Having your feelings dismissed by someone you are dating

what should I do

The people here split on one thing: whether they kept asking to be taken seriously, or whether they said what they needed once and treated the answer they got as the answer.

The ones who kept asking often got the same shape of reply each time, a redirection, an apology for how they feel rather than for what happened, a statement that the problem was in their interpretation, and they were still turning it over months or years later, tired and unsure whether their own reading of it was fair.

The ones who stopped asking did it after they saw the reaction to a plain, reasonable need, and they lost the relationship, which was the cost, but they came out of it settled about what they had seen rather than still questioning themselves.

What kept most people here in place was not confusion about him; several could already say exactly what he did and how little it gave them, and still stayed, because of what leaving would mean, being alone, starting over, being treated this way again by someone new.

Ember’s view. The question you are asking is probably not really what to do, since the people here who were most stuck could already describe the situation clearly. What they were waiting for was for him to agree that their feelings were reasonable, because that agreement would make leaving unnecessary, and it never came in the form they needed.

Say once, plainly, what you need in order to keep going, and then treat his response to that as the information it is, rather than as the opening of another round. For the people here who did that, the cost was the relationship ending, and sometimes guilt for having asked at all.

Am I overreacting?

Everyone here asked some version of that at night: whether they were a crazy person for having feelings, whether a brief jealous thought was an attack on someone's integrity, why they get upset and need reassurance, whether the contradiction was theirs or his.

In each case the doubt had a source, and it was not the feeling: it was the response to the feeling, being told the problem was all on them, being kissed to stop the conversation, hearing sorry you feel that way in place of an apology.

The ones who found their footing did it by putting the feeling into one plain, checkable request, time to recover from being sick, an answer about whether they were headed the same way, and then reading the response to that. What the response showed, several times over, was not that the feeling was too much but that the other person's own wants came first, and a couple of them say that seeing this felt good rather than bad.

None of them stopped having the feeling; what stopped, for some, was the nightly hearing about whether they were allowed to.

How do you bring it up without them shutting down or leaving?

Nobody here found the way; the same partner met every wording the same way, a kiss to end the sentence, a phone checked, the television left on, anger, a hug followed by take it or leave it, sorry you feel that way.

Several had already softened it as far as it would go, explaining they did not know the other women, saying they did not want to fight, stating a limit as gently as possible while very sick, and the softening did not change what came back.

The fear behind the question, that disagreement makes people leave, turned out for a couple of them to be older than this relationship, carried in from an ex or from earlier, and this person's reactions kept confirming it. What a few came to see is that the shutting down was the answer to the question they were asking, given every time, in place of words.

Where anything changed, it was the person deciding they could not keep asking someone to take their feelings seriously, not a better way of asking.

What happened to the people who ended it?

The two here who ended it did so at the point of realizing they could not keep asking to be taken seriously, and what they share is that they felt good about the decision, not only sad. What they carry afterward is less doubt about themselves than a clear reading of the other person: someone who cared about getting what he wanted, someone who said love while looking at his phone.

The ones still inside it name what keeps them: being terrified to date again and be treated the same way, tenderness that makes it hard to believe it means nothing, comfort offered right after the refusal. The staying costs them sleep and the daily work of trying not to care about someone they care about, and several describe both.

This light does not hold anyone whose partner started taking their feelings seriously; it holds people who left and people who are deciding, and the difference between them was a decision, not a change in the other person.