Why is my boyfriend mean to me Reddit

The "Don't touch me" thread got me to thinking about this. After I broke up with my ex (a few months later), she told me the meanest thing I would ever do to her was not give her enough attention or make her feel special. She said I didn't really touch her a lot in public which made it seem like I didn't want people to know I liked her, which she didn't like. She said, too that she didn't like how I would always do favors for my friends because I would pick them just as often as her (I guess she wanted me to play favorites to her?) Honestly I still don't understand what I did completely, but I probably never will. :-|

So, with that being said, what's the most unintentionally mean/hurtful thing your boyfriend/husband can do or say to you? What thing does he do that he doesn't even really get that just put you out?

i love him to death no matter what but rn i don’t think i can do it anymore. he’s been so mean to me for example yesterday i was going to take out his trash bc he didn’t and it was making his room smell and he grabbed my wrist and told me to stop being a “show off” idk know what he even means i just wanted to help him be clean and then when his bday came two weeks ago i suggested that we go to the arcade that we went to on our first date and he said that’s stupid and didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day bc he thought i was “trying to ruin is birthday” when i just thought it would be nice to relive memories and it’s little stuff like one day he will talk to me then the next hell ignore me or he gets mad at me for no reason then the next minute he’s happy i feel like whenever i’m around him i have to walk on eggshells i don’t want to feel that way but i dont want to leave him he is my life. pls help reddit i rlly don’t know what to do :(

I don't really have many people to speak to about this issue so I'm never sure who to go to.

But as the title says - my boyfriend has been straight up mean. I've told him several times that he has been. I don't know how else to communicate that I don't like being called stupid all of the time or that his type of humor is actually putting me down. It's turned me kind of defensive against him and he gets mad at me for getting mad at him after he makes some type of rude remark in what he believes is funny. I already have a low self esteem right now because of some personal/mental issues I'm trying to deal with, I don't need my boyfriend adding to it.

I know like half of you are going to tell me to break up with him ( which is not something I want to do ), but all I really want is another way to tell him that I don't appreciate how he's been treating me. What else can I do? I just have no idea.

Sorry in advance for the length. I love my boyfriend very much (I'll call him James), but I feel like our relationship has deteriorated a lot. He talks to me really rudely on a more frequent basis as time goes on (saying things like "go away", "shut up", "you're annoying", "I don't care", etc.) or gets angry with something I do, but won't tell me what it was, he just sits and stews about it. It seems like he has less and less patience for me as time goes on.

I tried talking to him about it numerous times. I said that if he's agitated, I'd appreciate it if he could tell me more tactfully because his words cause me to feel unwanted and it hurts my self-esteem. His response is always a snarky "why don't you just write me a script of what you want me to say then?" and the conversation ends there. At this point, I look forward to going to work because people are nice and respectful to me there.

I've been trying to just ignore it but it really brings me down in general, There is just such a negative atmosphere around him. However, when he's not being negative, I love our time together and I could see us getting married if he works on this stuff or if I learn to not let it bother me so much..

About a month ago I met a guy (I'll call him Brad) at a friend's place. We hit it off instantly, more so than I've ever felt with anyone before. We've been talking a lot and I'm starting to have feelings for him. We have a lot of the same ideas about life and he has anxiety and depression (as do I) so we've had a lot of good talks regarding that, and I feel that we understand each other really well. (Side note: I'm pretty damn sure that James has these issues also, and he agrees himself, but refuses to see a doctor).

I told James I've been talking to a guy, because I wanted to be honest and hopefully salvage our relationship. The discussion circled back to me being unhappy because of how he treats me, he didn't really say he'd make an effort to work on it but he was extremely nice to me for a couple days out of fear, and then went back to the same old.

Ideally, I want to stay with James, because aside from his anger, he's the kind of guy I'd want to be with for a long time. However, meeting Brad reminded me what it's like to, well... be talked to nicely again, and now I don't know what to do. I should note that James is this way with everyone he talks to - his mom, his friends, waiters - so I don't think it's personal towards me.

TL;DR Boyfriend is generally rude to me a lot of the time but I want to stay with him and hopefully work on it somehow. I met another guy who is actually nice to me and who I really get along with emotionally and I'm wondering if I'm wasting my time with my BF. What do I do?

Before I start let me give some background. He took a scented candle from my house and some cleaning spray previously, and I asked for him to bring them back to me.

We got into a fight, he stormed into my house and sprayed me with the cleaning spray. Then he took some wax from the candle and rubbed it on me and put the jar up to my face and said eat it, eat it. He even cut up the flowers he gave me before, and threw the pieces at me. He choked me too and called me a bitch. After this “event” we went to my family’s house and ate dinner as if nothing had happened.

What the hell drives a person to act like this???? Is there some sort of childhood trauma at play or something else that I should be aware of?

I’ve been dating my boyfriend on and off for two years. This is the longest chunk of time we’ve been together without breaking up and things have started to go downhill.

He says a lot of things to me that are rude and straight up disrespectful, and when I tried to talk to him about it before, he made it into this big deal about how women are sensitive and how I’m too sensitive and condescendingly was like, “well I’ll just hold my tongue from now on to not hurt your feelings.” When that’s not what I was asking, I was simply asking him to be kinder and treat me with more respect.

Some examples: He’s big on cooking and traveling, two things I’m not good and inexperienced with, therefore more insecure with the topics.

So whenever we cook together or talk about cooking, he makes comments that make me feel small, like answering my question on how to prepare something with an attitude and looking down on me and making me feel like an idiot for asking and not knowing.

Same thing with traveling. We’re planning a trip out of my country and he asked me to look stuff up for where to go with our extra days, so I did - and when he reviewed them he laughed at me and what I came up with and almost quizzed me like, “why do you want to go here?” Acting as if it was hilarious I chose these places but “the reasons I wanted to go weren’t good enough for him.”

And sure enough, he then ended up planning the rest of our trip for us without any of my input that he asked for and ignored my thought. Which he had done the first leg of the trip planning too, but then was upset with me that I didn’t “help him plan anything.”

It’s like I can’t win. I don’t know if I want to break up with him or not but ugh.

I just texted him expressing my feelings so now we wait.

This is more of a venting post than anything but would love to hear any advice or help if possible. Thanks for reading if you read this far :)

EDIT: I want to say thank you to everyone who has commented on this post. Your support and validation means so much to me and everything that everyone is saying is right, 100%. A lot of this is new to me - the word abuse is a little scary to hear for the first time, but it’s something that adds up when you add the accurate title to the gaslighting he’s been doing, trivializing, minimizing, invalidating etc. I’ve learned a ton from everyone commenting on this - about my relationship and most importantly, myself. There’s a lot to process right now so I can’t get to every comment but really want to say that I’ve been reading through every single one and am giving you each a virtual hug to say thank you for responding and taking the time to give advice. Like I said, everything everyone’s saying is totally real and right. I love push for the self love and respect and worth because it is something I see has left my body and that’s just not okay. Anyways, thank you to everyone, your advice is so helpful and this is all what I needed to hear. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This will be my Bible moving forward, and I’ll continue to refer back to it as I need reminders that I deserve better, and anyone who makes me question who I am or belittles me and makes me feel sad shouldn’t be in my life. Thank you all again - I really hope you all read this and know how grateful I am for your responses <3