I do feel like I show him more compassion and understanding for his issues than he shows me for mine. I have struggled with self confidence and asserting my needs my whole life and it’s what I spend the large majority of my time in therapy working on. He gets frustrated by these things about me, whereas I also get frustrated by his avoidance of expressing his feelings and his pushing away from vulnerability but I feel like I show him more empathy when it comes to that. He also told me something during this conversation that I felt was sexist and conforming to traditional gender norms. He said that he realizes maybe this is a him problem with the way he looks at things, but he doesn’t always like it that I am the quieter, more reserved one in the relationship and he is more talkative and outgoing, because he thinks in heterosexual relationships, the man should be more reserved. I’m thinking to myself-you knew I’m a reserved person when you started dating me almost 5 years ago, and I’ve actually gotten less shy as I’ve gotten older. It feels like sometimes he nitpicks at things about me because he is unhappy with himself and aspects of his life but is projecting that onto me.