Bit concerned about my relationship.
Partner of 6 years always makes jokes or says things in jest that I find hurtful and potentially abusive but whenever I confront him and say he’s in the wrong, he says ‘it’s just a joke’
Quite worried actually about certain things e.g
- joking threats about telling a family secret when I do something wrong. E.g ‘you wouldn’t want me to let slip about xyz’ if I don’t do something he wants. He says this with a grin on his face and I laugh and say ‘you’d better not’ but it makes me so uneasy.
-He also says often that I don’t dress nicely enough for him when apparently ‘every other woman dresses nicely and femininely for their partners’. I dress nicely and always look presentable in blouses and black jeans but he complains that I don’t wear dresses and skirts often except for work. He even points out women in town dressed nicely and says ‘you’d never do that for me’
- i also have a health condition which has stemmed from past surgery which has resulted in occasional pain during sex though most of the time i am fine. He has said a couple of times as a joke that I will ‘never find a man who will put up with it’ like he does. This worries me as I can’t help having had surgery!
- I bumped into an old friend when we were at a restaurant a month or so ago. A male friend. Partner didn’t like this and said afterwards as a joke ‘I’d fucking kill you if we broke up and you found another man’
Am I being unreasonable to find this really uncomfortable? We’re unmarried but been living together a few years.
There are other examples that I could think of but those are the most regular comments I get.
Is this abusive or borderline abusive? When I say he’s being mean, he asks where my sense of humour disappeared to.
I don’t want to appear to be boring and i don’t know if this is normal? Is this just part of a normal relationship? Is it just his sense of humour?