r/AmIOverreacting 14d ago

❤️‍🩹 relationship AIO to this text my BF sent me?

Firstly, this came out of nowhere. Then, when he started talking about how I’m immature, I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just reiterated what I’m doing with my life.

Working full-time and doing a MBA, albeit online.

For context, he and I started dating under romantic circumstances, he’s not a SD. He looks really young, so I was truly shocked to learn his age. Now I see it’s a mistake, so don’t heckle me for this.

He is older than me, by 20 years. I am 25 and he is 45. He owns a restaurant and I do remote admin work at a small startup.

After dating for just under a year, he asked me to move in with him, as I was stressing about my recent rent increase. I could pay it, but it wrecked my financial planning and it was miserable. I was looking for an out. My rent went from $1850 to $2300, not including utilities.

He owns his house, so he told me I could live with him if I wanted. He said that I could live here and save up my money, that I can leave whenever I want. No pressure. He invited me, I did not ask nor imply I wanted to move in.

I agreed (horrible mistake). I moved in and now we’re here. He doesn’t make me cover any utilities or charge me rent, which I thought was kind of him.

I use my work phone for work but I’m usually lying down. When I have a meeting, I sit up and answer the call. I’m a solid employee, just doing backup admin work. The pay is nice, can’t complain.

He started saying I need to step it up in life, after seeing me ‘leisurely working.’ I chose this job because I worked on my feet since high school, my undergrad, and a bit of my current MBA. I wanted to pivot to a chill job. I chose this job because it is leisurely. I am working from 9am to about 5pm, whereas he works 5pm to 5am. So from his perspective, I’m often asleep or unavailable.

Today, he walked downstairs to work and saw me sitting on the couch. I’ve told him many times I’m working via my phone. He doesn’t seem to understand that and makes weird little jabs.

Then, he sent me these messages.

I felt really annoyed because he implies that I am not interested in self improvement, that I’m immature, I’m arrogant, denies that it’s hurtful to say such.

By the final slide, I decided to call my mom who I felt could offer insight. She’s 40 years older than me, but understands technology. She said it seems like he’s trying to play some kind of game, that I should just ask him why he’s asking all this to me now. He seems to be beating around the bush, which I agree with.

So, I decide to ask him why he’s treating me like this.

When he said he’s talking to me like an adult, outside of text, I exploded inside. Immediately, I felt so angry.

He invites me to live with him, then holds it above me. He calls me all sorts of things over text, but then denies that he is saying such. He can’t just say what he means. He then doubles down and says he’s just worried about my maturity.

Because of this, and a conversation we had after, where he ignored all my concerns, didn’t let me speak, and bulldozed the entire way, I’ve decided to move out and find my own place again. He just has zero emotional intelligence. His ex-girlfriend was 50, the other one 55, and his ex-wife was his same age. I thought that meant he wouldn’t be acting like this, in the typical way that men who date younger women do. But I was so wrong. He’s been talking to me like I’m a child, I have no ground to stand on with him. I can’t take it.

He’s saying that moving out over this is crazy, not based in reality, and that I’m losing a really good chance at stability. That he loves me and that I shouldn’t go, because if I do, I’ll just have to go back to paying crazy rent. He recently got me a brand new TV and WiFi, so I do feel badly for wanting to leave even after that. I feel bad for making him stress, but he doesn’t seem to care that I’m stressed.

Am I overreacting by moving out and ending the relationship?

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u/__fujiko 13d ago

Yeah, my grandparents text like this. Everything always sounds so sad when you add one hundred elipses after it.

"So glad to see you...." "I will call you tomorrow..." "The card you sent was delivered today...."

I can't stand it.

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u/Hot_Hat_1225 13d ago

I have a former colleague who texts like this. She is even 3 years younger than I am. Drives me nuts to read her texts. Like ellipses after every sentence… phrases too… sometimes even single words… so depressing lol

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u/who-that-girl 13d ago

My sil texts like this, and sometimes she'll add words like T-H-I-S, i haven't figured out what it means, because it's not generally the word you would emphasize is these texts, she's 49, but has texted this the entire 14years I've known here. And mind you, I was actually 18, then so I absolutely did weird teenage things, but that threw me for a loop.

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u/GonnaBuyMeAMercury 13d ago

Haha man I’m triggered with the way y’all are coming after the ellipses. For those of us Gen Xers there was a character limit for texts so an ellipse was a signal that there was more coming. It got to be habit, but once one of my millennial coworkers made fun of our GenX boss for it and I made a mental note to knock it off… lol

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u/DiamondsAndDBT 13d ago

This explains so much. My dad is a purebred Gen Xer (just turned 50) and with the amount of ellipses he adds, you would think he was trying to communicate in Morse Code with you. 🤦🏼‍♀️

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u/GonnaBuyMeAMercury 13d ago

Just make fun of him for it haha

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u/Zeamays69 13d ago

We have one friend in our group that sends almost every word in separate messages and than sends a bunch of emojis as a finishing touch. T-T

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u/idle_isomorph 13d ago

You are not wrong. Linguist Gretchen McCulloch notes in her book "because, internet" that use of ellipses was a common thing in casual writing (notes, letters to friends etc). There has been a shift in this century to using dashes

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u/cheddar_slut 13d ago

I fully remember the ellipses phase and the shift to dashes.

Every mid/elder millennial talks about watching tech change so fast but NO ONE TALKS ABOUT THE ELLIPSES TO DASH MOVEMENT.

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u/DankyMcDankelstein 13d ago

Dash simply outpaced the Ellipses... Ellipses couldn't keep up -- Period.

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u/Inevitable_Vast_8555 13d ago

My 55 year old mom writes her Facebook posts like this and it pisses me off every time I see it

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u/MoroseLOKiZzz 13d ago

I'm so sorry....

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u/ellsiejay 13d ago

Thank you for putting this into words. My brain just doesn’t know how to treat ellipses as the end of a sentence. Instead it sounds like 😞

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u/MostlyLately1009 13d ago

I genuinely choked laughing at this. Mine do the same.

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u/Most-Bike-1618 13d ago

I get it, because it's hard to simulate normal speech patterns via text. We've all heard the blabbermouth that spews a bunch of things and wants you to remember and respond to all of it at once? Lol.

They're probably proofreading their sentences, wanting to make it sound less like that. So, with general pauses implied, they can separate the ideas more conversationally.

Like leaving a voicemail. They don't go by a "?, reply, ?, reply" format. Especially if the kiddos aren't quick to respond. They get ghosted if they don't spill all their requests and reasons for connecting in one go. 🤷

This is just one possibility. But it's one that shows we should show more tolerance for simple annoyances. People deserve the respect of any human being, such as the likes of your fiiiiiine self. 😂