Am I being irrational? (Lol)

posted 2 years ago in Long Distance Relationships
Post # 16
Member
21 posts
Newbee
  • Wedding: September 2020

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BrideK2Wings :  I definitely think that we need to make an effort to spend more time here in town. He has been here many times, and I have invited friends to dinner/to hang out some, but there was always a schedule conflict (with the exception of one time). Sometimes, when I haven’t seen him for a period of 2-3 months, I just want to be with him. Yes, it’s his choice to be gone, and that is something I had to deal with on my own. The town he lives in is very small and there are not that many opportunities in terms of employment, so he has been working out of state, saving, and paying off his house. (I’ve been doing the same; Our goal is to be debt free before we are married.) I do know that it “sounds” like he is doing lots of taking and not giving, but he is extremely close to his family and it’s very, very hard on him to be away from them. 

 

For reference, he is 32 and I am 29. 

Post # 17
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21 posts
Newbee
  • Wedding: September 2020

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hungrymeow :  I’ve had this happen to me, as well. I know it’s not a good feeling, and I never intended on hurting anyone’s feelings. I have seen my boyfriend maybe a total of 15 days in 2018. How am I to avoid them feeling this way? If my boyfriend is planning to be at home then I think it should go without saying that I am going to go see him. Just like when they are dating someone and make plans to go to dinner and a movie that is what they’re going to do. 

Post # 18
Member
21 posts
Newbee
  • Wedding: September 2020

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HisMoon :  This may be the root of the entire situation, here. He has a 6 year old daughter that he always thinks of first. He adores that little girl and it absolutely breaks him into pieces to be away from her. If he was not like this, then he and I would not be together. He is an absolutely wonderful dad, and I love how he is with her and how much he loves her. I have known her since she was 4 and I’m completely in love with her, too. 

 

So, not only have my friends never done a LDR, they’ve never dated someone with a child. (Both are firsts for me.) It is a completely different situation than anything they’ve ever expereinced, so of course it’s difficult to understand. I definitely need to ask them to dinner and talk it out. Like I said in an earlier post, I’m really non confrontational, so I usually let things just lie, but the last thing I want is there to be resentment that could have been avoided by a good conversation. 

Post # 19
Member
344 posts
Helper bee

 

If I were on the outside of this (IE the friends’ position) it would look like my friend was prioritizing a man who wasn’t prioritizing her – he chose to be gone for weeks, months at a time, and when he finally was home, the onus was always on my friend to go see him. And to boot, she makes clear that our friendship plays second fiddle to her relationship with a man who doesn’t seem to make her a priority after two years of dating.

I am NOT saying this is the truth of your relationship, only that it might look that way from the outside and explain some of the resistance you’re getting.

I say this as someone who has been in a long-term LDR, a short-term LDR, and had friends flake on stuff because they needed to be home at a certain time to Skype their long-distance boyfriend and the like. So I have been on both sides of this.

I also have to wonder why your guy can’t come and see you with his daughter if it’s only 1.5 hours?

If there are no jobs in his hometown, why not move to where you live?

What will you do for work once he no longer travels?

Post # 20
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6939 posts
Busy Beekeeper
  • Wedding: April 2016

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wcky711 :  So, I’ve kind of been in your friends’ position before. It wasn’t because of a boyfriend, but I had one friend who basically never hung out. I’d invite her to everything and she’d always turn me down for one reason or another or just flake entirely. So after a while, I stopped inviting her out. You say NO so many times and that’s basically what happens. I guess then she realized something changed as she hadn’t heard from me in a while and suddenly she kept calling ME up to hang out. At that point, it was too little too late and I just had no interest in such a one-sided friendship. 

It could also be what some other Bees have mentioned. These friends don’t understand your relationship and from an outsider looking in it seems that you’re putting in all this effort and your bf is putting in next to none. It’s hard to watch a friend do something like that, especially if you don’t even know the guy. 

Post # 21
Member
3007 posts
Sugar bee

So I thought this was going to be your traditional ‘I’m ditching my friends every week and now I don’t see why I don’t have any friends’ kind of post but to me it sounds like you’re a great friend. You have been keeping your relationship with your boyfriend and making him a priority while still attending friend’s events and making them a priority as well.

I dealt with a similar situation at my last job actually. All of my coworkers who were married (I was just dating my now husband at the time) acted like their time was more precious with their husbands and I shouldn’t have been spending too much time with my then boyfriend. I hung out with my girlfriends ALL the time too. But they would make snide remarks on making time for my boyfriend. Well we’re married now so maybe that’s why I was prioritizing him undecided People are so rude!

Post # 22
Hostess
4633 posts
Honey bee
  • Wedding: November 2016

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BrideK2Wings :  This.  I’ve had friends in LDRs who I felt were doing all of the work when they were always the ones traveling and their S.O.s couldn’t seem to be bothered to make the effort to reciprocate.  I understand it’s a bit different in your case because your S.O. has a daughter that he should be prioritizing, but it sounds like your friends don’t really know him at all. 

In your friends’ place, I probably would make less of an effort too if it seemed like you only were looking to hang out because your boyfriend wasn’t available, and I would have a hard time not expressing my concern that you seemed to be giving more than him, which would turn the night into a less than fun time.  Having also been in an LDR with my now husband, I understand the balancing act.  D.H. didn’t always want to spend a day hanging out with my friends when we only had two days together before not getting to see each other for 4-8 weeks, but we were able to find a compromise (i.e. spend the day just the two of us, and meet my friends out for drinks/dinner or go to brunch and then do our own thing).  

Post # 23
Member
2731 posts
Sugar bee
  • Wedding: October 2017

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wcky711 :  It’s hard to know, just based on your perspective in your OP, whether or not they’re now avoiding you because you avoided them so much in the past, but I totally get both sides.

When I was long distance with my now husband, I frequently traveled to see him on the weekends he worked and couldn’t come home. On the weekends he could come home, I visited his family with him, because they also never got to see him. As a result, my weekends were booked up, and my family made several comments about it. I love him, missed him, and would do anything to get a few more precious hours with him. I also made sure to always catch his nightly call. I realize to some that would be annoying, but I think that all couples reach that stage where they prioritize each other over others, though some to a stronger degree. When my BFF started dating her now husband, she started doing everything with him and asking to bring him on all of our hangouts, and they weren’t even long distance! I never did that, but I did decline some weekend events with my group of friends to be able to see my guy.

Now that my husband and I are no longer long distance, I’m able to spend more time with my family on the weekends, and not have to worry about travel or missing him, but I’ll admit I still prefer Netflix and chill nights with him, over a girl’s night out. We do more friend outings together as a couple now.

I’m sorry, I know I’m not much help, because the only thing that made this better for me was for the long distance to end. Maybe try to hang out with more of your single friends on the weekend? Though I know this also can lead to difficulty, because if you’re like me, all of my single friends only wanted to go out drinking to try and meet guys.

Post # 24
Member
21 posts
Newbee
  • Wedding: September 2020

Thank you ALL so much for your thoughts and comments. I am really trying to look at both sides of the situation, since I know it’s our nature, as people, to hold our own opinions in a higher regard. 

There are definitely things that I could have done better, and I’m trying to keep an open mind to that; I hate to think that I have made anyone feel that they don’t matter (or don’t matter as much as another person) to me. 

 

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missinthecity :  
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llevinso I completely understand that it can seem like I am making more of an effort than he is. From my friends perspective it probably looks very much like that. I need to do a better job at communicating the reasoning that he and I have for meeting in his home town, rather than just expecting that they will understand, especially since they don’t know him as well as I would like. 

 

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whitecollarbee :  He has brought his daughter to my home town several times, so that is definitely an option! We usually try to see my family as much as we can when she and him both visit because my family is in love with her too. Unfortunately, moving them here would mean taking her out of her school and away from her family and church. Boyfriend’s family is extremely close (especially after a couple recent, and unexpected, family deaths, one of which was a young girl.) There is also the issue of his daughter’s mother still living in his hometown: the farther away he lives when he is finished working out of state the less we will get to see her. Fortunately, my job is easily don’t remotely, so I will be able to continue in my position and work from home with a few travel days a month for meetings and whatnot. 

 

I suppose this weekend is a perfect example of the “predicament”: 

On boyfriends job, for the last two months, they have been working 12 hour days Monday-Saturday and 8 hour days on Sundays, and the town he is working in is 6 hours away from me and another 1.5 hours away from his hometown. So he is taking four days off of work (all that he was able to have approved). If he leaves Friday morning he should be here by the time I am off work, then it’s another 1.5 hours to his hometown which would put us there by around 8 if we stop somewhere quick for dinner. That’s too late to drive out to get his daughter, so we will probably visit with his brother and his wife that night. Then we have Saturday and Sunday to spend with his daughter and will have to leave around 8AM on Monday morning to come back here so he can drop me off and head back to the town where he works. He will probably get back there by 6 or so and get to sleep around 8:30 (they begin work at 6:30 every morning). And, unfortunately the way this job has been, he won’t be able to come back home for another 8 weeks. 

 

Its not ideal; it’s not a perfect situation. But we have one year left to get through. When that year is over he has work lined up in his home town, it just doesn’t pay the kind of money that he makes on the road. 

 

I can’t help but, at the end of all of this, feel just a little sad and frustrated. I really try to make sure everyone feels that I love them and am present in my relationship with them; I don’t like to let anyone down. Truth be known, I spent more time celebrating the friend who has been most outspoken about this than I have with my boyfriend in the past 15 months (read: two engagement parties, a five day long bachelorette party at the beach (the weekend that boyfriend got home from his last job), a bridal luncheon, stock the bar party, wedding/rehearsal, and now two baby showers). I have never missed anything and go out of my way to make known how much she means to me. I know this sounds very defensive, and I have really tried not to make this about the “numbers” in my head – I don’t like to quantify my time spent with the people I love. I definitely need to sit down and have some more honest conversations so that we are all on the same page. 

Post # 25
Member
21 posts
Newbee
  • Wedding: September 2020

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knotyet :  Oh, no it was completely helpful! It’s nice to get some validation, haha. And yes, I absolutely love my single friends but “going out” is just a bit too much for me these days, lol. Oddly enough, the friends of mine that are still single haven’t said much at all about the topic of discussion. We get together for pool days and brunch and whatnot when we can and I still get to hear the stories of their wild adventures, haha!

Post # 26
Member
21 posts
Newbee
  • Wedding: September 2020

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sarathemermaid :  Thank you! I really have been trying. I love my friends and don’t want them to feel like they aren’t important, but I worry that it’s just one of those things they may never understand fully. And, honestly, that’s okay with me. I’ve had a friend enter back into a relationship with her husband (they were in the end stages of separation and the beginning stages of divorce) that we both knew wasn’t going to be good to her. She knew how I felt about him and the choices he made, but she made her decision and, as her friend, I’m here to help and support her however I can. (If I thought she was in danger or if she was in an unhealthy situation of course that would be different; he may be a pretty scummy guy, but he isn’t someone I would classify as overtly dangerous, nor have there ever been any indications of it.)

Post # 27
Member
1036 posts
Bumble bee
  • Wedding: October 2017

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wcky711 :  That’s really frustrating.   She could be one of those people that don’t understand that lives and friendships change as you get older and settle down.  The other day I caught coworker/friend looking completely frustrated at her phone.  When I asked her what’s wrong she said, “oh, it’s friend X. She doesn’t understand that I don’t have time to hang out with her every other weekend.   We have so’s daughter every third weekend and I also babysit my nephew once a month and then our rotation at work.  She’s just one of those friends that think you have to hang out constantly and I just can’t.” Sometimes people who aren’t in a relationship or don’t have family obligations don’t understand that those that are/do just don’t have unlimited time for hanging out.  

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