I (23f) need relationship advice concerning my boyfriend(27m) after feeling dismissed?
I could really use some perspective/advice here. So me (23f) and my boyfriend (27m) have dated for about two months now. Things have been mainly okay, but I have slowly begun to notice some things that alarm me. It begun one evening when I forgot to message him that I had gotten home safely from the city in the evening, and he got very upset over it, saying he was really worried. I felt horrible and tried to call him to apologise but he hung up on me and messaged me saying he didn’t have time to call, and he would go to sleep. I ended up having a panic attack (I have complex ptsd and although I’m a lot better these days, I still struggle a lot with conflict) and ended up sending him a voice message where I cried and apologised for forgetting. He then apologised the next day saying he hadn’t intended to make me cry. A little over a week from this incident we were messaging one evening and he said something that seemed very egoistic to me, so I asked him to clarify what he meant to see if we had simply miscommunicated. The discussion went on for a bit but we eventually figured out what had happened. However immediately after he sent me a message that explained what had happened, he sent me a message asking me “not to make a big deal out of nothing” and went to sleep, leaving me with that. Now I admit it was late, but I had mentioned multiple times within this conversation that we could discuss everything the next day as I knew he had to go sleep. To me this was basically a second time now, where he had left me before we had finished discussing things. Now I admit that discussing anything like this via text was a horrible mistake and likely the reason all this conflict had happened to begin with. But I didn’t want to call him as I was convinced he would not answer me. After this, I wrote a long message explaining how him leaving the discussion unfinished, and with (in my opinion) a dismissive comment, really hurt me and made me feel like my emotions were being dismissed. I also detailed that I’d want to discuss this on the phone the next day, as my intention was to write the message because I often tumble over my words if I do not write things down. The discussion following this went horribly. He first sent me a message explaining his side, explaining his side of things, and saying how he felt that he doesn’t understand how I could feel hurt over his words if I know him well enough, and that it was because he was tired. I tried to explain that the issue wasn’t our previous discussion itself (as I had already detailed in the message I had sent him) but the way he ended it, and that this was a second time I felt like I had just been left standing there when he decided he wasn’t interested in continuing the discussion anymore. He did not seem to understand and told me how he didn’t understand how I could feel this way if I trusted him, and only apologised once I told him “all I would have needed was an apology”. We decided to take the day to be separately and to calm down. In the evening I felt bad and sent him a drawing I made saying “you’re loved” and he didn’t respond to it. We called again the following day, and the entire call was me apologising to him for having reacted to something seemingly small, and making him feel better after he said “it just sucks that I feel like I’m doing really well and trying to be the best version of myself and it’s never enough”. I told him how we’re all good enough always, but that we can always improve and learn from our mistakes, and that growth should be a happy thing and something nice, not a competition against some invisible standard. When I asked him afterwards to see what this would mean in terms of him saying “it’s never enough “ he told me in a very cold tone: “I’m not doing this, this is really childish “. He did not ask me a single time about how I was feeling, nor did he apologise for anything. His tone of voice really scared me, and I honestly froze a bit. The call was eventually cut short as my mother called, and I haven’t talked to him properly since (I needed to leave the city for a few days for an errand).
So here is where I need help: I am very strongly thinking of breaking up with him. I know I was far from perfect in our arguments etc. but I have to say that I feel incredibly dismissed after all of this. He did not seem interested in my viewpoint at all, nor did he apologise until I literally told him to. He did not seem to understand my viewpoint even after I explained it to him three times in a text, and then in two phone calls. I have also noticed other things, like how he told me he has “high libido” (I’m personally not the most sexually active person) and that he’d ideally want sex 3-4 times a week. He also commented on my sister’s husband’s body, saying how “he should take him to the gym with him” (implying my sister’s hubby is too fat), and being very strict of his eating and training (like eating disorder level stuff), to the point that he once complained how my mother didn’t drive us back to the city early enough because he “needed to go to the gym” that day because he hadn’t been for 3 days. There is something about him that seems very cold to me, and as someone having lived with a narcissist parent, I’m horrified this will become something bad in the long run. But I do like watching tv with him, and he is one of the first people who haven’t made me feel like a freak about my personality (I have ADHD so I can be a little much sometimes). But after these arguments (or rather their aftermath) I feel very uncomfortable and very unheard and dismissed. And it seems like he cannot understand that.
I know my trauma makes me hypersensitive to certain things, but I also feel like a partner should at least pretend to be interested in understanding your perspective on things. And he does not seem to be. I am wondering what to do now.
Posted Oct 22, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC