Being short with him is never a solution.
All that does is make him defensive or force him to ignore what you are complaining about altogether.
I know that you get frustrated with him when something bothers you and he never seems to be receptive nor aware of it.
It’s like you are in a relationship with yourself.
He doesn’t seem to have the perception that you do when something goes wrong and you are hoping that he detects it.
He doesn’t.
He acts as though nothing went wrong.
He doesn’t acknowledge what happened.
All he seems to care about is his own happiness.
For that, you have realized that he doesn’t require all that much from you either.
Some physical intimacy here and there, and he is good.
This only leaves you that much more frustrated with him.
It’s no wonder that the next time something happens in the relationship that you are unhappy about, you get short with him.
It’s not like you like doing this.
You don’t.
But you get short with him in the hopes that he finally gets better at picking up on when something goes awry in the relationship.
Unfortunately, so far, being short with him hasn’t given him a higher awareness about what caused it.
He is as clueless as he has ever been.
At this juncture, you have tried the two strategies.
It began with you telling him about what was bothering you.
It never got you anything but grunts and empty promises that he would do better.
Then, you got desperate and started using the strategy of being short with him.
That hasn’t worked either.
If anything, he gets hostile in retribution to you being short with him.
Nothing improves.
With these two strategies failing, you have thought about the prospect of leaving him.
That isn’t so easy.
With all of the problems that you face in the relationship, you continue to love him.
You want so badly to get back to how it was in the beginning.
A time where he was attentive towards you and aware of issues whenever they occurred.
He seemed to be so much more in tune with you whenever these issues would arise in the relationship.
Alright, with these two strategies failing, it’s time to use a different strategy.
Being short with him hasn’t worked, nor has telling him of what bothers you when it happens.
The new strategy is one of weekly meetings.
Devise a strategy to meet at the end of each week to give each other an account of how the week went.
This is where you get information from each other on what went on during the week, the good with the bad.
A report card of sorts on how the week went.
This keeps you two abreast of what is going on in the relationship.
It starts with praise.
You praise each other for what went well during the week.
This is good for the relationship.
It makes your boyfriend feel good about what he did in the relationship that worked.
This is encouraging.
Guys are practical.
They think along the lines of action and reward.
When he receives a good report on what he did well during the week, it triggers a sense of reward in his mind.
This feeling inspires him to keep doing whatever it was that worked for the relationship over the week that transpired.
And does something else.
It makes him open to criticism.
This is where you tell him about where things didn’t go so well during the course of the week.
This being said, remember that a relationship is a two-way street.
This strategy won’t work unless you also give him an opening to voice what he didn’t like that occurred during the week too.
This keeps you from making him feel like he is the bad guy in the relationship.
There is an equilibrium in the relationship in terms of either party having to be accountable for where they went wrong during the course of the week.
A strategy like this makes him so much more receptive to paying attention to issues that occur in the relationship, and has him wanting to resolve it.
To reiterate, the key is to start with what went right over the week.
Then segue to what went wrong.
When you start with gratitude, a guy is far more open to hearing about where he went wrong during the week.