[brokenhearted]

My boyfriend and i have been dating for about 1.5 years and we love each other’s company and had alot of fun together. However when we start to argue, i’ll hate him so much because he thinks i’m criticisizing him and whatever he does is never enough to keep me happy. I know i’m making a horrible mistake by saying i wanna leave him and i don’t see a future with him each time we quarrel but sometimes when i think back, i feel that i didn’t make any mistake at all because i really doubt we can stay together in the years to come. He shld be better off with some other girl and i tell him that every so often. And as for me, i’m better off single.

I find that we can’t really understand each other and the point we are trying to make. For eg, i tried asking him out on a rainy day cause i wanted to get some stuff but he told me another day because he was feeling lazy. I was so disappointed because it made me think that he’d rather laze at home than accompany me for some shopping. Each time he asks me out, be it for dinner, hiking or anything, i’ll try my best to meet up with him because i won’t let the chance of seeing him slip away. I was really hurt and furious with his reason for not meeting me. So i casually brought this up and said i felt sad he didn’t wanna accompany me and he got defensive and said we’ve been going out so often for the past week that his parents will be unhappy if he goes out with me again. And if i keep going out with him, his parents will not have the opportunity to go out with him! That further fuelled my anger. He’s no longer a child, already an adult and yet he allows his parents to control him? We’ve only gone out twice for the last week but he claimed that we “kept going out”. I didn’t understand it at all. He said his parents’ unhappiness aside, he wanted to spend the day alone at home lazing around and didn’t feel like going out. This made me feel rejected. So i told him i couldn’t see a future with him and we just couldn’t stay together. This wasn’t the first time that i’ve brought this up, in fact almost in every argument we have, i’ll say the same thing because i think he doesn’t even understand what i need and what i’m trying to say, so what’s the point of staying in a relationship? He thinks i only care about myself and doesn’t spare a thought for him but what i think is he didn’t even try to to acknowledge my feelings and whatever he deemed to be a non-issue, he will think i’ll take it the same way as he does so he doesn’t care about the words he uses and just said it without thinking. And when i tell him that, he’ll say that i did the same thing too. SIGH

We’ve had so many arguments the past few weeks that the both of us are emotionally drained. He thinks i don’t appreciate all he did for me and said he’ll stop paying for my meals and stop sending me home because i keep threatening him and doesn’t seem to treasure this relationship so he will stop doing all these things for me. I don’t know what to think or what to say now, i feel that our relationship is beyond repair now and the both of us just feel terrible. I tried talking to him nicely but he took it as a criticism and even use words like “it’s your problem”. Since talking to him nicely didn’t work, i couldn’t care about all the hurtful things i lashed out. What should I do now?

[Ask April Masini]

What you need to do now, in answer to your question, is to understand that the two of you are not compatible at this time in your lives.

But first, I have to tell you that he isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong, and neither are you. The problem is that you’re not accepting each other’s differences and allowing for compromise. If you can’t do this, you’re never going to make this work with him, and for future, you’re going to have to find someone who’s got the exact same values as you do, or more likely, you’re going to have to learn to bend a little bit, and allow him his own values.

For instance, if he doesn’t want to go shopping with you because he wants to lounge around the house, you need to understand that that’s just who he is. He needs more down time than you. He doesn’t need to see you as much as you need to see him. His idea of what a couple’s relationship looks like is different than yours. I’m not sure I believe his excuse that his parents want to spend more time with him — I think he was just looking for a way to hold you at bay because you don’t like his honest answer that he just doesn’t want to see you as much as you want to see him.

This simple difference and lack of a compromise seems to have spun into a list of criticisms from each of you about each other. The criticism isn’t the problem. People in happy couples always have differences, but they’ve figured out how to accommodate each others’ differences whether they’re social, sexual, economic, energy, financial or family differences.

I wish I knew your ages because I’m going to guess that you’re both young, and for that reason, I think for now, you’re right, that you’re better off looking for someone who is more compatible with your relationship values and wants more of the same things, but I would also advise you to work on accepting differences and deciding if there are compromises to keep the relationship together and the differences intact, before lunging into a litany of critiques of each other.

I hope that helps!

Good luck. 🙂

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