Submitted by waldewin on 07/20/2016.
Me and my boyfriend have been together for four years. This has been extremely difficult time for numerous reasons. I have been in therapy for all these years and my boyfriend has been quite supportive. He has also pointed me to some of my issues which I need to solve. At some point I am however feeling that he has taken the liberty of just pointing out whatever is wrong with me and suggest that I change my behavior. Because of his ADHD he has a lot of micromanaging habits which get challenged when living together with someone. His most obvious solution to all these problems is that I change my behavior. We are not talking about small behavioral changes here, but he wants me to become more attentive to my surroundings (I have always been a dreamer). I am also not super observant and practical and these issues have been really problematic for him. I have tried hard to become more organized, because again I cannot hope that this role will be fulfilled by my boyfriend. For a person that is not naturally organized it is quite a challenge. I learned to manage my own money, but as I have understood my boyfriend wants me to also manage his. He also does not want to or cannot plan things, so all the future planning is left to me. He keeps saying that our relationship is not at the point where we can have children. I think it is because we have the not so neat combination of people partering up who both struggle with everyday practicalities. However, the last comment he made was that we are not ready because I have emotional issues. This was when I told him how sad I am whenever someone else gets to know that they are going to have children. He has also told me that I only want to have a family because of my own complexes and that children cannot fill the void inside of me. I feel that every action and wish of mine is question and his go-to response is that this is something that I have to work with in my therapy. Things have progressed that far that most of our conversations circle around my therapy- what else I should do, what problems I have etc. I have really no idea how to break this circle. I admit, for quite some time I was pretty focused on my therapy, because I had some really though childhood issues to solve. I am now slowly coming out of my therapy, but I feel that my boyfriend has gotten all to used to the fact that every problem we have can just be solved by me changing myself. He has been shortly in therapy and in ADHD group, but I feel that there are some more problems in his behavior. He for instance often times makes plans without including me and without informing me about his plans (like he bought plain tickets for himself for the vacation without confirming with me). In the past he has also come at home at random times (the latest being at three am), missed our appointments, not to mention his financial problems which are still pretty acute. When I tried to talk about these issues he indicated that in fact I had a problem and that I should work on these things in my therapy. I think I have gotten him to confront at least some of his issues, but at this point I just feel I am soo tired. I have lost all my wish to spend my free time together with him, because in many occasions when we do something together he just finds some behavior of mine intolerable. For instance he did not like when I did not look at him while I was talking to him and made a scene about it. He did not like that I did not notice small details when we were walking together and insisted that this is because I am actually not interested in the surroundings. He cannot watch TV with me because I am once in a while going and making tea for myself, which for him means that I am not enjoying the show we are watching. I feel that every activity of mine is under the radar and he is just never satisfied. He will always find some new thing which he then suggests me to change. Why does he do this? Are my habits and my personality really so annoying? How much should I accommodate for him? I feel I am really loosing my patience and also that this relationship is much more work these days than fun. I just feel like I have ended up in a relationship where I am constantly patient that needs to engage in self-development.