Hi, lucky, welcome to PsychCentral (PC). We're just other peers like you with struggles at different points in our lives, etc. So, all we can do is commiserate and give our opinions, worth a good $0.02

I'm 62, have 3 stepsons and grew up with a stepmother and stepsister (and my father and 3 brothers). I quoted the part of your post above that seemed to jump out at me.

It looks to me like you are trying to get your needs met by someone else and that can't work. Other people can't make one happy or feel needed, etc., one's feelings are one's own. Trying to get other people to say or do certain things and "arrange" them a certain way, etc. tends to annoy them as they are trying to arrange their own life and expectations from outside themselves just get in the way.

Feeling needed is a great feeling but dependent on someone else needing you and that's like going out pan handling and getting annoyed when someone else doesn't give you their money? You need to do work for yourself that makes you feel good and provides your own energy fuel.

Everything we do, we do for ourselves. For example, obviously the pan handler above goes out to get money for him/herself but the person who gives the pan handler money does that for themselves too. They feel good giving the pan handler money or they would not do it. It is fine to say they do it for the pan handler, to "help" him but that is not the primary reason and the other person cannot know if it helps the other person or not because they are not that person or looking at life from that person's point of view. "I helped the pan handler" is the primary reason; but if you told the giver the pan handler went and bought drugs with that money, would they want to take responsibility to "helping" the other person then?

I did not live with my husband until I was 35-36, so living with another was kind of new and getting use to how to do that, "interesting" :-) The biggest thing I have found in my 23 years of marriage is that my point of view is very personal and was taught to me mostly by my stepmother as I was growing up. My stepmother was very controlling and so I was taught the "right" way to do things so I can get angry and argue about everything from wet towels on the floor and toilet paper running out to who takes out the trash, when, and how the money is spent, at the drop of the hat. Anything at all, I'm there with an opinion that is guaranteed not to be the same as my husband's :-)

But, how important is it to get my way? How important in the grand scheme of things is when the trash gets taken out this time?

How important is it to get my way? That important? Fine, so why have I not ensured that my way happens if that's how I want it? Why am I trying to get other people to do it my way when it is me who wants it? I don't like running out of toilet paper so I check the toilet paper under the sink every now and then and make sure there's an "extra" roll. Now, I could resent that my husband does not ever check and I often find there is no extra roll under there but. . . my husband doesn't care if he runs out of toilet paper. When/if he runs out, he deals with that problem in the moment, when he has that problem to deal with. If you think about it, I spend a bit too much time worrying about toilet paper

Actually the most important thing I've learned is that my husband is not an extension of myself. As close as we are, as good friends as we are, as much as we love one another, telling my husband to do something has occasionally produced dramatic results.

We go to the grocery store together. We came home and I, as my habit is, was carrying too many bags at once from the car into the house so I did not have to make a second trip. I was in the lead and got to the door and some of my bags were slipping and I called out in a panic, "Open the door!"

Everything stopped, except for my slipping bags. I ended up having to put all the bags down while my husband and I had a little "discussion" about "open the door". Apparently he took that as a command, not an urgent "request". It is an imperative sentence. I had had enough therapy to realize that I was so use to my stepmother ordering me around that I did that to everyone else, matter of habit. I have since, often :-) changed my ways, the feeling of everything stopping for a heart-to-heart discussion on the front porch not being a difficult memory to call to mind, LOL.

Do you ever just arbitrarily stop and think about what your boyfriend says, what he's arguing and why and why you are arguing another side? You do not have to keep a clean house, you know; there are other houses cleaner, dirtier, messier, whatever. What chores you take on is either from your background/training or person desires. I take out the trash often now, quite happily, because I can either take out the trash and live with the man of my dreams or I can take out the trash and live alone? When I want the trash taken out, who's job is it to make sure I get what I want? When I want the trash taken out but I'm doing something else, say cooking dinner, I call to my husband, "George, would you take the trash out right now, please? It is in my way", and then I wait for an acknowledging response or I look to see if he's putting his shoes on and getting up from his chair, etc.

Think about what you want and how you can get that or ask another to help you but don't assume they will. Don't worry about what others want, that's their problem to get (themselves or by asking you). If you are working on a task together (money management) then you can look at and ask about joint monies but one either trusts one's partner or one does not? One speaks to and treats a friend and partner like a friend and partner, not like a child or employee. But if one's friend and partner "forgets" or has never learned that, then one has to model the behavior and also lovingly teach the principles when one is sure one has mastered them one's self. Part of teaching is knowing one's self and being able to say, "When you call me names like 'stupid idiot' I feel angry and less likely to want to cooperate with you and see things your way." immediately, when it needs saying.

Think about yourself and how to get what you want when you talk to your boyfriend; it's a little like sex where one has to tell one's partner what one wants?