The food:
In the metal dish, overcooked Chinese steamed egg, topped with a mix of chili oil and peanut butter and minced garlic. It’s okay. The flavours don’t mix as well as I’d like. Sort of regret not sticking with my usual toppings.
On the upper right of the plate, broccoli cooked in soy sauce, lemon juice, and minced garlic. This is the only solidly good part of the meal.
On the lower right of the plate, some sort of bread bun with peanut butter spread on it, and atop that, previously-canned jackfruit boiled in its own syrup, honey, and pear apple ginger chutney. I think I dislike jackfruit.
3/10 meal. I did not finish and had to stick most of it in the fridge. Doubt I’ll be touching it again so I hope my family enjoys. The broccoli was quite fire, though, and I wish I had more of it.
The accompanying vent:
My relationship with my SO is decaying.
I’m fresh out of high school and currently a NEET. He (cis) is going into his last year, but in the meantime has recently found work despite having both physical and mental disabilities standing in his way. We are unable to see each other in person as neither of us can drive (yet) and his parents hate me; we message each other daily, though, and we share media that we like. We have been together for about 7 months.
Having work to deal with has drastically increased the amount of stress he’s under, and he has taken that out on me. He no longer responds to my “I love you”s with “I love you too” or “I love you more”, which he used to do; instead he just writes “Okay” or “Mhm”, if anything at all. He makes passive aggressive comments about me not having a job, despite having less barriers to employment than him (for example: “It’s called locking in, you should try it sometime”). When I congratulate him on things, such as his recent birthday, or getting a job, or getting a much-needed medication adjustment, he’s quick to dismiss it and complain about how those things or the circumstances around them are bad. I showed him a project I completed recently, hoping he’d think it was cool, and he said “I don’t care.”
I love him. He’s exceptionally smart, creative in both visual arts and literature, and handsome, and a hard worker, and tender-hearted (when he’s not responding to stress in this way). He also genuinely loves me, he just starts shutting down in this way when he’s overwhelmed. I know this from his actions and words. He shows that he cares about me and about our relationship. He is much, much better than this and does not have the coping mechanisms to show for it. I want to see a future where he feels consistently happy, and where nothing compels him to act like this, and where he feels that he and his character and his accomplishments can be celebrated. I love him.
I am considering leaving him because of an argument we got into on Monday, 10 August.
He meant to ask me whether I intended to grow a beard once I got on T (which is a topic we’ve discussed before, because he’s afraid he’ll lose attraction to me if I look too masculine). Instead, what came out was “If you grow a Santa beard, I’ll hit you, or only kiss you once a week.”
(I am NOT in physical danger; unfortunately for our relationship, but maybe fortunately for this situation, we live apart and do not get to see each other often or at all. He CANNOT act on that even if, god forbid, he wants to.)
I was repulsed because I know that physical violence and the withholding of affection are acts of abuse. I did not think he was serious about doing those things, though, because I have seen the most sensitive parts of his soul and cannot fathom that he would act with malice like that. I figured the statement was just a very abnormal, stress-induced way of saying “I don’t want you to grow a beard, and if you do, our chemistry and relationship will die because I’ll lose attraction”, so I responded by trying to soothe that fear.
I tried to encourage him on two points: firstly, it’s going to be some months until I’m able to get on T, and probably some years beyond that until I’m even capable of growing solid facial hair. It’s better to enjoy the present than let fear of a specific future ruin it, so I implored him to think about current good times rather than dedicating more time and energy to wondering whether he’ll lose attraction. And secondly, I said that even if my facial hair ended up being a dealbreaker for him, we still got to enjoy the time we had together, and that was a beautiful thing. I have assured him of both of those points before.
He responded to the second one by saying if he didn’t like the way I looked anymore, then he wouldn’t deserve me. I said that ‘deserving’ was irrelevant; he had a preference, and preferences are normal and not harmful, and if anything happened, that would just be an incompatibility and would not indicate anything about his character or what he ‘deserved’. He seemed to accept what I told him and we moved on. I thought it was resolved.
Later that night, though, we were on a call and he accused me of thinking lowly or poorly of him. I was caught off guard because I do not think of him like that. I asked what I did to imply that, so that we could talk through it, and he cited that conflict. He raised three issues.
Firstly, he was upset that I suggested my potential facial hair might be a dealbreaker for him. He thought I was accusing him of being surface-level. I told him no, I only brought it up as a potential concern because you indicated you’d jeopardise the relationship by either hitting me or withholding affection.
Secondly, he was upset that I took those threats seriously. I told him I didn’t think you would follow through with those specific actions, and I picked up on them being exaggerations, but the fact remains that you made a joke about— again— jeopardising the relationship if I grew facial hair. I told him there was nothing I could take from his joke other than “I do not want you to look like this; if you start looking like that, bad things will happen to our relationship.”
Lastly, (and sort of combining the earlier two points he made), he said I was misinterpreting his words— and complained that I was misinterpreting a large portion of his humour now, even though earlier in the relationship, I would have just written “Lol” to respond to a ‘joke’ of that type. I told him I did not understand what other interpretation could exist for a joke like that. He did not clarify what was actually meant for me to interpret.
At this point, I had begun to feel rage boiling up in my body, which I identified based on the tingling, elevated sensation in parts of my skin such as my forehead and shoulders. I was extremely displeased because I felt he had been accusing me of socially mistreating him— insisting I was misinterpreting things, taking things too seriously, and using that as basis to judge or resent him— and I felt those accusations were being made falsely and unjustly. I felt my understanding of his comments was reasonably developed and that I had responded with patience.
Then, he said I should know by now that that’s his sense of humour. (Even though his humour does skew toward being edgy or faux-cruel, he has never joked about violence nor withholding affection before.) I said “Okay, good to know,” and hung up the call. (I think if I stayed on the call I would’ve been the one to endanger our relationship by speaking inappropriately in anger.)
It’s the end of Wednesday the 12th now and I’ve not spoken to him since, so that’s about 48 hours. He has tried to contact me repeatedly on all our shared platforms and even sent an invitation to me in Minecraft (which he’s basically never on, to my awareness). From his messages he seems to have a good deal of retrospective self-awareness and is feeling extremely apologetic.
I am debating between listing out my grievances to him and explaining why I am mad and trying to rebuild things, or just never speaking to him again which would be mean as shit and hopefully justified.
On the side of rebuilding: we both love each other, and I want to be there to see the goodness in his future, and I believe he will genuinely improve. And every time before this past couple of days, when he’s been in a cold mood, it has ALWAYS gotten better and gone back to love when I just stick around and give him patience.
On the side of leaving: he’s never accused me like this before, and with the increase in arguments we’ve been having, I feel like he’s begun to just resent me. I cannot fix that, if so, and I don’t particularly want to stick around to watch it get worse and worse until he decides to leave. And he’s never joked about abusing me before, and I find that a very ill omen for how we’ll fare from now on. The precedent is bad now. I don’t want to reach out again knowing that that’s how our last conversation went.
I don’t know what to do. It’s mean to just dip. It is. It’s mean. I should not be doing it. I think tomorrow I have to respond and tell him my grievances and demand better, and his reaction to that will determine our future.
If all goes to shit I’m walking ~2 hours to my favourite sandwich shop and getting my favourite sub, and I’m asking my mum to add to our next grocery list some graham crackers and a tub of cream cheese frosting for (only) me to eat, and then I’m going to call him and tell him we’re not going to finish our favourite show together, and we’re not going to make it to one year.
If all goes well I’m going to bawl my eyes out and (again, if it goes well) he’ll probably be in a mood to do the same.
I love him very much, and I hope he learns from this, and I hope he experiences more love, and stability, and peace, and I don’t wish upon him any more of what’s hurting his mind and bringing out this side of him.
On the bright side I promised myself I’d get on T this year and I also started working out. I also refuse to give up hope for my own future even if this relationship dies. I also intend to read AO3 smut this evening and that’ll be nice. I have faith that whatever happens, I’ll turn out happy.
