A rough start to a relationship, is it okay?
I have been dating my boyfriend for a few months. I am his first girlfriend so I didn't expect him to know everything. However, he has still never held my hand and I mostly initiate kisses and I can feel his nervousness to this day. I've talked to him about it and he says he needs more time and that he isn't that nervous, but I feel it and it makes everything awkward for me as well.
Also, he already wants me to meet his family and he mentioned it all the time. I talked to him about it and told him that I would feel pressured if I were to meet them now since we aren't so comfortable with each other yet and that I would want to meet them later on in our relationship. He got offended and needed time to process that. Now he's constantly making jokes about how I don't want to meet them, even though he has said that he has accepted that and that it's okay.
It has happened twice that we have had tough conversations where I felt like I needed to regulate his emotions and where it didn't feel like a conversation between a couple where we both are in the same boat, but more like his problems and feelings and me making sure he feels better, even though I had my own emotions as well.
I have told him all of this and he has said that it wasn't like that and that he is gonna show me that. At first I accepted it, but later I realized that my feelings and perceptions were completely invalidated.
Is all of this okay considering the fact that he has never been in this situation before and is it something we can both work on or is one of us just completely wrong?
Posted Mar 5, 2026, 11:33 AM UTC