You’ve been in a solid relationship for a while, and you thought everything was going well until your partner’s behavior changed so drastically that the only question you could ask yourself every night was, “Why does my boyfriend hate me?” It’s a legitimate question considering the fact that he’s turned into Jekyll and Hyde. Three weeks ago you were the love of his life, but now, he’s literally repulsed by you. What happened? Well…maybe he does hate you, but not in the way you think. Hate is a strong emotion, and sometimes, when people internalize emotions like hurt, anger, sadness, and frustration, it can manifest as hate. In other words, it’s not that your partner literally hates you, he just doesn’t know how to articulate how he really feels. Since you’re not a mind reader, all you’re picking up on is this negative energy and the only way you can describe it is hate. But before you start jumping to conclusions, it’s important to find out exactly what’s going on. The good news is that I’ve done most of the hard work for you and come up with 7 reasons why your boyfriend might hate you.
Why Do I Feel Hated By My Boyfriend
Notice that the heading isn’t, “Why do I think my boyfriend hates me?” but, “Why do I feel like my boyfriend hates me.?” That’s because women are emotional creatures who are guided by their feelings. So when you’re in a relationship, you typically feel that something’s wrong before the problem actually comes to light. Intuition is when you know something without thinking it through, and now looking back, you can probably pinpoint the exact moment when the relationship started turning sour because you felt it. Reading Suggestion: 16 Communication Exercises for Couples to Improve their Communication Your boyfriend’s feelings hadn’t yet started showing through his actions, but deep down, you knew something wasn’t quite right because you could sense hateful feelings. So now, you want to find out exactly why your boyfriend has suddenly developed this hatred for you.
Why Does My Boyfriend Hate Me? 7 Reasons Why Your Boyfriend Might Hate You
Your boyfriend didn’t just wake up one morning and decide that he hates you. Something happened that’s made him feel this way. Here are 7 reasons why your boyfriend might hate you:
#1 You’ve Done Something Wrong
Sometimes, your boyfriend might hate you because of something you’ve done. Let me give you a couple of scenarios. So, about a year ago, you cheated on your boyfriend. You went out with some friends, got really drunk, and ended up kissing another guy. The problem is that it wasn’t some random dude that you met at the club, but your ex-boyfriend! The high school crush you never got over. Even though your boyfriend was truly devastated, he found the strength to forgive you, and you’ve managed to put the incident behind you. But recently, he’s started thinking about it again, it’s started getting to him, and he’s wondering if he made a mistake by deciding to stay with you. Yes, I know that when he chose to forgive you, he promised never to bring it up again. Reading Suggestion: Should I Text Mt Ex Happy Birthday? However, emotions are unpredictable, and if he buried his emotions about the situation without dealing with them, there are going to be some emotional triggers, and that’s what he’s experiencing now. Another scenario might be that you’ve got your dream job, and your behavior has changed. Suddenly, you’re staying out until all hours of the night because of work. You’ve got new male colleagues who call you when you’re together with your boyfriend. Or it could be that your partner feels neglected because you’re putting all your energy into your new job, and you don’t have time for him anymore. In both scenarios, it would help if your boyfriend just let you know how he’s feeling instead of acting as if he hates you. But the problem is that some men are not good at managing or expressing their emotions. Men don’t tell you how they feel, they show you. In the same way, he expresses his love by buying you flowers, fixing your car, or mowing the lawn, he expresses his anger towards you by shutting you out.
#2 He Sees You as a Hindrance
It’s important to understand that people change. When you first started dating, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He was working in a dead-end job, he had very little ambition and you were okay with that because you both worked in dead-end jobs and had very little ambition. But after dating for a couple of years, he found his passion, and now, he wants to work towards achieving his goals. So after work, instead of vegging out in front of the TV together, he’s upstairs building his dreams. Reading Suggestion: How to communicate with a man who won’t communicate? You find it difficult to adjust to his change in character and every half an hour, you’re in his face. When he’s around you, he can’t get much done, so instead of coming home after work, he goes to the library. In the library, he’s able to focus without you distracting him, and he notices that he makes a lot more progress when you’re not present. So now, he sees you as a hindrance to achieving his dreams and he doesn’t know how to deal with the situation.
#3 He’s Interested in Another Woman
Your boyfriend might be suffering from the grass is greener syndrome. According to clinical psychologist Dr. Joshua Klapow, the grass is greener syndrome is when a person becomes unsatisfied with what they’ve got because on the surface, things appear to be better with someone else. At the core, the grass is greener syndrome is really about being unsure of yourself. Klapow goes on to state that social media doesn’t help. We are living in an era where everyone’s lives are on full display. So if all his friends are posting pictures of their perfect-looking home-cooked dinners every night in their minimalist-looking apartments, of course, he’s going to start feeling resentment towards you if you’re not giving him what he wants but he thinks he’s found in someone else. At the moment, your boyfriend is just friends with this other woman but it’s obvious they like each other. When two people like each other, they display the best version of themselves. So when he visits this other woman, her home is remarkably tidy, smells like freshly baked bread, and there’s always a cooked meal. But when he visits you, the only food he’s smelling is McDonald’s fries, and you’re a bit on the untidy side. So he gets aggravated when he’s with you because he can’t stop thinking about how comfortable he is when he’s at this other woman’s house. Reading Suggestion: Once a Guy Loses interest Can You Get It Back? But what he doesn’t know about her is that she’s a total control freak, and if they were in a relationship, he’d lose his freedom. It’s not uncommon for a man to leave his partner for someone else only to find that the grass wasn’t greener on the other side after all.
#4 You’ve Just Told Him You’re Pregnant
Breaking the news to your partner that you’re expecting a baby should be a moment full of joy and happiness. But when the pregnancy wasn’t planned, and your boyfriend feels he isn’t ready to raise a child, such an announcement can have the opposite effect. He might have pretended to be happy when you first told him because he didn’t want to upset you. But now that he’s had time to process the information, the idea of becoming a father is really giving him a sour taste in his mouth. Once the baby is born, his life will change, and now he sees you as someone who is about to rob him of his freedom.
#5 He Thinks You’re Too Friendly With Other Men
Yep! Your man is jealous of your friendships with other males. Despite the fact that you were friends with these guys before you started dating your boyfriend, you’ve formally introduced them. You’ve reassured him you’re just friends, and his pictures are all over your social media profiles, he’s still jealous! Why? because he may deal with low self-esteem. Especially if your guy friends are alpha males with good careers, and the icing on the cake, they’re not bad looking either! Your boyfriend isn’t going to admit that he’s jealous because that will make him look stupid. Reading Suggestion: My Husband Looks At Other Females on Instagram Instead, he’s going to lash out by giving you the silent treatment, or he’ll get angry with you for no reason. To find out whether jealousy is the reason for his behavior, pay attention to when he starts acting hateful towards you. I can guarantee it will be any time he knows you’ve socialized with one of your alpha male friends.
#6 He Might Be Suffering From a Mental Illness
Mental illnesses such as personality disorders, narcissistic personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder can all cause a change in your partner’s behavior towards you. Things may have been perfectly normal when you first got together because the condition was either dormant, and something triggered it. Or something traumatic happened to him like a car accident or a death in the family, and the disorder has developed over time. However, if your boyfriend is a narcissist, this change in his behavior is not uncommon. According to psychologist Michael Quirke there are three stages to narcissistic abuse. The love bombing stage involves him being super nice, romantic, and caring. At one point in your relationship, you thought he was the ideal man, a dream come true, and life couldn’t get any better. Reading Suggestion: HELP! My Husband Thinks he does Nothing Wrong! But the aim of this stage is to get you hooked on him. Once he knows you’re addicted to his love, he starts getting nasty. This is known as the devaluing stage. He will call you every name under the sun, lie to you, steal from you, and make you feel terribly insecure, all while getting you to believe that it’s your fault. The final stage is the discarding stage. By this point, he’s worn you down so badly that you’ve got nothing left to give. You’re no longer any use to him, so he’ll walk out of the relationship.
#7 He Has a Substance Abuse Problem
Like mental illness, substance abuse might not have been a problem at the beginning of your relationship. You didn’t even know he had a problem, it was normal for you to go out on the weekends and have a few drinks. But recently, he’s started having severe mood swings, you’ve noticed money going missing from your bank account. Cash is being withdrawn from your credit cards, and the bills are not getting paid. These are all telltale signs that your boyfriend might have a substance abuse problem. He has mood swings when he is craving for drugs and alcohol, and money is going missing so he can pay for his supply.
5 Signs Your Boyfriend Might Hate You
The reason why you suspect your boyfriend hates you is because of the way he’s been acting lately. If you really want to know whether your boyfriend hates you, here are 5 of the most common signs:
#1 He Makes You Feel Insecure
Women are notorious for feeling insecure about the way they look. The media is constantly highlighting a standard of beauty that most females simply can’t measure up to.
He makes you feel insecureHe gets angry over nothingHe stopped making an effortHe stopped including you in his future plansHe stopped defending you
After years of this conditioning, it becomes very difficult to appreciate what you see in the mirror. Some women get over this, and others don’t. They then carry these insecurities into their relationships. Even if you don’t say it, it’s not difficult for your boyfriend to work out what parts of your body you don’t like. You might insist that the lights are kept off during sex, refuse to wear a bikini when you go on vacation, or refuse to allow your partner to see you without makeup. When you first got together, he was always complimenting you because he wanted you to feel confident. But now, it seems as if he’s doing everything he can to destroy your self-esteem. The dress he once loved because it showed off your bootylicious curves now makes you look fat. Or it’s no longer acceptable for you to sit around the house without make-up on. He even goes as far as to have the audacity to tell you that you look unattractive without a full face of cosmetics.
#2 He Gets Angry Over Nothing
Your boyfriend was once a mild-mannered man, if there was a problem, you would both sit down and discuss the situation in a calm and rational way. But lately, you can’t seem to do anything right. He’s always grouchy, and when you ask him if there’s anything wrong, he says he’s fine when he clearly isn’t. A couple of minutes later, he’s snapping at you because you didn’t put enough salt in the rice! Your time is spent trying to work out what’s gone wrong, perhaps he’s depressed? Maybe he’s got money issues you don’t know about? Or is his manager putting a lot of pressure on him at work? Whatever’s eating away at him, it’s affecting your relationship in a big way, and making you wonder if you’re the problem. But he’s the one with the issues. When a man starts nit-picking and getting angry over nothing, it’s a sign that his love for you has grown cold and he wants out of the relationship. In general, men who act like this are cowards, he doesn’t have the guts to dump you, so instead, he gets really moody in hopes that you’ll get fed up and end the relationship.
#3 He’s Stopped Making an Effort
Another sign that your boyfriend hates you is that he stops trying. He’s literally got to the point of no return, and he’s letting you know that he has absolutely no desire to maintain this relationship. When you try to make arrangements to meet up, he’s always got something else planned. When you do see each other, he spends the entire time playing video games. He never calls, and so you always call him. When he finally answers the phone, he gives you one word answers, sits in silence, and is constantly making excuses to get off the phone.
#4 He’s Stopped Including You In Future Plans
A few months ago, you guys were more or less planning your wedding. He hadn’t proposed, but he kept making it abundantly clear that he wanted to build a life with you. You spoke about getting married, where you wanted to live, how many kids you wanted to have, and even the names you would call your children. Anytime he spoke about the future, he included you in it because he was excited about it. But recently, that excitement seems to have disappeared into thin air. Reading Suggestion: Should You Be Worried about Inappropriate Friendships When Married? Now, he comes up with every excuse under the sun not to discuss where the relationship is going. Sometimes he slips up and says stuff like, “When I get married…” instead of “When we get married..” The reason why he’s stopped talking about the future with you in it is because he’s changed his mind about committing to that version of his future. The life he now envisions no longer involves you.
#5 He’s Stopped Defending You
Men are protective by nature, but they don’t protect everything, they protect what they love and what they feel belongs to them. Now, let’s say your boyfriend’s family members have never liked you. Not because there’s anything wrong with you, but because there are some men who come from very overprotective families, and not even mother Teresa would be good enough. However, when you get together on special occasions and his sister, brother, or mother makes a snide comment towards you, your boyfriend is quick to defend you. But you’ve noticed that the last two times you’ve been around there, he’s allowed them to direct all types of slick comments at you. To make matters worse, when you try to defend yourself, he cuts you off and instructs you not to cause any problems.
What To Do When Your Boyfriend Hates You?
Feeling like your boyfriend hates you isn’t a good place to be in, so you’ll need to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible. Here are a few tips on what you should do about the situation.
Talk to Your Boyfriend
The only way you’re going to find out what’s going on is if you have a direct conversation with your boyfriend. Getting him to open up will be difficult because he may not be in the right state of mind to talk. The key is to find the right time, and only you will know when that is. When you finally do get to sit down and have a chat, don’t start off by being defensive or argumentative or you won’t get anywhere. According to relationship expert Graeme Butler, start the conversation on a positive note, surrender your desire to be right and just listen. You are the one who feels violated, and you want to know what you’ve done to make him feel this way, so it’s in your best interests to let him talk even if you don’t agree with what he’s saying.
Suggest Going to Relationship Therapy
If you’ve tried talking to your boyfriend and you don’t feel as if the conversation achieved anything, you might need to see a therapist. Having a trained third eye can help you come to a resolution faster than the two of you could alone. The therapist will help you understand what has gone wrong in the relationship, and give you a different perspective to consider. If your boyfriend wants the relationship to work, he is going to agree to outside help. If not, it’s time to move on to the next stage.
Take a Break From the Relationship
Taking a break from the relationship should be the last resort. However, it may be necessary to get things back on track, or to give you some breathing space to decide whether you or your boyfriend want to end the relationship. As mentioned, some men are not very good at expressing how they feel. Instead, their behavior will change. It may be that your partner wants to break up with you and he doesn’t want to hurt you. Reading Suggestion: How to save your marriage when you feel hopeless? By suggesting that you both take a break from the relationship, he may feel relieved. Or your absence might get him to see the error of his ways, and he’ll come running back with a heartfelt apology.
Red Flags In The Relationship (When Things Start To Become Abusive)
As you’ve read, some of the reasons why your boyfriend hates you are because of the things you’ve done. However, voicing his opinions, or ignoring you is okay, but no matter what you’ve done, becoming abusive is not. Additionally, as you will read, abuse is not always physical. Many domestic violence survivors say it started off as emotional abuse before it progressed to physical abuse. The following red flags are signs that abuse has started creeping into your relationship:
#1 He Tries Isolate You
Abusers want to have full control over their victims, and one way they do this is by isolating them from their friends and family. The isolation process is a carefully constructed one, he won’t outright demand that you should stop seeing your loved ones. But he will start manipulating you to believe that they don’t have your best interests at heart. The aim here is to get you to do the distancing so you won’t see him as the enemy. For example, he will look for opportunities to convince you that they can’t be trusted. Let’s say it’s your birthday, and you’ve planned on doing something special with a group of friends. Reading Suggestion: How to get out of a bad marriage with no money? One of them calls to say they can’t make it and they have a legitimate reason to do so. Your boyfriend will use that as ammunition and say something like, “What type of friends do you have? If she really cared for you, she’d cancel her appointment and make sure she is available to celebrate with you.” He will get into your head so much that it won’t be long before you realize that you don’t have anyone else but him, and that’s exactly the way he wants it to be.
#2 He Is Becoming Disrespectful
Respect is important in a relationship, you should feel safe, appreciated, and loved by your partner. Having respect for each other doesn’t mean you agree about everything, but it does mean that you know how to communicate with each other in a way that honors each other’s feelings, desires, and needs. On the other hand, disrespect is an indirect way of saying, “I don’t care about your feelings, needs, or desires, and even if you tell me you’re not happy with the way I’m treating you, I’ll continue. Here are some signs of disrespect:
He blatantly looks at other women when you’re in public.He criticizes you in front of his friends.He keeps asking for sexual favors he knows you’re not comfortable with. He looks through your phone when you leave the room.He discusses your personal business with his friends
#3 He Starts Demanding Sex
Abusive boyfriends can become very aggressive when it comes to sex. Again, it’s another way of wielding control in the relationship. Demanding sex means that he will either refuse to take no for an answer and keep asking until he gets it. Or, he’ll make you feel guilty and call you names if you say no. Sex between two consenting adults should be just that…consenting. If you are not in the mood, your partner has no right to demand it from you. A boyfriend who respects his partner is willing to wait because he doesn’t want to put pressure on his girlfriend, additionally, he also wants her to enjoy the experience.
#4 Everything is Your Fault
It’s normal to feel as if something that happened to you wasn’t your fault. However, abusers won’t take responsibility for anything, and everything is someone else’s fault. In this case, it’s yours. When he screams in your face it’s your fault. When he maxes out the credit cards, it’s your fault. When he doesn’t pay the bills on time, it’s your fault. When he’s late for his best friend’s wedding, it’s your fault! I’m sure you get my point here. At the start, you will surrender to the accusations, and sometimes, you might even convince yourself that it was your fault. But after a while it will start becoming redundant, and when you start defending yourself, he’ll ramp up the abuse.
#5 Unrealistic Expectations
There is nothing wrong with having expectations in a relationship. If you don’t know what you want, you can inadvertently give people permission to mistreat you. However, when your boyfriend has unrealistic expectations that he expects you to meet, it can become a problem. For example, let’s say your boyfriend is the traditional type, and he expects you to stay at home and take care of the house while he goes out to work. But you were a successful career woman when you met, and that’s how you want it to stay. He was okay with it at the beginning of the relationship, but now you’ve moved in together, he expects you to run the household, and cook and clean while he doesn’t lift a finger. He refuses to compromise and is determined to wear you into the ground. Basically, when you start feeling exhausted because of what your boyfriend wants from you, and your pleas fall on deaf ears, his expectations have become unrealistic.
#6 He Gets Physical With You
Getting physical doesn’t necessarily mean he gives you black eyes and knocks your teeth out. However, he can show physical aggression in other ways such as squeezing your arms really tight, grabbing your hair, covering your mouth to stop you from speaking, preventing you from moving, or shoving you. Run a mile the moment he starts trying to dominate you physically. Don’t even think about it, when a man believes it’s acceptable to put his hands on a woman, you’re dealing with a very dangerous individual. Don’t excuse his behavior, and try to convince yourself that it was a one-off, pack your bags and leave immediately before it turns into a full-blown domestic violence situation.
Final Thoughts
If your boyfriend really hates you and he wants out of the relationship, please don’t try and force him to stay. For whatever reason, he’s decided that he no longer wants to be with you. I know it’s not the best position to be in, but wouldn’t you rather be with someone who is crazy about you? Don’t waste your time and energy fighting for a guy who doesn’t feel the same way about you. You’re better than that, and you’re worth more than that. Always remember that! Reading Suggestion: Do men who leave their family regret it?
