This is an essay but please read it as I need serious advice. I have gotten myself into a pickle and I feel absolutely awful about it. My boyfriend and I have been dating for a year and a half and have recently moved in together, but we have had out problems. If there is something that is bothering me about us he is very dismissive of it, like he always ALWAYS contradicts almost anything I say, from the definition of words to whether something I bought is still in the fridge to what I was trying to say in a sentence that he didn't even let me finish. It's very frustrating for me because it's just little things but it can happen like ten times a day. I expressed to him that it's very frustrating to me that he can't seem to just trust what I say and he just brushed it off with "that's just how I talk to people, I'm not contradicting you, I'm just contributing to the conversation" Another example of him ignoring my feelings is this: I'm 21, he's almost 26 now. He's a marine who has lived without parental control for almost eight years whereas I am in the process of tearing myself out from under my abusive parents yolk. I have a lot less real world experience than him but I have also endured things he could never have imagined. And yet I feel like he treats me like a child sometimes. I don't feel like he sees me as an equal adult. When I expressed this to him he just brushed it off and didn't address it, multiple times. And if I do push him hard enough to address something that upsets me, or just try to understand something, like why he feels the need to watch porn if we live together, he will freak out and yell at me to just shut up and drop it. He's just really not good about talking about feelings, he doesn't ever express himself even about good feelings. He tells me he loves me but that's literally the extent of any romanticism from him.

A bit about me as a person, I am very artistically minded, a singer, I love music and books and really getting in touch with and understanding human emotions. The guy I dated before my current boyfriend was this Italian musician who encouraged me to find my voice, that my mother had told me was awful, and he and I really communicated through shared music and it really helped our relationship grow. I feel music can often help us communicate things we'd be too shy or timid to express in spoken word.

My current boyfriend does have many great qualities, I do love him very very much. He's so funny and down to earth and nerdy, like me, yesterday we just sat in bed all day playing video games on our pcs for eight hours and had a great time, but the one thing that keeps gnawing at me is his complete lack of appreciation for the arts. We go on a road trip and after an hour of listening to music he starts complaining that he is bored and wants to listen to a talk show, which bores the hell out of me but I figure it's interesting to him so compromise. I try to get him to sing with me and find out what kind of music he likes but it just doesn't seem to have the same impact on him as it does to me. Music is something I use to connect with everything around me but he just seems closed off from it. Or maybe he isn't and just doesn't know how to express himself, especially after having been a drone of the military having his spirit beat out of him for eight years.

It may not be his fault or something that he can help but he won't even talk to me about it so that I can try and understand. I love him but I haven't felt very connected to him lately, like there's this whole part of him he won't let me know.

Enter my pickle, I started a new job and there is this guy there who has made no secrets about his interest in me. I have tried to discourage it but my bf has not helped his cause in discouraging the guy. Ex: I went out for drinks with everyone after work. My bf had driven me because I needed a dd, which was very nice. He said he would pick me up and told me to text him where I was. I thought that meant, text me where you are when you need me to pick you up. What he meant was, let me know where you will be at all times tonight. Around midnight, I'm at the bar with everyone and I get a call from my bf, yelling at me because he wants to pick me up now and needs to know where I am. I'm confused and try to talk to him, but I work in the city which is a place he hates, we lives about 20 miles outside of it, the city triggers his anxiety apparently, something he refuses to get help for, and instead was just taking it out on me, yelling at me for not letting him know where I was and telling me to text him because he wanted to go home now. Naturally I'm crying, and lucky for us, chez, my coworker, witnessed all of this. So this basically ruined my attempts at portraying myself as someone in a loving committed relationship. Which, though I am, he now thinks my bf is some asshole who doesn't treat me well enough. I walked away from my friends crying to wait for my bf outside and Chez followed me to make sure I was ok. He seemed so genuinely concerned about me, it was astonishing. The past few months we have continued working together and he has gotten more bold. He straight up told me "WHEN you're single, call me." I've tried to ignore his interest in me and just keep things a casual professional relationship, but I think he's starting to get in my head a little. He is so the opposite of my bf in almost every way. He played zimba on Broadway when he was like 9 and loves music just as much as I do. He is very expressive, often telling me very specifically what he appreciates about me. He is funny and genuine and really seems to care about me. See what I mean about getting in my head? I keep finding myself thinking about him. I know I love my boyfriend, he has been nothing but supportive of me and I know even though he has trouble saying it he does love me too and we always have a great time together and he means the world to me. And I am aware that every relationship hits its rough patches where the romance is low and things seem dull and it's easy to get distracted by shiny new things and you just have to have the self control and maturity to work through your current relationship because it's worth it, but what if my bf won't let me work through things with him? I'm honestly scared to ever tell him something he did upset me because he will either brush it off or yell at me.

I would love to just talk to him about what I'm feeling about our relationship but I know that's basically impossible with him so I don't know what to do. Advice? Please?