Boyfriend Keeps Canceling Dates Due to ‘Low Social Battery,’ but Girlfriend Sees Him Playing Online Games: ‘What Do I Do?’
“I wanna work this through with him because I really do love him so much, and this is our only issue,” the woman wrote on Reddit
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A man playing online video games with his friends (stock image)A woman is wondering how to react to her boyfriend who routinely bails on planned dates last minute so he can recharge his “low social battery" and instead plays "video games with friends” for hours.
The 25-year-old girlfriend, who turned to Reddit’s popular Relationships forum to tell her story and ask for advice, began by noting that her relationship with her 28-year-old boyfriend, whom she's been dating for only a few months, is "amazing and he treats me very well."
"I've been in a couple of really bad relationships and this one is night and day! He gets along super well with my family, introduced me to his friends who are also amazing, and often brings me hand-picked flowers or my favorite snacks," the Reddit user continued.
She also said her boyfriend, who is “usually a great communicator” because “he regularly attends therapy,” has offered to help pay for a certification course to aid in her career goals.
“My love language (for how I give love) is acts of service, so I LOVE planning out fun dates and activities for us to do,” she noted. “I try to plan these on weekends so we get the most out of the day.”
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An unhappy girlfriend (stock image)The Redditor detailed several weekend dates she planned that he agreed to go on in advance but canceled the day before, partly due to him depleting his “social battery” by going out with friends on the nights before these dates.
“I planned a beach day for us. I asked him on Wednesday if he was free on Saturday and he said yes,” she explained. “I told him the plan and he seemed excited! On Friday, I bought all of the snacks, made sandwiches, a salad, and his favorite dessert. While texting him before I went to bed, I mentioned how excited I was. I fell asleep soon after.”
“I woke up on Saturday to a text saying ‘I’m really sorry, but I was with friends last night and honestly my social battery needs to recharge. Can we go tomorrow?’ ” she recalled. “Due to this being the first time he's done this, I told him it was okay. I understand sometimes we need to recharge and have time to ourselves. However, I was still really disappointed and quite sad for the whole day. When Sunday came, it rained and we were unable to go to the beach. So the date never happened.”
The woman then recounted two more incidents where her boyfriend canceled on dates: a trip to an apple orchard and a “cozy low-key night in.”
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A man who is tired (stock image)“I gently expressed that this made me feel kind of dejected and sad,” she said. “Like I went through all this effort and he doesn't appreciate it. He apologized profusely but did not offer any compromise or solution. ... That Saturday he hung out with his friend into the afternoon, then went home and played video games with that same friend for 5+ hours.”
For the low-key date night in, she decorated her living room in Halloween decorations, bought candy, prepared drinks and picked out a meal kit to make dinner together. But he bailed again, citing his “low social battery," so she told him she felt unappreciated, and he apologized.
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“It crushed me to get all excited and be let down at the last-minute,” she remembered. “But in the end, he was firm on his decision that even this low-key evening would be too much. A few hours later, I noticed a notification that he's Twitch streaming playing games with a friend. A stream that in the end lasted over 9 hours.”
Now, the woman is pondering if she’s "being dramatic to feel so crushed” by her boyfriend's actions.
“I wanna work this through with him because I really do love him so much, and this is our only issue,” she wrote on Reddit. “It has only started happening recently too. Does anyone have any advice on what to say or do about this? Or feel free to let me know if I'm just being dramatic, constructive criticism is welcomed! … What do I do/say?”
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