Constant affection from boyfriend is smothering

And you’re not the person for him, either. I have opinions about so much affection in this new a relationship, as I imagine many others do right now after reading this, but it’s actually irrelevant. The mismatch is the thing.

I’m sorry.

Re: “any more that day”: You’ve talked about it “some,” but how clear were you? Maybe he’s taking you literally when you say you don’t want to be touched any more THAT DAY, but the next day is a whole new day, so he’s free to touch until you call a halt again. Have you told him that IN GENERAL you need considerably less touching, rather than gritting your teeth and enduring it until you have to tell him to stop “for the day”?

There is a little gap in Smothered’s statement, yes, and that could arguably explain why they’re living a handsy “Groundhog Day.”

But it seems reasonable to expect someone to take away the larger message of, “For the love of deities, please, give me air.”

He apparently hasn’t done so – yet more proof that the reasonable must always defer to the real. That allows Smothered to see him as attentive and respectful by the numbers, and that in turn supports an argument for giving the guy a chance.

But if anything, his failure to grasp the larger message intensifies the whiff of doom here. They not only have way different needs and thresholds for affection, but this gap exposes (at least the possibility of) way different communication styles: Smothered speaks in hints and the boyfriend is literal possibly to an extreme. Yikes.