Should I break up with my boyfriend?
I think I've read enough relationship filters to know that if I am bothered enough to click my way onto this screen, things might not be looking too good. Sob story as follows:
Been dating my first boyfriend for 3 months. Problems arise.
Bad stuff:
1) Has a habit of showering once a week. Junk, very frankly, stinks. Asks for blowjobs on a regular basis, and I basically try to hold my breath through it. Not pleasant. I've mentioned it a few times and he'll shower more, but then go back to normal. I don't usually make a fuss about it when we have intercourse because I don't smell it (as much), but I've been getting BV, and I don't think the uncleanliness down there is helping things. I am fed up with this though and will enforce a "no shower, no nookie" rule. Question: is this too strict or mood-killing?
2) Claims he hates driving. All his friends are enablers and drive him everywhere. I do most of the driving as well, mostly because I invite him places and then feel obligated to drive. I am resenting this more and more though. If I say I hate paying gas money and auto depreciation, does that let me off the hook too? Question: even if I am doing most of the asking (otherwise, we’d sit at home and do nothing), should I float the idea of taking turns driving? What if he says no? How do others handle driving scenarios where one person does most of the asking?
3) More boring than I thought. At the beginning of the relationship, he suggested all these fun activities we could do like wine tasting, fishing, hiking, bowling, boating, what have you. Now, what we do mostly every weekend is hang out with his friends, smoke pot, and watch movies. If I ask him to do things, he is mostly amenable to the idea, but I feel weird making him pay his half of things sometimes, since he is broke a lot. I’m in school and get an allowance from my parents, but it's basically my savings. From the beginning, we’ve gone dutch, but I’ll treat him to meals sometimes to be nice. He has bought me decent presents for my birthday and Christmas. We’ve gone out to eat at a semi-nice restaurant exactly once in our relationship. I wish it were more often, but he lives at home (as do I), and his mom cooks nice meals for him, so I can understand his reluctance to spend the money to go out. (Yet part of me is like… once a month shouldn’t be so hard to swing.) Question: keep asking him to do stuff? Or accept that he has a different idea of fun than I do and leave to find someone more compatible?
4) Attention has gone way down in a very short period of time. He used to call me every night and we would talk for hours on the phone. Now, our nightly phone conversations are 15-30 min. He gets home from work, plays computer games for 6 hours, calls me before bed, and then is too fatigued to talk much and has to go to bed. I have suggested he call me earlier, but he has not taken me up on that suggestion. I don’t call him because I don’t want to bother him. He puts me on speaker phone while his friends are on the headset so they can all hear me and that bothers me. Question: Does this show waning interest or is it just the natural result of knowing more about each other and having less to explore?
Good Stuff:
The fact that I am hesitant as I’m writing this is, again, not good. Probably because I feel like this could describe almost any normal, decent guy. He’s easy to talk to, he occasionally makes me laugh, it’s, quite frankly, nice to have someone to text or call and just not feel like a complete loser. He’s very honest and earnest. He is also very stubborn, which I don’t like, because I am stubborn as a mule (how did a negative get into the “good stuff” category?) I feel like in any relationship, there needs to be one person who is willing to let up a little bit, and sometimes I feel like we get into stalemates because neither of us wants to budge.
Gosh, I don’t know what else. I feel like in some ways, I’ve half made up my mind to end it, but that’s the problem… it’s only half. And then he’ll surprise me with a small gift or do something sweet for me, and all is forgotten… until the next time.
The other part of it is I’m clueless about relationships and, in many ways, my own feelings about them. It’s just nice to have someone around after believing that I’d be alone for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I’m expecting too much; I have a tendency to be neurotic and dissatisfied with people, things, and situations that are actually perfectly adequate. I’ve learned to not always believe what I feel, because sometimes I have poisonous feelings that have little to no basis in reality.
What I envision in a partner is someone I can respect, admire, feel lucky to be with, want to improve myself for. I want someone who’s crazy about me in return, someone who understands my occasional insecurities and is willing to talk me off the ledge. Sometimes I feel I may not be deserving of that, since I don’t have my career figured out yet and still live at home. But at the same time, I understand that’s what I need in a partner. Being in an ambivalent relationship is not painful per se, but it’s like a dull ache. And I can see how if this goes on for years, it will slowly destroy the soul.
I keep thinking it’s been too short a time and that I don’t have a big enough “sample size” of events to accurately judge. I feel like I should give it another couple of months, but I also feel like I will just keep getting more attached and am afraid I won’t have it in me to leave down the road.
I’m 23 and he’s 24, btw.
posted by anonymous to human relations (101 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
This is the only reason you're still dating this loser. There is absolutely no other upside to this relationship. Dump him immediately and move on.
posted by Sfving at 8:53 PM on February 12, 2012 [72 favorites]