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The original was posted on /r/twoxchromosomes by /u/Jurassica94 on 2023-08-02 20:02:05.
We usually talk about weaponised incompetence when it comes to household chores and the mental load, but I’ve found very little about a pattern of (probably feigned) emotional incompetence in relationships. I’ve witnessed it quite a few times and I’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts about it.
The pattern I tend to see often goes like this: You meet a guy, he’s respectful, kind, considerate, empathetic and you think you’ve got yourself a real prize there. Few months later you find yourself explaining the most basic things to this man as though he was an alien. (Doesn’t just go for romantic relationships though, I’ve seen it in friendships as well.)
“It hurt me when you unfavourably compared my body to one of your exes.”
“I feel unimportant when you spend the bulk of our time together doing other stuff instead of being present with me.”
“When you don’t ask me a single thing about myself for weeks it makes me feel like you don’t care.”
“It makes me feel dismissed when I bring up one of my problems and you just minimise it.”
“I get anxious if you don’t reply to my messages for days without giving me a warning”
“I’m sorry you feel that way is not a proper apology.”
“It’s important to me that we spend quality time together outside of the bedroom”
“I’m unmotivated to do more for you when you don’t express appreciation for all the things I already do and hold me to a higher standard than yourself.”
“I want sex to be good for both of us.”
“Mutuality and reciprocation are important to me in relationships.”
“Of course I don’t trust you anymore after you kept important information from me that concerns me as well.”
“I feel uncomfortable when you monitor and confront me about my online activity.”
“I don’t want a threesome with you and your girlfriend and it’s really insensitive to try and convince me into it when my mum just died.”
“It’s not okay to show intimate pictures of me to your friends.”
The list goes on and on. I found myself “communicating”, explaining, trying to formulate my boundaries in almost legalistic ways, so they won’t possibly find a loophole to exploit and then act like they couldn’t possibly have known that that also counts. It doesn’t matter, they either act surprised, “accept” what you said and say they’ll do better just to completely forget about it two weeks later, or turn it into a “you” problem. I’ve been described as jealous, insecure, prude and high maintenance, just because I wanted to be treated with some pretty common decency.
The advice you usually get is that you have to learn to communicate better, don’t criticise, assume good faith, work on yourself. For more years than I’d like to admit I tried. I put so much effort into becoming a better communicator, learn nonviolent communication, work on my issues, my resilience, therapy…all so I could finally be heard and seen by people who’ve hurt me over and over again, just to realise that they just don’t want to. It benefits them to not understand you, because then they’d have to change, put in effort or forfeit whatever their bad behaviour got them.
If you find yourself explaining how someone’s behaviour hurts you time and time again, just for them to be annoyed with you and continue like nothing happened, you’ve found yourself someone with an incredible tolerance for the pain they cause you. And at some point you need to ask yourself if this is the kind of person you want in your life.
Some of the men I’ve been talking about here were “good guys” who contributed wonderful things to my life, and if it wasn’t for that one thing I’d be happy to keep them around.
And before the comments about how it’s not their fault, because boys aren’t taught these things like girls are come in: it’s not their fault they weren’t taught, but it’s their fault for refusing to learn.
This is mostly a rant and hopefully a wake up call for some people who find themselves in a similar situation, but I’d really like to hear other people’s experiences with this, because I don’t see it being talked about that much.
TLDR: Stop explaining things to people who don’t want to understand you.