I’m living with my boyfriend right now, he is 35 and I am 25. We’ve been very close friends for two years and we’ve been dating for the past 6 months. I moved in with him when we first started dating, and everything was wonderful. It didn’t take long for us to adjust to living together and despite our quirks and differences we got along great. We have been sexually intimate and we are both close and loving towards each other.

However, this past month has been worrying me. He’s been having a lot of random bouts of anger and annoyance, always directed at me. Most of the time he’s his kind and caring self, but on an almost daily basis he’ll say something extremely hurtful to me out of nowhere, such as a jab at my interests (I love gardening and he sometimes would tease me a bit about it all in good humor, but lately it’s been to the point of hurting) or something about how he does most of the work around the house and how I’m just lazy. In my defense, my days at a minimum of 8 hours long (I’m a teacher and quite often I’ll have things to grade at home or meetings to attend) and he does work from home, and we specifically agreed that he could do the housework, and he had no problem with it up until these past few weeks. I’ve started to help out around the house, but then he snaps at me for doing something not to his preference, like not loading the dishwasher right or something trivial like that. Most of the time when he snaps at me for something it’s something small that he escalates into something big. Then after a few minutes or an hour or some short period he apologizes and is nice to me, but then a few hours late or the next day he does something similarly hurtful again.

The rest of the time when he isn’t snapping at me for something or making an argument out of nothing, he’s as nice as he’s ever been. His mood swings worry me, and I have no idea what I did wrong to make him every once and awhile hurt me (most of the things he brings up he knows are sensitive topics). Just a yesterday it was about how I’m infertile (he’s known about it ever since the start of our relationship) and it was about not being able to have his children. That hurt a LOT and it made me run out of the room and start crying. I haven’t talked much to him since, and he hasn’t brought it up. I don’t know what to do.

I’ve gently asked him a few times when he’s been in a good mood what’s been going on, and if he’s okay, but then he instantly finds something to accuse me of or yell at him for, and he completely ignores whatever question I ask him about how he’s doing. It’s like he doesn’t want me to know that something is wrong or that he’s having moods when it’s blatantly clear something is up.

Anyway, what should I do? I really love him, but this keeps getting worse and worse, and I haven’t been able to figure out why he’s doing this and he won’t talk about it.

Didn't know he was a big, picky, moody, grouch did you? Well the best I can tell you is stop asking is something wrong, and tell him, gently of course what you think is fair, and what's not.

The honeymoon is over, and the hard work of how best to adjust to each other has begun. Be cool, and be fair, but don't let him be unfair. Once you set boundaries and rules of what's acceptable then MAYBE you get some fun back in this thing.

Didn't know he was a big, picky, moody, grouch did you? Well the best I can tell you is stop asking is something wrong, and tell him, gently of course what you think is fair, and whats not.

The honeymoon is over, and the hard work of how best to adjust to each other has begun. be cool, and be fair, but don't let him be unfair. Once you set boundaries and rules of whats acceptable then MAYBE you get some fun back in this thing.

Thank you, it's worth a shot :) We agreed on a lot of things at the start of this relationship, and I'm really confused as to what brought this on, but I guess I need to gently get my boundaries set and try to compromise on some things I've noticed he fusses a lot about.

What I'm concerned most about is him all of a sudden expressing dissatisfaction with not being able to have children with me. He's been in a few past relationships that lasted years and he never had any children with those women, and now with me, who he knows physically can't have them, he starts in on it.

Talk of kids came come later, and to be fair he knew all this before he agreed to let you move in right? If the guy is this wishy washy about keep it real, make sure you have a few bucks tucked away. Just in case he is more than just a grouch!

Pick your battles carefully, he seems to be able to pick one out his a$$.

Yes, he did know before I moved in and back then he was perfectly fine with it. We haven't talked about the whole subject of kids much anyway, as it did seem a bit early to do so when I was just moving in, but we decided that just as a blanket over the whole subject that we could possibly adopt after marriage, assuming we did get married after a matter of time (I'm guessing that if we do get married it'll be a few years down the road).

I really hope that I don't wind up moving out, but if I did my parents would likely be more than happy to let me stay with them. They live not too far from here, maybe an hour and a half commute, and they're about an hour away from the school I teach at, so I would be able to keep my job.

Ugh, he can. I try to not let arguments spark often, though when I don't I wind up sitting there taking whatever verbal spike he hurls at me. Again, not sure why he does it, I mean, I knew his last ex pretty well and from what I could tell this sort of thing didn't happen with her, but at the same time they were more friends with benefits than boyfriend/girlfriend even after being "together" for years. I've been thinking that maybe be does it because I am admittedly more sensitive than she was and he wants me to be tougher, or he feels that I have more power since I work outside the home and feels the need to whittle me down, who knows. (I certainly don't think me working outside the home and earning more means much but he might.)

I am going to talk to him about some things tomorrow, I'll be careful. He might be going through something he isn't telling me or he is just being a grouch, I'll hope for the best.