Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
He wants constant contact when they’re apart
DEAR CAROLYN: My boyfriend and I are in our mid-30s and have been dating for a year. The first six months were heady and passionate, and now we’re entering longterm relationship territory. 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: He wants to hear what I’m up to, he wants pictures, he wants to feel emotionally connected to me, even if just over text. More than 24-48 hours without speaking on a work trip starts to feel like “too long,” but for me that feels perfectly fine.
I’d really prefer to reconnect in person when we see each other again; it feels more organic to me that way. But this makes him feel ignored and disconnected from me, and it’s been the cause of numerous conflicts between us that usually end with him sharing that he feels I hold him at a distance in our relationship.
When I try communicating “his way,” I end up feeling a bit exhausted by check-ins designed to appease him, and it distracts me from being fully present in where I am and what I’m doing. 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: Are his expectations unrealistic, or should I be more gracious toward his communication needs? Any creative ideas for ways to work this out? — Less Texting
DEAR READER: I urge you, with every fiber of my advisory being, not to get creative here. There is no “of course” about any middle.
You are not here for constant texts. Creativity will only muddle and subvert the very clear, utterly valid, totally value-neutral message your exhaustion is trying to send you. You live in your moment and you can still love fully that way. That is you. Honor it.
Do so for your sake, yes, but arguably as much for his. His preference for contact is also value-neutral and valid. But if you nudge yourself this way and schedule yourself that way and jury-rig a boyfriend-appeasement program, then you will eventually tire from the extra work. Maybe not this week or this year, but
you will. And 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’tdo-this-anymore fatigue.
And what then? Does an unmatched set of unmet needs, a recurring argument, a growing sense of alienation, maybe even a divorce, get better for all the history and property and community ties and possibly next generation you form together over the years you’re able to make it work?
A viable compromise is one that makes room for each of you to remain true to yourselves while being less exhausting to the other. Sometimes there just isn’t one to be had.
So have your reckoning now. Kindly, calmly, but fully and without flinching:
“I wanted to do this for you. I love you and I love us. But it doesn’t work for me — I cannot comfortably be the person who feeds you news and pictures while we’re apart. My happy place is fully in my physical world. And, yes, I can still love you completely while I’m there. I realize I can’t make you believe or accept this about me, but I hope you do, because I am telling you as clearly as I know how that I am not going to change.”
As always, do all the script editing you need to make it yours.
One last thing I could easily have put first: This is not a “communication over text” issue you’re struggling with. Texting is just the venue.
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 to the point of conflict; he would believe you (or not), take your “no” for an answer, and decide his next move from there.
Standing up to such claims more than anything else will wear a person down over time, more even than texting photos you don’t want to text of events you’d rather be enjoying than texting about. Taking no for an answer — and wanting love as a partner naturally gives it, instead of always wanting something more/different/else — is the most headily, passionately romantic gesture there is.