Scarleteen

i have a question. so im 15 about to be 16 and my boyfriend just turned 17. we do have a sexual relationship and have been together for close to a year. we both have really bad anxiety issues and have had them close to our whole lives.

so 2 weeks ago i was mad at him and he ran and grabbed my arms (not hard but to stop me from stomping) and he said "babe im sorry lets talk please" and he kept trying to kiss me when i said no a few times. i pushed him off and went upstairs and he continued to do the same once we went upstairs. he usually does this to ease a situation i dont believe he was trying to kiss me just to get a kiss but he didnt listen to me. this has happened multiple times before and i never had a problem with it until that time, so i guess he thought it was ok. i told him how i felt and he apologized a lot and said he wouldnt do it anymore.

i dont believe hes done it since but like now i think everything is bad. he tickles me and i say no and ofc he doesnt stop and i thought that was bad. i even asked him to start asking me to kiss me. hes been good about it he hasnt done anything like the 1st incident since, hes improving and remembering the boundary i put up. i want to work out with him i truly love him so much, and i want to make sure we are able to progress from this and continue our relationship.

i asked a few ppl and they said as long as he is improving and not doing it constantly and moving to the point of not doing it at all is good. i know he never intentionally means to make me feel that way majority of the time he's just joking but i keep overthinking.

summed up, can me and him still try and work out and be together? and what would u classify this as, maybe like pushing boundaries?

[staff note: edited to add in paragraph breaks for readability!]

Hi there unicyu, and welcome to Scarleteen!

First of all, I'm sorry to hear that your boyfriend treated you like that. I think it's absolutely understandable that how he acted made you feel weird - no one wants likes being kissed when they're not in the mood for a kiss, much less if it feels like they're only being kissed so that they'll shut up. (I guess we have a lot of the old "romantic" black-and-white movies to thank for that concept - I can't tell you how many times I've rewatched a movie I thought I loved and watched the "hero" grab an angry or hysterical woman and plant one on her to get her to stop talking. Ugh.)

I think that it was really great that you were able to speak up about it and tell him how it made you feel. Setting boundaries and letting your partner know what's okay and what's not okay is something that's difficult for a lot of young people (or people in general), so big big kudos to you for being able to do that.

What I hear you saying is essentially that he acknowledged your behavior, but you still feel like there are boundaries that you need to communicate (not tickling after when you tell him to stop, asking for permission before going in for a kiss). To me, that seems totally understandable - like you said, you hadn't really thought much about this bodily-boundaries thing until he really crossed a line, and now that it happened, you find yourself thinking about it more often. I don't think that means that you're overthinking things; you were made to feel uncomfortable, and you're reminded of it in times that you're in a similar situation. You're always allowed to make your own boundaries and communicate if they've changed based on how you feel - our article Driver's Ed for the Sexual Superhighway: Navigating Consent talks more in detail about how you might go about doing that.

I'll start by turning your question back on you - how do you feel about it? (Regardless of what your friends say, because they may be trying to give perspective, but they're not the ones who are actually in the relationship and get to make decisions about it.) Have you talked with him about these boundaries and feelings since that initial conversation? Does he do anything else that bother you or make you feel uncomfortable?

Not really. Some times he does normal things and I just overthink or think too much into it sometimes.

Have you talked to him some more about this? It's ok to revisit your boundaries and agree new ones together as Al said.

i have and he's been accepting of it

Hi unicyu,

Can you tell us more? What did you talk about? How did he respond? Has his behavior changed at all since you had that conversation?

i told him i didnt like that and he apologized a lot and said he'll work on the boundaries thing for me. it changed positively he's been trying hard to stick to my desired boundaries. and ik its tough cause i enforced them so suddenly after weve been doing it for practically a year but hes trying

As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm closing up all these other threads -- which get extra confusing since most of them have the same title -- about this except one for now, so we can have a conversation about all of this in one place for ease. The thread left open for us to talk about this is here: http://www.scarleteen.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8670