TELL ME ABOUT IT

Dear Carolyn: My boyfriend and I are in our mid-30s and have been dating for a year. We both can really see ourselves with the other person in our futures and love each other very much.

We’ve just been struggling with communication over text. He wants more, and I want less! We both travel frequently for our jobs, and when we’re apart, he wants to be in daily contact.

When I try communicating “his way,” I end up feeling a bit exhausted by check-ins designed to appease him.

I worry we have unresolvable differences in our needs for space, but hope we can work it out. The answer is of course somewhere in the middle, but what do you think? Any creative ideas for ways to work this out?

– Less Texting

Less Texting: I urge you, with every fiber of my advisory being, not to get creative here.

Creativity will only muddle and subvert the very clear, utterly valid, totally value-neutral message your exhaustion is trying to send you.

His preference for contact is also value-neutral and valid. But the more creative you get, the longer your appeasement plan may hold up – and, therefore, the deeper into a shared life you will be when you hit the wall of can’t-do-this-anymore fatigue.

One last thing I could easily have put first: The issue is one of control – specifically, a person’s claim on a partner’s behavior.

Your boyfriend believes (consciously or no) that he has a claim on your behavior to meet his emotional needs. His actions, at least, suggest a belief that because he wants something of you, and because you’re in a relationship, he therefore is entitled to get it. Otherwise he wouldn’t repeatedly push the issue.