My partner has been a dream for 4+ years we’ve been together, and I trusted him fully. I’ve never ever had a pang of jealousy or even feel the need to “creep” on his social because I just had so much trust in him.
In the last year or so, he let me know that our living situation (re: neighbors etc) makes him really angry and upset, and I was surprised because it had taken him 2 years to tell me this. I told him I’d wished he’d tell me things that were bothering him instead of holding it in because it’s not good to hold everything in.
He shared a little bit. I encouraged it and showed support.
But then it just pouring out like a faucet. He is CONSTANTLY angry, frustrated, mad, and anxious. He is literally never ever at peace. And now he tells me every single day. Multiple times a day. I never knew he was such a negative and grumpy person- he had just never spoken out about it to me until about a year ago.
I am a pretty positive person but daily I’m fighting to support/ or at least acknowledge him and also block him out of my mind so I can at least have a slightly okay day. It’s extremely draining but mostly, I just question everything about our relationship up to this point. Was he happy? Did he want to be with me? When we went to do this thing was he actually really angry? I feel like the whole relationship as I knew it has been flipped upside down.
When he tells me anything, I second guess it. I feel like trust has been broken and I was in a weird dream for the last 5 years. I’m scared of what this means. If he can hide this for 4 years, what else could he be hiding now?
I’m feeling lost, and while I’ve told him this, I just don’t know how to cope with feeling like our relationship wasn’t real. wtf do I do?
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This is exactly why men do not want to open up to women. You wanted now you got it.
Sounds stressful — I get your worries that he may be hiding more feelings. If it makes you feel better, I think it’s probably a really good thing he’s learning to talk about his negative feelings bc it’s like you said, that stuff can do emotional damage when bottled up. Now he may be struggling to find boundaries and appropriate times to talk about those things. Or, like you hinted at, maybe he’s never been that good at self-soothing, or he has certain outlooks on other people that make him constantly angry. Talking openly about his feelings will only help him work through those things in the long run (therapy is great for that).
Unless you have some kind of evidence he’s hiding more, this doesn’t sound like he’s a big liar to me. A lot of guys are bad at talking about emotions and have to learn it at some point.
You probably want to primal scream at the top of your lungs half of the time. If so, you already know what you need to do. No relationship can survive the type of stress you’re talking about.
Is he willing to go to therapy? I can see you’ve already got one person somehow blaming you for the fact you didn’t know there was a problem because your partner never opened his gob to mention it.
I couldn’t be in a relationship where you now have to second guess absolutely everything because you can’t trust your partner to tell you if somethings wrong. That’s going to get exhausting fast. Also the fact he’s now shown you this side of himself – grumpy and angry – how deep does that run? What other ways is that going to manifest itself?
He needs individual therapy and then once he’s learned to talk about it you should possibly consider couples therapy. If he won’t do therapy then I’d consider leaving – you can’t live your life constantly afraid you’ve pissed your partner off. We call that walking on eggshells
“Please talk to me about how you feel, unless I don’t like how you feel”
You know, this negative response to expressing emotions is why men never open up or talk about how they feel.
“I made my partner feel safe and now I don’t trust him because he has a lot of pent up negative emotions. I was hoping he’d tell me cutsie little harness emotions about how sad he is that there are poor people in the world or that he saw a little birdie die. Not this gross, negative, hurt and anger he is experiencing”
Couples counselling.
This is bait, y’all.
I think what people of all genders don’t understand is that being more open with your emotions does not mean waterhosing your counterpart with your mostly unprocessed raw negative emotions. The expectation is that your partner will share emotions they have already processed or are able to regulate. The rawness and the quantity are the issue. And perhaps a sign that this person should turn to therapy or diversify their sharing among a few people, as being on the receiving side of this is emotionally and mentally draining.
I think you should embrace him opening up, but maybe limit the timing a bit?
Ćhey, I’m really glad you opened up, but sometimes you communicate your feelings when I am mentally not ready for it. When one of use wants to communicate can we maybe do a check in if the receiver is mentally ready and how much you need to tell it right now? Don’t see this as me not wanting to know your thoughts and feelings. I just have to think about my mental health too sometimes. “
Also, if you have doubts if he is even happy, maybe take your own advice and communicate this to him?
” hey, I’m really glad you are opening up. But it makes me feel like maybe you aren’t really happy in our relationship at all. I don’t want you to stop communicate your feelings, but I just want to do a check if you are still happy?”
Maybe you can also ask why he only ever communicates unhappy feelings, and that it would make you feel loved if he can communicate both happy and unhappy thoughts.
But if he is communicating a full range of unhappy happy and everything in between emotions, than maybe also reflect if you are just raking this too personally? Maybe instead of feeling like he is so negative, you could think differently about it and suipport him. But since you give no exams of what he is saying exactly, it is a bit hard to exactly know what’s the case here.
He’s gotta learn to shut that off when around you.
Don’t expect him to pour his heart out that’s not how men operate but he shouldn’t be complaining to you.
Like you said it makes you question him. I know this sounds weird but you basically have to fk his stress away or do little things to try an relieve it. Without asking what’s wrong or anything like that.
If he complains around you, you need to say “You’re complaints are turning me off”
You ask him to open up. Now that he does, it’s a him problem?
Where’s your support and understanding? Down the drain? Cause you never really cared about his feelings or thoughts? Cause it always sham relationship from your side? Is that what you are asking?