Oh, I’m glad you said that out loud. Because that sentence, “my boyfriend makes me feel stupid,” carries a lot of weight, and I don’t want to just glide past it.
Let me ask you something first. When you say he makes you feel stupid, what does that actually look like? Is it the way he corrects you in front of people? Is it a tone he uses when you ask a question? Is it eye rolls, or sighs, or the way he explains things to you like you’ve never had a thought before? Because the *flavor* of this matters. A lot.
Here’s what I know after 16 years of sitting with couples. Feeling stupid in a relationship is one of the most corrosive experiences a person can have, because it doesn’t just hurt in the moment. It starts to quietly reshape how you see yourself. You stop speaking up. You start pre-editing your thoughts before you say them out loud. You get smaller. And that shrinking? That is not a you problem. That is a relationship problem.
Now, I want to hold two things at the same time for you.
One is that your experience is real. Full stop. You feel stupid around this person, and that deserves to be taken seriously.
The other is that we need to look honestly at what is creating that feeling. Sometimes a partner is genuinely contemptuous, and contempt is one of the most destructive forces in a relationship. It says, “I am above you.” That is serious business.
But sometimes, and I say this gently, a partner is anxious, or a little arrogant, or just has a terrible communication style, and the impact on you lands as contempt even when the intent is something else. That does not make your feeling wrong. It just changes the conversation you need to have.
What I would want to know is, can you tell him this? Can you say, “When you do this specific thing, I feel small”? And if the answer is no, if you already know he will dismiss it, or turn it around on you, or make you feel stupid for even bringing it up, then that tells us something very important about what we are actually dealing with here.
You deserve a relationship where you feel like your thoughts belong in the room. That is not a luxury. That is the baseline.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Emotional Safety in Relationships: What It Means and How to Build It
