One morning, I was well into a conversation with my boyfriend when he asked me to start over. He hadn’t heard any of it. There wasn’t an argument or a dramatic interruption. I had been talking, and he hadn’t taken in what I was saying.
We’ve been together for about seven years. I’m 25; he’s 26. I used to be chatty with him, happy to tell him what was going on with me. Lately, I’ve realized how much less I share. There are things in my life I haven’t updated him on, because somewhere along the way I stopped expecting him to hear them.
Sometimes I’m halfway through saying something when he begins talking about a completely different subject. Other times, he takes a call or plays a voice message while I’m still speaking. Each interruption is small enough to explain away on its own. Living with them every day feels different.
I’ve brought it up several times. He says I catch him when he’s busy, when he’s reading something on his phone, when he’s distracted or trying to relax. Sometimes he has a lot on his mind. I understand all of those things. I get distracted, too. But with so many reasons available, there hardly seems to be a right time to talk.
At first, it didn’t bother me much. Now it happens so regularly when we’re together that I find myself wondering whether I’m being too sensitive. People do zone out. A missed sentence doesn’t prove someone has lost interest in you. Still, I can’t treat this as an occasional lapse when it has become part of every day.
The contrast is what stings. When he wants to tell me something, I’m interested. I put my phone down and pay attention. Last week, after he’d had a tough week, he thanked me for supporting him. I appreciated that. It meant something to know he had felt supported, and I don’t want to dismiss his gratitude just because I’m upset.
But it also made me aware of what I’ve been wanting from him: that same willingness to listen. I’m not asking for every ordinary detail I share to be fascinating. I want to feel that there’s room for my day in the relationship, too.
The strange part is how awkward it now feels to raise the issue. Saying that he hasn’t listened to me today sounds like I’m singling out one distracted moment. What I’m trying to describe is the accumulation, including the things I no longer bother to say. Those are harder to point to than a phone call that interrupts me.
I haven’t stopped wanting to talk to him. I’ve started getting used to talking less. Even as I think about bringing it up again, I feel silly trying to explain something that has become so ordinary between us.
