I'm thinking I might end up leaving him, but I need some advice. We have been together since the end of May, he moved into my parents' house with me in mid-July. My job is physically and mentally draining at times; I work in a group home with people with developmental disabilities, and they have many challenging behaviors (verbal and physical). I work either afternoons or overnights, and I work and go to school full-time. He knows how stressful my job can be, and that I want to come home relax, study, do homework, watch Netflix and/or Hulu and go to sleep. He doesn't work and doesn't have his own car or his license. Yet, when I get home he wants to tickle me endlessly (I'm not usually in the mood for it), and the only way to get him to stop is to piss him off enough. Then he gets mad and doesn't talk to me the rest of the night and expects me to apologize. He always gets mad at me..for little shit. He doesn't take jokes. My only break from him is work. So, I need some advice on what I should do.
Give him a break he hasn't seen you the whole day, have you told how stressed you ate after work?. Maybe he tickles you to cheer you up and misses you. Try and step into his shoes. I honestly would like someone to do that for me after work. But in a way you are right, you don't need someone "bothering" after a strenuous day at work. And I think its pretty immature for him to act like that. Talk to him. Humans aren't mind-readers
He knows all of it bothers me and doesn't want to hear about my hard stressful day at work. We see each other constantly; at school and at home.
I think your boyfriend just loves you a lot, and he can't really show his love in a calm way. He really is childish, and that can supposedly be changed, but .. isn't your work at fault as well? If you really think it's your boyfriend that's stressing you out, and not your own job, then you can break up with him. But if it's the JOB that's clouding your love towards him, then maybe you should switch the job instead ... I know you said that you both see each other a lot and there's no way he can miss you so much to the extent of annoying the crap out of you, but then again, maybe your job is stressing you out too much to enjoy anything with him anymore, be it a surprise kiss or tickling ... I don't know, I'm just trying to point out the possible issues, without taking sides x.x
My work may partly be at fault, but I honestly love my work (even though I don't want to do it my whole life) and am not going to leave it for that. He cannot possibly miss me that much -- and, he knows I'm tired when I get home because most days, I get up at 6 (school, as does he) and I'm not home until almost 11 every night. The immaturity and childishness is getting to me and I don't know how much more I can handle it. The other thing is, I'm afraid of what will happen if he can't find a place to go if I break up with him.
Well, it sounds like you know the answer already ... If you really don't feel happy with him, then you should break up with him. As for that, whether he can find a place to go to or not, is entirely his problem. You shouldn't force yourself to be with him just because he 'can't find a place to go'. He should deal with this on his own, it's not your job to babysit him. You're his boyfriend, not his mom. Or at least, that's what I would do ...
So, reading your post, two things kind of jumped out at me: a) You talk about all the things you want to do when you get home - and not a single one of them is spend any time with your boyfriend. b) You presumably fell in love with this guy and became his boyfriend willingly, so it might help to try to remember just what it is you like about him and what you fell in love with. I understand about having a stressful and tiring day at work and wanting some time to decompress - that's likely going to be a constant for the rest of your life no matter who your BF is or whether or not you have one - but in having a BF you also have another person in your life who presumably loves you and who you presumably love. So making some time for them would seem to be something you should want to do. That doesn't mean you shouldn't also have time to decompress or time to just be by yourself and not talk to anyone or relax doing the things you want to do. But it does mean you should make the effort to actually talk to him about the situation and try to come to some sort of compromise that can work for both of you. His constant tickling sounds like a bid for attention, frankly. So, perhaps he could give you some nights per week to just relax and decompress and you could give him some nights to spend time together watching movies or talking or whatever it is you both like to do. Weekends should be something both use to spend time together. Because you're working and he's not, I'd be inclined to go for something like 3-4 nights a week you get to come home, decompress for a bit, and maybe give him an hour or so of your attention (ignoring each other completely seems unlikely to be healthy), while 1-2 nights a week you come home and focus on him or on the both of you for a big chunk of the evening. Or maybe during the work week you just decompress, but do stuff together on the weekends. Or whatever you work out that you can both be reasonably happy with. On the other side of the coin, you say he 'doesn't take jokes'. I'm not sure what that means, but my first thought is that if you expect him to discontinue the tickling because it makes you unhappy, then it is only fair that you discontinue whatever 'jokes' you are engaging in that make him unhappy. Being in a relationship means it's no longer all about the primacy of what either of you wants as it would be if you were single. Living together with someone can be a stressful experience for both of you, especially if you are in a situation where one of you is having very different life experiences from the other. Some relationships survive it, some don't. I hope that yours turns out to be the one that does. Good luck, Todd
^ Agreed. I also think there is a difference between spending time with someone and just being around someone. There's a different quality to the time spent. If you are seeing your boyfriend at school then obviously you aren't going to be intimate with him there (Meaning time to talk about certain things or personal things or be physical with one another, or even one on one time) so when you come home and hes at you, he might be starving for that kind of attention. But you may find that just seeing him everywhere can become overwhelming. So perhaps you need time not just to schedule being together but create fixed times that you won't interact at all. It sounds harsh but it's unhealthy to be around someone 24/7 without getting a break, especially if he's not respecting your boundaries (Like with the tickling). Also if you can't come to a compromise, and if you can't find that then maybe you have too much going on. Sometimes people end up in relationships when they don't have time to make, well, time for their significant other, in which case now might not be the right time to have one. Some people only have time for themselves at certain points in their lives and that's okay, but if that's the case then the other half of the relationship might be starving and its not fair to them. So if you think that that's you then maybe you're not in the right place in your life to have someone else to worry about.
