My [27F] Boyfriend [27M] is in Germany for 2 months. He wants to tell me everything about it, but when it comes time to talk about me he either interrupts or goes off on a Germany-related tangent.

My boyfriend and I have been very happily together for 2.5 years now. He was in a job he hated for most of that time, and after a lot of searching was able to find a new job with awesome pay, in an awesome location, and with awesome benefits. The only drawback to this was that he would have to go to the global headquarters in Germany (we are in the US) to go train and do some onboarding things for 2 months. Hearing that kind of sucked, because we’ve never been long distance before, but we decided that our relationship was strong enough to handle the distance and that the payoff was definitely worth it.

So here’s the problem: he’s been there for 3 weeks now and it’s all he wants to talk about. And I get it! It’s fine, it’s interesting, he’s never left the country before this so everything is new and exciting...but I don’t get to talk about me anymore. We have regular Skype calls, and he will go on and on about Germany. He will tell me about everything they went to training for that day. He will tell me every meal in detail. The sights. The smells. On and on. It’s a monologue. At the very end of that he will ask me how I’ve been doing.

My life has been pretty much unchanged since he left, but I will tell him about whatever has happened. Or at least I try to. Here’s a couple different things that have happened on a regular basis:

Scenario 1

Me: “So I got together with some of my coworkers for drinks yesterday. There’s this new place by work we wanted to try.”

Him: “That sounds cool. Oh! That reminds me some of my coworkers wanted me to try real German beer, so we went to a bar and that stuff is nasty!” [Cue monologue about Germany]

Scenario 2

Me: “Mom texted me today, she’s having the patio--”

Him: “OH MY GOD haha Kyle (his temporary roommate) just walked in with like 10 people and pizza!”

Me: “Oh, I can let you go then.”

Him: “No, what were you saying about your mom and the patio?”

Me: “Forget it. It wasn’t important. I’m going to get off the phone now.”

Scenario 3

Me: "So there was a sale on oranges today so I bought like fifty haha."

Him: "Hmm...sorry I'm pretty braindead today. Got up early and didn't stop working until like half and hour ago."

Me: "I can let you go so you can go to bed."

Him: "No, sorry. What are you going to do with the oranges?"

---

I think you get the picture here.

So that’s what most of our conversations are like now, and I’m reaching the end of my rope quickly. I know that there’s so much he’s going through now (and he’s working overtime, it’s not like he’s there partying with the rest of the new hires) but I’m getting more and more agitated with every phone call. I hate being interrupted, and him interrupting me is something we’ve had to work on, but now he’s fallen back into his bad habits.

So I guess I need help figuring out how to do this remotely since he doesn’t have too much privacy over there. He’s rooming with another new hire, Kyle, so even his room isn’t great. Reddit, what do I do here?

TL;DR: BF is doing a bunch of interesting things in Germany. He wants to tell me all of them in great detail, and I’ve stopped being able to talk about myself without him going off on a tangent or interrupting me.