There's No Balance in the Relationship

by Allyson

A little background- started dating my boyfriend at the beginning of the year with the knowledge of his trucker life, he’s been in it for over a year now.

We couldn’t believe how perfectly we meshed together and felt like we’d known each other forever.

Our rough spots come down to our different lifestyles.

I went through a whole life change last year leading to me going back to school for art and getting an amazing job working as a bartender in a brewery.

This happened before him and I became serious. I’m a complete people person with a constant need for communication and new learning experiences. After five years of being in an office with the same staff, I’ve branched out to knowing many people and having a bigger social life.

I’m ecstatic about it all the time and continue to want to share everything with my boyfriend, also want to include him when he’s in town.
I’ve read it’s stressful for a trucker being lonely on the road- therefore I hear about all his stresses almost daily.

It is different because he just needs to be supported and appreciated whereas when I stress, I look at my life and make changes to make myself happier.

It was rough for me at the beginning since I couldn’t understand why he chose to be in a career this stressing or unhappy but he loves driving and the danger aspects of it so okay.

Got past that, then we hit a fight- whenever I was pumped and excited to head into work, I had to stop calling him (depending on his day) because he’d drain my mood.
We’d also had fights when he was in town because he’d have so much fun talking to people around him about everything else but trucking and I’d get jealous because all I got was trucking.

I started to listen to different podcasts and reading different books to start pulling different topics but yet I’ve mainly just gotten short phrases from him before he starts rediscussing trucking.
After researching trucker wives stories, it seems I need to learn everything trucking just to have a decent conversation with him while tracking roads and weather.

I try asking about his audio books and radio shows but I don’t get much out of that either. I guess I want a balance.

I did the whole talk to him about his days and there were phone calls where he didn’t ask about mine, like I began to literally watch the minutes. That’s why I assumed it was me because he couldn’t relate to my hobbies so I even started reading news stories so we could discuss our views and everyone who knows me knows I hate the news.

Tried going over this with him and he just instantly said he’d quit talking about his days. Why the extreme?
He also said he just needed to suck it up and deal with his job and stop being a baby, said I should tell him and when I said he should know what to expect from his job since it tends to always yield the same results, he gets mad.

Then when he’s home, he is mainly all about staying home when I want to go out, then he gets mad when I go do something fun when he’s on the road. Mad in that he doesn’t get to do it and then he gets lonely again.

I pushed going fishing and doing what he wants but now I’m getting excuses about how long it takes to get places and he wants to spend time with me and his family. I totally understand yet this past time he was home for three days together and he didn’t make any effort to do anything. I said to go fishing and I’d even get up after four hours of sleep to go since I worked from 7 pm to 1 am. Then he didn’t seem to make an effort to see his family.

Anyway, sorry this is coming to a rant. I love my boyfriend and we fully trust each other. That I’m very thankful for.
I’m just stressing trying to figure out how we can communicate better to get what we both need.

I mean now I see I can learn trucking info. Maybe I’m being really self centered too, I’ve thought that. But I’ve also told him to tell me what he wants to do and he always tells me whatever I want then ends up resenting me because it’s always what I want.

How do I compromise with nothing? I’m starting to want him to be more selfish just so he can tell me what he wants to do and then have something else to talk about other than driving 100% of the time.