My partner of one year has not been satisfied with our communication while away from each other. He’d like to know what I’m up to when not at work, and while I would rather have more sporadic catch-ups (say 2/3 times a day) I try to keep to his preferred frequency which usually ends up being once every two hours at minimum, because I know it’s important to him.
He’s currently visiting family outside the country for a month, and while away, and I’ve had several instances of not getting back to him - once for 5 hours when I was having a bad mental health day, which we argued about and then managed to come to terms with. And another time for 3 hours because I got sucked down a YouTube/research hole. These pauses in our conversation never actually felt that long to me cause I definitely get time blindness. I apologised and tried to explain about time blindness, but I don’t really think he believes me.
The conversation about the second instance ended on a sour note. Since then we’ve still been texting and updating each other on our goings-on, but I now feel anxiety when I see any messages coming from him, and like I have an invisible timer to answer by otherwise things will blow up again. And while I used to put real thought into my messages (maybe too much) I now feel like I’m chucking any information I can think of at him to keep him appeased.
I know getting back to people on a social level is an issue with me - it’s been a problem with friends in the past and it’s something I’m trying to work on, but I feel like I have no method for getting back to my partner. I’m in my thirties and feel like I should have figured this out by now - not great for the self-confidence.
I’d love any tips for managing social communication with people or indeed any other input. Please be kind, I’m being pretty hard on myself right now already.
UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who commented, I didn’t reply individually but I can promise you I read and took on board everything that was said. In honour of that, I thought I’d provide an update for anyone curious.
He came back from his trip and we had a talk, which led to us breaking up. Although he initiated the break up, and there were many elements to it, I think the fact that he was sort of hung up on his side of the story and his feelings of rejection over any desire to understand me or figure out a way for us both to work things out, kind of cements the fact that separating was the right thing to do. I’ve taken some time to heal, and will be keeping an eye out for this sort of thing in the future. Thanks again to all, I appreciate your time and concern!
3-5 hours is a universally accepted amount of time to not check into the stream of consciousness of another human. It really sounds like a him problem and not a you problem, and it’s wild to me that you don’t even mention any kind of compromise on his end. Partners are supposed to be walking in life with you, and it sounds like you’re trying to walk through life for him just to keep the peace.
Don’t be hard on yourself. This isn’t an instance of you being a square peg trying to fit his round hole, though I get why you would feel that way as an ND person. The other comment is right, this is controlling behavior. And I think the fact that you feel awful means he has manipulated you into not seeing what is and isn’t normal. His stomping over and destroying your boundary of unplugging for mental health is not normal.