Long time lurker, first time poster. I know there are lots of rules about posting so I hope I do ok following them all.
My bf and I have been in a relationship for a year; living together for about 8 months. It's an overall very healthy and loving relationship. He's a very generous man, not in the sense of gifts, but rather acts of kindness. He truly does put me first. He's also a man of deep conviction and has a very strong and firmly held belief of what he thinks is right and what he thinks is wrong. I respect that about him deeply, but we differ slightly in this respect as I tend to operate ever so slightly more "in the grey".
Today he lost it on me and told me he doesn't want to be with me anymore because "I can't keep my word". To be honest, I was pretty blindsided by the comment as it's the first I've heard him say it and, more specifically, I hadn't considered what I had done to be a "broken promise."
Yesterday, he was pretty hungover and it was hot as hell where I live. We had to go to my sister's Father's Day (social distanced) BBQ for a couple of hours. While we were sitting outside in the heat his hangover got worse and he asked if we could leave. I said "of course.. Let me just go dish out the dessert (which we brought) and then we can go." While inside, my sister "twisted my rubber arm" into having a bit of dessert. So we extended our visit by literally no more than 10 mins. I really woofed it down and we left. In the car he said "you just had to have dessert...you said we could go and you walk out with a bowl" to which I immediately apologised and acknowledged that that was selfish. Because it was. He was hurting and I put my love of sweets ahead of him. I apologized without a fight.
When we got home I got him what he needed to nurse his hangover and brought him dinner, snacks and tea and water throughout the evening to help him hydrate. This morning he's still grumpy with me and he starts on about how I never keep my word and listed other examples like: 1) on Saturday you said we could leave [your friend's] place in 30 mins and instead it was like 45 mins to an hour. 2) when we went to the post office [during the quarantine period] we only talked about going straight there and instead you had to add three other stops once we were out. 3) we agreed that I'd walk the dogs in the morning and you walk the dogs at night and yet I often walk them twice in a day.
So just stopping for a minute... Let's be clear - if I say I'm going to be somewhere, I'm going to be somewhere. If I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do something. If I say I'm never going to do something, I'm never going to do something. But what I see in these examples is just life getting in the way of informal agreements.
Now, I'm prepared to be told I'm the ass hole if that's the case. But what I'm really seeking is advice on how to have a thoughtful conversation with him, someone who is deeply committed to his beliefs that what I've done is wrong, that his expectation might be just a bit too high when I comes to what constitutes a promise and/or what constitutes a word that should be kept. I want to be able to explain that I (1) really just lost track of time on Saturday because we were having fun and I wasn't looking at the clock, and I also didn't think saying we'd leave in a half an hour meant we'd be out of there in exactly 30 mins, (2) really just thought it made sense to pick up the extra things we needed while we were out for that one time that day and I hadn't thought about it until we were out, or that I (3) just took him up on his evening dog walking offers because I had had a long day at work and he had been lounging for the last little bit. I'm really not trying to disrespect promises made... I just feel there is a practicality of life that impacts choices in the moment that sometimes we just have to roll with.
Any advice on how to approach this, or even reframe my thinking, would be appreciated.
TLDR my bf and I don't seem to agree on what constitutes a promise and now he wants to break up with me because "I can't ever keep my word" and he doesn't want to be with someone like that.
Submitted June 22, 2020 at 06:42PM by JKHinTOC https://ift.tt/2YoYxbW
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