My (F20) boyfriend (M21) and I have been dating for over a year and overall have had a great relationship thus far. We don’t live together, but I drive to his apartment which is about 30 minutes away from our college which is very doable and works best for the both of us. I spend the weekend (Friday night - Sunday afternoon) there with him, and we typically cook meals together and then watch a show while we eat. Weekends are my chill days, which is fine cause my weekdays are usually busy.

I consider myself a pretty laid back and chill person. I don’t always want to go out and do things, but once I’m out and about, I tend to enjoy it a lot more when I’m out of the house. My boyfriend is pretty much the same, except I would argue he is even more laid back and it takes more convincing for him to go out with me to do activities together. He also enjoys video games, it’s one of his main hobbies, and I respect that because it’s his way to hang out with his friends. I also enjoy playing video games with my friends, but I don’t like to bring my consoles back and forth to his place because there is no space or extra TV I can hook it up to.

In the last couple months or so, I have been feeling like we don’t spend enough quality time together. We cuddle a lot, watch reels in bed, but we don’t really do much of anything to break this routine (this is definitely partially on me too) and it’s been making me feel lazy and unproductive. I’ve also begun to notice that whenever my boyfriend and I interact, his attention is almost always on something else while talking to me or interacting with me. For example, I’ll be trying to talk to him but he also is watching reels at the same time and will sometimes miss what I say. Or another example is when we play video games together, he’ll be watching a youtube video in the background with one airpod in while on the couch with me. Then after he’s “spent time with me”, he will hop on the game for a couple hours (often later at night) and leave me to do whatever until I just go to bed without him.

I’ve now begun to resent whenever he plays video games, especially when I feel like we haven’t done anything together throughout the day. Now to be fair, he does ask me if he can get on the game, but I also feel weird telling him anything else but “yeah sure.” I’m not his mom, nor do I want to act like one. He can be responsible for his own time and what he chooses to do in that time. I recognize every weekend does not have to be filled with activities, but I feel like I have to push for us to do anything that breaks this routine of not getting out of the house or just doing something more special or out of the ordinary, especially when I see it’s nice outside and I want to go out and do something as the warmer weather approaches (we live in a very rainy/snowy climate).

The most recent example of this routine was me driving to his place Friday night, cooking dinner with him at 7:30pm and eating together (we skipped watching a show together while we ate, so I just watched stuff on my phone while he watched stuff on his), and then he proceeded to play video games for the next three hours while I was just in bed until it was time to sleep. Saturday night, I asked him if he wanted to play some video games with me on the tv and he groaned briefly about it but helped me set up, played a couple rounds (while he was listening to a video in the background), and then decided it was enough. After I asked him if he wanted to play a different game, he told me not really and we both just went back to his bedroom and scrolled until I got annoyed enough to ask him if he wanted to do anything else tonight. We ended up watching a movie together, which was fine but I still felt like wanting to do more. We just went to bed after.

I told my boyfriend that I’ve started hating when he gets on the game and that I would really appreciate spending some quality time together BEFORE or AFTER he gets on the game with his friends (I suggested playing video games together, doing some of the date night cards I bought with ideas, etc). Though he was receptive about it initially, it seems that he doesn’t think it’s fair for me to be upset at him when I’m the one who comes over every weekend to see him, and therefore his routine shouldn’t necessarily change (e.g. playing video games with his friends for hours, scrolling reels for hours, etc). I don’t really disagree, but it also hurt to hear him say that because I want to spend some quality time with my partner throughout the week. Whenever I ask if he wants to go do something, he always asks me what I want to do and when I give suggestions, I can usually tell it’s not really something he’s interested in so he takes no initiative in “okay, let’s go do it!”

So AITA for telling him that I hate when he gets on the game after not really doing anything together?