There's only so much that can be said. The purpose of communication is to give someone else your point of view, your idea, what you want, etc. But the point is not to make them understand, see, agree, help you, etc. Think of someone else talking to you and you to them as a gift. If you give a gift, there are no strings attached; it is a gift. They are free to like your gift or not, to keep it or to throw it away or sell it and keep the money, etc.

Ongoing fights are an attempt to force the other person to accept or agree with what I am saying. They are "will struggles" or power plays, trying to assert one's self over the other person. The only way to stop that is to let the other person be themselves.

Were I you, I would get a journal and when your boyfriend leaves, I would write about it, complain and argue and whatever you felt like in a journal. Gradually I would work to not need to do the complaining and arguing (you want what you want; it is your job to get/do that, not your boyfriend's). I would look at what I have said and what he has said in reply (or what he has said and what you said in reply) and see what is really wrong, what one really wants? Your boyfriend does not have your background, was not raise like you were just as you do not have his background, was not raised like he was. There is no right or wrong to how we are raised, but it is different and if we want something from another that they are unfamiliar with, we often have to teach the other (if they are interested in learning) how and let them practice even though they will not be particularly good at it at first. I am lucky, my husband was eldest of 4 boys and "chief babysitter" and had a job as a teenager as a dishwasher and so is happy to do the dishes in exchange for my cooking (if left to his own devices he'd live on fried-in-butter, cheese hot dogs :-) However, he does the dishes when it suites him, is not attuned to thinking about the whole and necessarily having things clean/ready for when I start to make dinner? What is obvious to us may not be obvious to the next person. What is obvious to the next person is not obvious to us.

I am teaching myself to be responsible for what I want. If the kitchen trash is overflowing, a task my brothers were always given/yelled at for not doing sooner, I will notice as my stepmother "taught" me to but I really only have a couple choices? I notice/want the trash out. I can take it out and get what I want. There is no right/wrong way to do things, maybe some people have bigger trashcans, maybe they have two trashcans or maybe someone has been taught to check the trash situation every 10 minutes and not let it get out of hand or they only have outdoor trashcans and take the trash out each time they have some, no middle can to get full and overflow. Or, I can ask my husband to do me a favor and take the trash out. My husband is usually doing something else and not thinking/worrying about the trash when I am? LOL. That's his prerogative! He is living his life just like I am living mine and they are not the same. He may be working on our finances and paying bills, something I don't do. He may be playing games on his computer or talking to his business partner or who knows what? What he is doing is not my problem, what I am doing is my problem. I do know he loves me though and that he feels we are a "team"/partners so when I ask him to take the trash out at his convenience (or "right now because it is in my way" when I am cooking or something) he will do what I ask. I can count on my partner, not to read my mind and know I want the trash taken out but to respond to my stated need. That does not mean he will always respond favorably. I want to buy a new car and, so far :-) our discussion is not getting me a new car. Last car took me 2-3 months of hard work researching and honing my argument before he caved It was both very frustrating and very helpful to me (the need to research and hone my argument so he could "hear" it better, it was more in his terms).

But how I feel about something is about me, not about the situation or the other person; they are my feelings. If I feel resentment, I need to work on that with myself, not to "get rid of" the resentment but to understand it thoroughly and see what I can do to help myself so I am less likely to feel resentment in similar situations in the future. Most of the time I need to understand that my husband's thoughts, moods, and actions are not about me. He is not trying to frustrate me by taking so long to "change his mind" or, when I decide to "help him" (without his asking me to :-) that he changes his mind about what he wants when I have put in so much personal effort to help him get what I thought he wanted, my feeling of resentment is all manufactured in my own little head, is not about him. I get to understanding both him and myself better and next time I work on what I want and/or wait until he asks for my help instead of just assuming I can jump in there and condescendingly make things easier/better for him; his own little personal heroine :-)