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The original was posted on /r/relationships by /u/ThrowRAabcde123 on 2024-01-18 17:15:20+00:00.
TLDR: Arguing with BF for a year, he says he will be better. Now his dad is dying and BF is slowly going back to past hurtful behaviours. Should I breakup with him?
My boyfriend (26M) and I (25F) have been together for almost 4 years (don’t live together, long distance). The first 2.5 years were great, he was attentive and caring. The last 1.5 years have felt like we’ve been arguing non-stop. Our arguments would go as follows:
- he’d do something inconsiderate (eg. Won’t reply to my texts for 5-6 hours because he’s gaming with his friends)
- I would tell him this sort of behaviour hurts me
- even though we just talked about it, he does it again
- I then get really mad because we had just talked about it, and then we argue,
- he eventually apologizes and says he will be better, but then goes back to making the same mistake again shortly afterwards. Rinse and repeat.
It’s gotten to the point where now he becomes defensive when I get upset. He rarely apologizes, and rather tells me it’s annoying that I keep bringing up the same issues and replies with something dismissive like “yeah I get it” or “whatever”. Or he doesn’t want to talk to me because he tells me I’m accusing him of being a bad person and he doesn’t want to hear it. He never wants to address the issue and just wants to move on.
In the past 6-months he started to just fully ignore me… it went from a few hours to a full day to a few days and the most it’s been is almost a week. I have told him ignoring me makes things worse and hurts me deeply, but he says this is how he copes when being angry and hurt.
After almost 1.5yrs of arguing and being unable to resolve our issues because he keeps making the same mistakes, we argued again about 2 weeks ago. This time I told him that we need to talk about our problems and resolve them once and for all because I was becoming very overwhelmed with the state of our relationship, but he didn’t want to talk and instead went to play video games with his friends. So I got really upset and we didn’t talk the next couple days.
When he finally reached out, not to address anything, but just pretend like everything was okay, I told him that I no longer wanted this kind of relationship. Eventually we did talk things out, but in the end I told him that I will leave him for good if he ever stonewalls me, makes me feel like my feelings and opinions are invalid and worthless, or if I see him falling back into those inconsiderate behaviours again.
Since then, the past two weeks have been fine. We’ve slowly started to reconnect and I can see him trying. However, a couple days ago his dad became ill (old age) and it seems like he won’t make it. I’ve noticed in this time my boyfriend’s behaviour is slowly regressing back to what I don’t like.
I understand that it is a stressful time for him, and I want to be more understanding. But I’m worried that he will use this situation as an excuse to treat me like he used to. I also know two weeks for improvement is a short time, so I don’t know if he’s actually truly changed especially since this whole situation with his dad has stalled his improvement.
I’m not sure what to do in this situation. I understand he’s under a lot of stress right now and I want to support him, but I don’t know if it’s the stress causing a regression in his behaviour or if it’s just him (just like in the past). I do care about him and ideally I want to be with him, but I can’t continue another possible year of being in this endless cycle of arguing-making up. It’s mentally and emotionally exhausting.
Do I patiently wait to see if things improve (and for how long) or do I just end things right now? (Or is that too cruel considering his dad might die and my boyfriend probably doesn’t need additional stress).