TL;DR When my partner is telling me his negative feelings, I don’t know how to support him without offering advice or getting defensive and it makes him feel like I’m dismissing his feelings and we end up fighting. I want to be supportive but I keep falling into this cycle and I’m looking for advice on what I can do to get out of it.
My partner and I (22 & 23M, been together for almost 6 years) get into fights multiple times a week because I just constantly make things feel worse whenever he’s seeking me for support. When he’s telling me how he feels about something he’s struggling with, or if he’s telling me about something I did that hurt him, instead of being there for him I’ll talk about what things I can do to make things feel better, offer solutions, positive words or other things like that or sometimes just apologize. And if it has to do with something that I did, without even realizing I’m doing it I’ll start trying to explain my intentions which just hurts him more. He says that when I do these things they feel like I’m minimizing his feelings or the situation and start making it about me and what *I* can do instead of being there for him. I completely understand why its hurtful, we’ve had a lot of conversations about it, I’ll make a promise to work on it and I do, sometimes I catch myself and things go well, but a lot of the times I’ll still find myself starting that cycle again without even realizing until the damage has been done. When I defend myself over things too, it makes him feel like I’m making it about me and not how I hurt him which I understand too.
This has been an issue throughout our relationship, but within the last couple of years is when the actual “fights” started, because he says that he just cant handle it anymore. The defensiveness, minimizing and just making him feel alone in his feelings has strained our relationship so much that when it happens now, he will start calling me selfish and cruel and that I don’t care about him and I’m scared now that I’ve pushed him to resent me. And when he calls me those things, I feel hurt, because I truly do care so much, when I’m trying to support him it’s coming from a place of genuine love, and I try to explain that to him, which again, is me defending myself, talking about myself again instead of talking to him. He feels like he has no one to be there for him because I am not even there for him. He doesn’t trust me with his feelings anymore because I’ll just try to “treat him like something to fix.” I’ve tried asking him what makes him feel supported, or what he needs from me, but he says that “He shouldn’t have to tell me what to do” and it’s not his fault that I don’t know how to be there for people without being a hero (true).
Last night, we got into a big fight because he was telling me that he’s tired of his life, waking up and doing the same thing every day, waiting for me to come home from work, tired of not having money, and feeling generally depressed. (Important context: My partner doesn’t work because he is disabled, and also struggles with bipolar. We also live in low income housing). In a way I knew there wasn’t anything I could really say to change those feelings, but I tried. I said maybe we need to break up the monotony of things and make sure we’re spending time together outside of the house more, or telling him that things have been frustrating lately but will get better with time, etc. He got angry. Told me that there’s nothing I can do to change how he feels and need to stop treating him like that. That he just wants connection but it feels like I don’t care. I became apologetic and tried again, but he didn’t want to talk to me anymore after that and just asked me to leave him alone. This is where things escalated because I didn’t leave him alone and kept pushing him to try and talk again, but ultimately ended up just being apologetic and talking about how sorry I was while he screamed at me. At the end he caved and said “Fine, be here for me then without talking about yourself, without being sorry, without offering solutions, and just try being here for me.” So I tried to use words, to validate his feelings and put myself in his shoes, offered to just be here for him to listen and offer comfort but he said “That’s not what I need, and if you were ever there for me once you would know.” Ouch. I tried asking him what I can do, but if I have to ask then nothing. “If I knew how I felt and what I needed I would tell you but I don’t.” I just stood there trying to say anything but I just couldn’t think of anything to say. I realized that I don’t know how to be there for anyone’s feelings without talking about myself. That I don’t know how to be there for my own partner and I felt embarrassed and ashamed and I feel like such a child. I feel like the only way I know how to talk about feelings is stuff I learned from my corporate office job and it feels so cliché and fake.
I don’t know what to do anymore. My partner resents me because it’s my fault that he feels worse because of no support and I feel like I’m failing him. I want to be there for him and make him feel supported and let him know that I care. But it’s so hard to break out of this pattern and I don’t know how I can work on it on my own time. I know I can’t expect him to wait for me to figure it out. I’m just afraid of running out of time. I’m exhausted of feeling like a horrible person and I miss when things used to be peaceful between us. But apparently all that time was just him tolerating my behavior and now it’s becoming too much.
I have a therapist, I’ve only been seeing him for a couple of months but I have a hard time articulating my feelings to him so I feel like I haven’t gotten the help I need yet.
For people who have also struggled with partners like me, or if you’ve been in my shoes, what did you do to see actual change? How do you learn to be there for someone if you are so used to avoiding feelings? What is needed here?
Sorry for the long post.