I’ve been dating Nate for two years (tho wanna clarify we are not doing marriage-kids and we’re both actively looking for more serious other partners).
Nate is profoundly wonderful in many ways, like often surprises me in new ways of wonderfulness, and has raised my standards in partners. He’s deeply caring, attentive, competent, hilarious, and of course brilliant.
Also, many of the complaints about him in the comments resonate with my experience, particularly your description above. I often find that in disputes I feel dismissed, I perceive him as having a significant lack of curiosity about my worldview (and believe he’s explicitly said he’s not curious about perspectives he anticipates to have no value to him).
Iirc he’s explicitly said he doesn’t respect my thinking (edit: he clarifies he respects it in some areas but not others), and from my perspective this radiates off him whenever we fight. I often feel like I have trouble trusting my own mind, I doubt myself, and despite my best attempts I somehow come out of disputes thinking I must be the one who’s wrong. It’s weird to have a partner who’s so shockingly good in so many ways, yet we have maybe the worst fights I’ve ever experienced in romantic relationships. (Though he says other girls he’s dated don’t have this problem and I am unusual)
On one plus side, I’ve found him to be very good at installing concrete changes if you can articulate them to him. A few times I managed to have a specific request about how I’d like him to say things differently, and if he agrees to do so he updates fast, thoroughly, and permanently.
I feel conflicted about posting this here because ??? should this be personal/private ?? but I’m having some sort of massive relief and feeling like actually I’m not insane. And also I am invested in (though not hopeful about) something changing here cause it would be good for our relationship and I assume also MIRI, which I like and believe in.
(I talked to Nate before posting this comment and he was encouraging)
(To be clear: I think that at least one other of my past long-term/serious romantic partners would say “of all romantic conflicts, I felt shittiest during ours”. The thing that I don’t recall other long-term/serious romantic partners reporting is the sense of inability to trust their own mind or self during disputes. (It’s plausible to me that some have felt it and not told me.))
Chiming in to provide additional datapoints. (Apologies for this being quite late to the conversation; I frequent The Other Forum regularly, and LW much less so, and only recently read this post/comments.) My experience has been quite different to a lot of the experiences described here, and I was very surprised when reading.
I read all of the people who have had (very) negative experiences as being sincere and reporting events and emotions as they experienced them. I could feel what I perceived to be real distress and pain in a lot of the comments, and this was pretty saddening.
Note: I really don’t like posting personal information on the public internet, for both personal preference and professional reasons. (I felt sure I wanted to post this, though.)
Background: I dated Nate on-and-off for ~6 years (from 2016-2022). We’re now friends on good terms.
How I experienced Nate’s communication over the years:
During disputes, I felt Nate respected my views and my feelings. I felt Nate tried to communicate well with me (though of course this is often hard for both parties in the midst of a dispute and we both failed a bunch).
During disputes, and generally, I felt like Nate engaged with me as an equal. I don’t recall ever feeling dismissed in the ‘you’re not as smart as me’ vein (or any other vein).
It feels important to note that we never really had discussions about his work in the way a lot of people in the comments seemed to have had (where they had very bad experiences). We talked about our respective work a bunch, but the subject matter wasn’t technical (I don’t have a technical background).
I don’t recall Nate losing his cool/saying something mean, except for uncommon instances where I was very upset and was saying unkind things first (not my proudest moments!)
I ~never felt like Nate’s confidence/manner impacted my views in a way I don’t endorse or made me feel less sure of my own beliefs. Nate is certainly intense and confident-sounding, but for whatever reason, I don’t recall this in particular causing issues.
The ways in which our communication was bad felt to me more mundane and predictable as relationship-comms go (unclear communications around expectations, not recognising and addressing underlying issues/feelings quickly enough, etc). And none of this was the reason we ultimately parted ways.
Also, in my experience, Nate’s communication / handling of disputes has improved over time.
I don’t want to paint an overly rosy picture—our worst disputes were really not great (understatement to save me saying personal things), but for reasons basically unrelated to the themes of the comments here. Nate is flawed in loads of ways (I was always pretty icked-out at the reverence? people treated him with, like he was perfect or something); and though I haven’t had the experiences others here have had, I find him to be someone who wants to be better and knows he’s far from perfect.
I’ve been dating Nate for two years (tho wanna clarify we are not doing marriage-kids and we’re both actively looking for more serious other partners).
Nate is profoundly wonderful in many ways, like often surprises me in new ways of wonderfulness, and has raised my standards in partners. He’s deeply caring, attentive, competent, hilarious, and of course brilliant.
Also, many of the complaints about him in the comments resonate with my experience, particularly your description above. I often find that in disputes I feel dismissed, I perceive him as having a significant lack of curiosity about my worldview (and believe he’s explicitly said he’s not curious about perspectives he anticipates to have no value to him).
Iirc he’s explicitly said he doesn’t respect my thinking (edit: he clarifies he respects it in some areas but not others), and from my perspective this radiates off him whenever we fight. I often feel like I have trouble trusting my own mind, I doubt myself, and despite my best attempts I somehow come out of disputes thinking I must be the one who’s wrong. It’s weird to have a partner who’s so shockingly good in so many ways, yet we have maybe the worst fights I’ve ever experienced in romantic relationships. (Though he says other girls he’s dated don’t have this problem and I am unusual)
On one plus side, I’ve found him to be very good at installing concrete changes if you can articulate them to him. A few times I managed to have a specific request about how I’d like him to say things differently, and if he agrees to do so he updates fast, thoroughly, and permanently.
I feel conflicted about posting this here because ??? should this be personal/private ?? but I’m having some sort of massive relief and feeling like actually I’m not insane. And also I am invested in (though not hopeful about) something changing here cause it would be good for our relationship and I assume also MIRI, which I like and believe in.
(I talked to Nate before posting this comment and he was encouraging)
Thanks <3
(To be clear: I think that at least one other of my past long-term/serious romantic partners would say “of all romantic conflicts, I felt shittiest during ours”. The thing that I don’t recall other long-term/serious romantic partners reporting is the sense of inability to trust their own mind or self during disputes. (It’s plausible to me that some have felt it and not told me.))
Chiming in to provide additional datapoints. (Apologies for this being quite late to the conversation; I frequent The Other Forum regularly, and LW much less so, and only recently read this post/comments.) My experience has been quite different to a lot of the experiences described here, and I was very surprised when reading.
I read all of the people who have had (very) negative experiences as being sincere and reporting events and emotions as they experienced them. I could feel what I perceived to be real distress and pain in a lot of the comments, and this was pretty saddening.
Note: I really don’t like posting personal information on the public internet, for both personal preference and professional reasons. (I felt sure I wanted to post this, though.)
Background: I dated Nate on-and-off for ~6 years (from 2016-2022). We’re now friends on good terms.
How I experienced Nate’s communication over the years:
During disputes, I felt Nate respected my views and my feelings. I felt Nate tried to communicate well with me (though of course this is often hard for both parties in the midst of a dispute and we both failed a bunch).
During disputes, and generally, I felt like Nate engaged with me as an equal. I don’t recall ever feeling dismissed in the ‘you’re not as smart as me’ vein (or any other vein).
It feels important to note that we never really had discussions about his work in the way a lot of people in the comments seemed to have had (where they had very bad experiences). We talked about our respective work a bunch, but the subject matter wasn’t technical (I don’t have a technical background).
I don’t recall Nate losing his cool/saying something mean, except for uncommon instances where I was very upset and was saying unkind things first (not my proudest moments!)
I ~never felt like Nate’s confidence/manner impacted my views in a way I don’t endorse or made me feel less sure of my own beliefs. Nate is certainly intense and confident-sounding, but for whatever reason, I don’t recall this in particular causing issues.
The ways in which our communication was bad felt to me more mundane and predictable as relationship-comms go (unclear communications around expectations, not recognising and addressing underlying issues/feelings quickly enough, etc). And none of this was the reason we ultimately parted ways.
Also, in my experience, Nate’s communication / handling of disputes has improved over time.
I don’t want to paint an overly rosy picture—our worst disputes were really not great (understatement to save me saying personal things), but for reasons basically unrelated to the themes of the comments here. Nate is flawed in loads of ways (I was always pretty icked-out at the reverence? people treated him with, like he was perfect or something); and though I haven’t had the experiences others here have had, I find him to be someone who wants to be better and knows he’s far from perfect.