Help With Insecure and Angry Boyfriend

Reader’s Question

I am very thankful for your online services, especially for people who are unable to afford a therapist right now. Please forgive me for the length and the amount of points I’m trying to address. I will try to keep this as brief as possible, without leaving out any important detail.

I am a 21 yr old female and have been dating my boyfriend (25) for 2.5 years. He has some major issues however, and although I would like to help him, I am not sure how…or if I truly even can. First issue is this. My boyfriend, I have found, is very insecure, paranoid, and slowly but surely becoming controlling/passive aggressive. This may have something to do with our shaky past, but I feel he may have been like this all along, and I could have just been blind through our “courting” stage. We started off with a shaky foundation, where I was 19 and still being a naive kid, flirty, fun and completely clueless. I still consider myself a naive kid, but I’ve learned a lot from him as he has “guided” me through what should be something close to a mature relationship. However, he needs so much attention. And when he doesn’t receive it the way he wants it, he becomes angry. There are many things he also admires about me and is attracted to, but also completely resents me for, I’ve found. For example: good Christian values, an incredibly close knit family, the fact that I love what I’m going to school for. He doesn’t have any of these. I should also add, that he did not experience close family ties growing up, and that he does not have a very close relationship with his parents or any of his family members. I know that he wishes he did.

His other issue is how he handles his problems. He has a very stressful life…a sick mother, a stressful job, and some time consuming hobbies, but he represses these feelings. He never wants to talk about his problems, and his excuse for this is “I do not want to feel vulnerable and weak to my girlfriend.” I understand this may be normal. But in the end, he ends up taking out all this stress and anger on petty things in our relationship. There was even a time when he had told me, “You are right. Little things in our relationship tend to double the aggravation with all my other stresses I have going on in the background.” I wish he would just talk to me and let out his feelings. Maybe it would make him feel better and he wouldn’t have to take out all this background anger on me.

He threatens me with breaking up, but if I say “ok”, he’ll object to the fact that I’m “allowing him to break up with me” and so on. It’s just getting crazy. I need some good help as to what to do, and I really don’t want leaving the relationship to be my answer. I’m becoming tired and beat.

Thank you for reading this. I appreciate any advice given.

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

I suspect you are dealing with issues that have been present in your boyfriend for a long time. What’s happening now is you are maturing…probably even out-maturing him. Not wanting to appear weak and vunerable to his girlfriend is another way of saying he wants to stay in control and not share himself completely. While your life is on a positive course with positive support from family/friends, his life has had few changes. Of special concern is the anger present in your boyfriend and how he directs it at you. This anger will eventually become emotionally exhausting. While you are becoming more mature, he may be becoming more childish — demanding your attention and throwing a temper tantrum if he doesn’t get it. As time passes, he may begin to see your mature, adult-level activities (family, church, school, career interests, etc.) as threatening.

You can offer such things as relationship counseling through your church or through local professionals. You might also search the Internet for “relationship exercises” that might help the two of you communicate more. If you find the situation getting worse, it’s likely that you have out-matured him and may need to consider moving on. At his age, his personality may be very stable — the “what you see is what you get” problem. If he doesn’t change, he may continue to want you to operate his way instead of looking toward your future and wanting a mature relationship.

During these rocky times in a relationship, I often recommend that you place the relationship on probation. The idea is give it a certain number of months — work on the issues — and see if they can be fixed or repaired. If nothing changes, it’s unlikely they will change. At that point, leaving the relationship becomes an option. Keep in mind that at your age, like Noah, you want a partner to help you build your boat and sail through life. You don’t want a partner that complains about the lumber, becomes angry every day, or acts more like an anchor than a sail.