s usually about anime or games or something that made us laugh. It’s never about anything worldly relevant, which is important to me as I try to always be caught up on world events and have opposing opinions (seeing a different perspective helps me understand better). When I ask for his opinion, I get dry answers like “same” or “I don’t know I’m not good at talking” like a npc. It gets even worse when I try to talk over text, as he’ll just send me the shrug emoji or continue with the same answers. I feel like I’m talking to a wall.

I’ve had a conversation with him before about this and how much communication matters to me and he’s apologized for not being able to give that to me. He said he doesn’t know if he can fix it but he’ll try his best. However, he did the same thing again today when we video chatted and it hurt even more because I was agitated about the recent issues (I’m in the US) and he just sat there and listened to me like I was a TedTalk. After my rant I just gave up as his lack of response made me even madder, and hung up to call my friends instead. I texted him later about how we can work on conversational skills if we just talk more and he sent me a shrug emoji in response.

I’m at a loss. I want so badly to help him build these conversational skills because I know it’s not a lost cause, but my friends tell me that if you need to “fix” your partner, you might as well leave as they need to want to change themselves. I don’t want to leave him because I love him. I see him in person in a few days and I think this is the best time to question him. All other conversations were online. How can I bring up the issues I’m having with our relationship/his lack of communication skills and help him build them?

tl;dr bf sucks at talking and i want to have better conversations

Submitted June 03, 2020 at 04:28AM by catterrarium https://ift.tt/2XXajsQ