When someone cares about you, they don’t say things like “you’re too sensitive” or “you’re so emotional”, they actually become more sensitive to your sensitivities.
Don’t fall for the “you’re too sensitive” game. It is played by those who want to get away with their own bad behavior.
The Game Some People Play With Your Emotions
There’s a game that some people knowingly (or sometimes unknowingly) play. There are people that know they’re doing it – the emotional abusers, the manipulators, the coercive type, and the unethically influential type.
I speak from experience. I was married for four years, and during that time (not only in my marriage but in other relationships, too), I was highly manipulative. I didn’t know I was until we separated. I had this realization that I was being manipulative. I didn’t know the term back then, but I was being emotionally abusive, and I was doing so in many ways.
One of them was being highly judgmental. When I was married, I judged my wife for doing things that I didn’t agree with. I wanted her to conform to my standards. I wanted her to conform to my values, and I set the bar very high. I was also giving her the silent treatment.
The silent treatment, not too many people know, is a form of emotional abuse. It doesn’t always start off that way because sometimes you need silence to process. Sometimes you need silence because you’re so angry you don’t want to just lash out at someone. You just need your time to process things, think about them, and figure out what to do next.
But when the silent treatment turns into making the other person feel guilty, making the other person conform, there’s a level of control in there – “I want you to do what I want you to do, so I will be silent. I will withhold and withdraw love.”
These are the types of things I was doing in my marriage, and it was very unhealthy and very toxic. So I come on here, showing you my cards, letting you know that I was there. But I was on the other side. I was the one playing that game. I didn’t know it was a game – it was the game I played for many, many years.
As soon as I got into relationships, I needed the other person to be the way I wanted them to be instead of allowing them to be the way they were when they showed up in the relationship and allowing them to be authentically free.
“Authentic” in the sense that they could show up as themselves and “free” as in, ‘if they showed up in a way that I didn’t like – I still accepted them, I still allowed them (I don’t even like using that word), but I allowed them to be who they are, and who they were.
The Selfishness of Control
What I’ve learned over the years is that my trying to control the person in my life was a selfish way to get what I wanted and make life perfect for me, instead of sharing in the experiences of someone else and celebrating their successes and commiserating in their failures. It’s not about telling them what to do, but being there for them as they do it and supporting them through it.
There’s a lot more to unravel there and really dig into so that we can understand the entire breadth, the entire spectrum of emotional abuse, manipulation, coercion, and just downright lies and deception, and other bad behaviors that we don’t necessarily want in our lives – and also that we can catch ourselves doing. I caught myself doing these things in my marriage and realized, “Wait a minute – is this how I want my wife to feel?” That was the one question that probably changed everything: is this how I want her to feel?
I believe that when you truly love someone, you support their happiness, you support their path to happiness, and you support them wanting to be themselves. When you can show up in someone’s life, and they want you to be you, not someone they want you to be – doesn’t it feel uplifting? Doesn’t it feel freeing? Don’t you want to spend as much time as you can with that person?
That’s what I figured out late in the game. I was 41 or 42 and I realized, “So, that’s what relationships are about – supporting her path, sharing life with her, walking to the sunset together, holding hands, and having our own life too, having our path of success and failure, and hoping that our partner is going to be there to support us through this – through the thick and thin – knowing that we’re all doing the best we can.”
Sometimes we’re going to show up in ways that our partners, our friends, and our family don’t like. When that happens, how do they show up in our lives? How does our partner, our friends, and our family show up after we follow a path that they don’t like?
You really start figuring out who’s important in your life and who finds you important to them, and you learn who wants to control you and who doesn’t. As soon as somebody starts making you feel bad about yourself, about your decisions, about the steps you’re taking in life – that’s when you really have to start questioning who the people are that you’re involved with, that you’re associated with, that you’re even related to.
This happens in so many different dynamics, including family. In fact, in my other podcast, The Overwhelmed Brain, I talk about family dysfunction, family drama, and defining your personal boundaries. That episode is called “How family drama can teach you a lot about personal boundaries,” if you want to check it out.
Coming back to this topic today, how I define emotional abuse, in general, is when you not only make somebody feel bad, but you make them feel bad about themselves.
When they feel bad about themselves, guess what? – You don’t have to do too much of the work because they’re putting themselves down. They’re questioning their own decisions; they’re losing trust in themselves.
So if you’re the emotional abuser like I was, I was putting all this doubt in my partners over the years and my wife when I was married. I put doubts in their minds so that they would feel bad about themselves. I would give them dirty looks; I would give them the silent treatment – sometimes for days.
They would ask, “Where did you go? I need your love. I need your attention.” They wouldn’t use those exact words but in hindsight, I can see that’s exactly what was happening – “Where are you? Are we in a relationship? Why are you withdrawing?”
It was my hope that they would feel so guilty that they would change and then show up in the relationship better, just to suit me – that’s a very narcissistic tendency there. It was just to suit me.
Thankfully, I asked the question, “Is this how I want her to feel?” I think that’s a great question to ask the people in your life: “Is this how you want me to feel?”
If you have someone manipulating or being emotionally abusive or coercing you in some way, go ahead and ask that question. It may not be appropriate in every situation, but it’s a great question to have when there’s somebody who claims to love you and claims to want you to be happy if they do things and they say things that they know hurt you.
I’m Not Being Mean. You’re Just Too Sensitive.
This brings up the main topic I want to talk about today, which is the “you’re too sensitive” game. That’s the game some people play when they say things like, “You’re just being too sensitive,” or “You’re being overly emotional”
In fact, that was one of the checkboxes in The M.E.A.N. Workbook. The 200-point assessment in the workbook is a bunch of checkboxes that you go through, helping you to define the level of emotional abuse that you might be experiencing. One of the boxes is, “My partner calls me too sensitive and overly emotional.”
I want to let you off the hook. If you’ve ever been called too sensitive or overly emotional 99% of the time, it’s not true. I know there are people out there that will say, “No, I’m a highly sensitive person. It is true. There are a lot of situations that I am sensitive about.”
But if you’re in that space and you know that about yourself, that’s okay. I understand that there are people that are sensitive. I’m sensitive to needles. I don’t like them. I just barrel through them and hopefully, it’s done before I think about it.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about emotional sensitivity, of course. There are some people that have developed a higher emotional sensitivity. That term – highly sensitive person – is a thing.
Unfortunately, highly sensitive people often get involved with emotional abusers. Highly sensitive people also often get involved with insensitive people.
This is something that’s very important to know if you’ve ever been called overly emotional, highly sensitive, or too sensitive. I want you to look at the source and ask yourself, “Who is telling me that, and is that person insensitive?”
This is where I’m going to let you off the hook. Most of the time, when somebody says you’re too sensitive, it’s a way for them to make you focus your attention back on yourself. If they can make you focus on yourself, they can get away with bad behavior.
This is something I have strong feelings about because I have heard from so many clients and so many listeners of my other show, The Overwhelmed Brain. People write in and say, “My partner says I might be too sensitive. I think I am,” and I always answer that comment with this response, “It’s not that you’re too sensitive. It’s that the person telling you that is insensitive to your sensitivities.”
If someone really loves you and they really care about you, they’re going to understand that you have sensitivities. If, instead, they trample on those sensitivities, then blame you for those same sensitivities (the ones they knew about before they trampled on them), then the problem is their insensitivity to your own fears, doubts, and emotional triggers.
When my girlfriend and I first met, she had many sensitivities. One of them was the inability to trust men. She was sexually abused as a child and she developed a distrust of most men in general. She still had relationships with men – some good, some not – but when we met, she did not trust me, and it took her a long time.
Because I understood that she had this sense of not being able to trust me, I had to be extra sensitive to that. This is my point with today’s episode – you need to understand that it’s not that you’re too sensitive, it’s that the person telling you that is not being sensitive to your sensitivities, and that pretty much makes them insensitive.
I don’t mean to label someone else as that because sometimes we know we’re playing the game, and sometimes we don’t. When I was being insensitive toward my wife at the time, I didn’t know I was playing the game. I wanted what I wanted, and I learned to do that from childhood – to get what I want, I just have to use the silent treatment.
‘I just have to sulk, mope, and feel bad because I want my overly sensitive wife to feel compassion for me, to feel guilty that I feel bad. So she needs to do something about it to make me feel better.’
I wanted to use her sensitivities against her.
Thankfully, I figured that out because I was ruining many, many relationships. I don’t want your relationships ruined. I want you to understand that some people are going to use your sensitivities against you, and it’s not your fault. It’s not something that you need to fix.
Sometimes You Have to Draw the Line
You can work on your sensitivity, sure. You might be overly sensitive to certain things. But when someone tells you that and they use it as an excuse to get away with their behavior, that’s where the line needs to be drawn. That’s what needs to stop.
You might have to say something. You might have to speak up for yourself and say, “Look, if you know I’m sensitive in that area, and you really love me, and you really want to support me, and you really want me to be happy – then why would you be insensitive to that?”
Hopefully, the person doing that will step back and realize, “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry. I guess you’re right.”
That would be great. I’m not saying everyone will have that response, but some people don’t even realize they’re being insensitive. Some people need to be reminded that “Yes, I have sensitivities, and I want you to know that when you call me too sensitive, knowing that I have these sensitivities, it makes me feel like you don’t respect my sensitivities. It makes me feel like you don’t care about me, you don’t support me, you don’t love me, you don’t even like me. You just want me to feel bad.”
I don’t want you to get caught in that game, the “you’re too sensitive” game because you don’t deserve it.
So what! We all have sensitivities, right?
Absolutely. I want you to know that just because you may have higher sensitivities in some areas and not so much in others, we all have our sensitivities.
I guarantee you that even the people that are abusing language and abusing their relationship with you have sensitivities, and it would be very unfair of us to take advantage of those sensitivities, just like it’s unfair of them to take advantage of ours.
Remember, you are not alone. You do not have to feel as if no one will ever see or understand what you’re going through because the word is out.
This show and many other resources are highlighting manipulation and emotional abuse, and outright deception so that more people are aware of it and more people can call others out on it.
The more people that know about it, the less often others will get away with it.
This was an amazing article. Thank you for this. I’m finding myself in a similar situation. I am very self aware and tend to analyze (being told I overanalyze) things. Also being told that I’m too sensitive. I do often dislike the blanket statement of “accepting someone no matter what”. My girlfriend sometimes says or does hurtful things. By that rationale it seems to say that I should just put up with it because that’s “who she is” (another statement that I find ridiculous). For the most part it is actually who she is ‘choosing to be’ NOT ‘who she is.’ What would be your advice?
–jm
Thanks UH. Sorry you are experiencing this challenge. I could agree to an extent. We can choose who we are, yes, then there’s the old programming that kicks in when we’re emotionally triggered. Not that we don’t have any control, but our responses can come from a triggered (fight or flight) space so it can feel very out of control when it happens. An example of that is repressed anger. Your girlfriend comes home from a stressful day at work and she doesn’t want to take it out on you, but then she blurts out something hurtful. This could be her attempt at trying to be nice but she can’t because she has no outlet for her anger / stress (girl’s night out, exercise, good talk with a friend, etc) so since you’re in the room, you become the target. It doesn’t always mean she’s intentionally trying to hurt you, but unfortunately, she does.
I could be way off of course. I have no idea how your relationship has been. She may be upset at you from something you did 5 years ago that you never resolved between each other and she is still holding on to it so she says hurtful, passive aggressive things to sting you now and then. It’s something you might want to explore in case that exists.
My short answer is yes, we can choose to respond any way we’d like. AND we can sometimes response from that knee-jerk reaction that has nothing to do with the moment and everything to do with what someone is holding on to inside.
My suggestion would be to address it the moment it happens instead of creating a big picture of all the times she does it. Meaning, she says something that hurts you, you say, “Hey, that didn’t feel very good. Where’s that coming from?” and see what she says. You say it in a hurt way, not an “I’m angry because you hurt me and now I’m going to strike back” sort of way.
I think it’s vital to address these things in the moment and open up to her in those moments so you can find out what’s on her mind that minute. If you wait too long, and she forgets about it, or represses it, it festers inside her waiting for the next outburst.
If she says you’re too sensitive, make sure to follow the steps I’ve outlined in this and other episodes. I would even be humble and say, “You may be right. I may be a bit oversensitive to things. Will you work with me on that?” and see what she says.
If she continues to put you down because “you’re too sensitive”, I’d want to get to the bottom of it. I’d want to ask her something like, “You’ve be upset a lot lately. Just tell me what you’re so agitated about. Let’s get it on the table, let’s hash this out.” You may even want to bring up a previous “battle” like, “Is this about _____, because if it is, I want to talk about it. Let’s get it out in the open.”
Then listen without judgment and with compassion. Because she may share a whole lot of things you don’t want to hear.
I hope this helps. I apologize if I’m off the mark, but I have many other episodes both here and at The Overwhelmed Brain that might be helpful. You may like this article:
https://theoverwhelmedbrain.com/keeping-your-relationship-from-slipping-into-dysfunction/
Good luck with this. Thank you for your comments!
Paul, your response doesn’t make sense. In your article you claim that 99 percent of the time someone calling you oversensitive isn’t true. Yet your response here is pointing away from that and suggesting that JM puts aside his pain and allow his partner to open up instead responding to the abuse by creating boundaries.
Thanks for giving me an opportunity to clear this up. I always encourage boundaries, absolutely. If victims of abuse could put up boundaries and enforce them, there’d be no more abuse. But it’s never that simple.
The reply of “You may be right. I may be a bit oversensitive to things. Will you work with me on that?” takes out the abuser’s expectation of your resistance (something they usually wait for so they can react to you). It also may open them up to a conversation about the subject of sensitivity instead of going down the same path it always goes where the abuser expects the victim to resist and be “dramatic” or whatever.
Some forms of abuse work by using your resistance as an excuse for the abuser to hurt you more. If they expect resistance, and you give it, the abuse cycle will complete itself because the abuser expects it. If you cry or appear sad or out of words, and this is what the abuser expects, the abuse cycle completes because the abuse doesn’t stop.
If, however, you offer an alternative response, something they don’t expect, you might get somewhere with them.
There is of course a slim chance that you’ll get anywhere with an abuser that doesn’t care and simply doesn’t care if you’re hurt. But by replying in a different way for once, it takes away their expectation perhaps interrupting the abuse cycle.
It’s the philosophy that one of you has to change before either of you do. It’s not normal for the abusive person to stop what they’re doing and say, “I’ve been calling you oversensitive and realize that may not be fair. Can we explore this together?” If that happened, it would be fantastic. But abusive people are usually on a fixed track and don’t get off that track until they either experience accountability for their behavior or there’s a shift in how the conversation goes that makes them respond differently. That shift could be removing their expectations which may take them off that track and get them out of their abusive state of mind in hopes that they’ll finally communicate in a healthy way.
When the victim says, “You may be right,” that doesn’t mean they have to believe that comment. I’m just helping them to stop the abuse cycle if all else fails. I didn’t intend for it to come across in a way that puts the victim in a powerless state. In fact, this empowers the victim by helping them control the conversation so the abuser doesn’t.
When the abuser hears something like that, it gives them an opportunity to communicate in a way that might lead to a better solution. It’s sort of like when one person backs off in an argument. They can both keep aggressing on each other getting nowhere, or one of them can say, “I see your point,” and back off. This quite often leads to the other person backing off (in a non-emotionally abusive situation) so that both people don’t feel like they need to defend themselves so much anymore. Some arguments never end because no one wants to be wrong. Not saying this works every time, but it works within healthy relationships quite often, and sometimes with toxic ones too.
I have many articles and episodes on boundaries. If every victim of abusive behavior put up boundaries and enforced them, then made the abuser accountable, the abuse would either stop or the victim would leave to stop being exposed to it. But that simply doesn’t happen. Many victims are still learning how to create boundaries without being abused more. Some aren’t ready to leave the situation so they can’t enforce the boundaries they create. And some are still in doubt just how they are being hurt. They know they hurt, but they can be convinced by an abusive person that they (the victim) is doing hurtful things to them and they (the victim) are the problem.
This gaslighting is done intentionally to keep the victim second-guessing themselves. Also, so much emotional abuse is very hard to spot in the moment. Someone saying, “You’re so sensitive,” to a sensitive person may not believe they have a defense to that. The recipient of those words may believe that about themselves already so it someone they’re supposed love and trust says something like that to them, they’re likely to believe it.
To many victims of emotional abuse, being called “too sensitive” doesn’t even appear to be abusive, so they may not know they need to put up a boundary at all. I’ve had people write to me to thank me because they believed that, because they were a sensitive person and couldn’t do anything about it, they simply had to accept the abuser’s hurtful behavior. As if sensitivities were a logical reason to deserve punishment.
It can be a very complex situation sometimes. I’m not suggesting JM put aside their pain. I’m suggesting an alternative response in hopes to open a dialogue. If that response doesn’t work, they can look back and tell themselves that they tried everything. And when you’ve tried everything, and nothing’s changed, you may have to make a bigger decision about the relationship.
I apologize to both you and JM if it appeared I was steering you to put aside the pain or not create boundaries. That wasn’t my intention at all.
Thanks so much for asking. I hope this clears it up. Feel free to follow up if not.
Wow. Thanks so much. My X told me this often, and now my new fiancé is doing it. I’m upset and will try to be more wise in my reaction instead of just flipping out.
Thank you for sharing this. Sorry you are dealing with it but I hope this episode helped you.
My partner will often say things to me in a way that comes across not very polite or as if she’s not very bothered about my response etc and when I pull her up on it she says I am being too sensitive. She is a very insensitive person due to a bad childhood etc etc. She doesn’t tell me this to make me feel bad about myself so that she can get away with bad behaviour. But I always feel as if whilst I can change and try to be less sensitive, she should also try to be more sensitive to my feelings. We both agreed to try to work on it, do you think it is possible for a relationship to work between a HSP and an insensitive person if they both try to work on being better or am I wasting my time?
I think as long as you see progress, even minute progress, it’s worth a shot. Though, if a person is truly insensitive, then there’s an automatic incompatibility with an HSP. If there is the ability to feel empathy, then the insensitive person can change, but empathy is key. A good question is, “Do you realize that what you’re doing / saying is hurting me?” If they say No, then ask, “Now that you know it hurts me, will you not do / say that anymore?” Someone who accesses their empathy will not want to hurt you because it will hurt them hurting you. That’s the key. You just need someone to feel bad when they hurt you. If your partner really feels bad and apologizes and actually tries and succeeds next time, then there’s a chance. But if she tries and fails over and over again, sometimes it’s a good idea to separate for a while so the insensitive person can determine whether they have something to heal in themselves and whether they want to heal in themselves.
Yes, the highly sensitive person may have healing to do as well. HSPs need to determine exactly what behavior bothers them so they can cite those specific behaviors and have a conversation about them. It’s possible the HSP realizes they may be being overly sensitive to something that really isn’t a big deal. But what I’ve seen more often than not is that the HSP tends to be more intuitive about bad behavior but they doubt their instincts. More times than not, the HSP is absolutely right that the person they are with is not being kind. An HSP lets their guard down when they feel safe. When they don’t, it will appear as overly sensitive.
I am curious to know the answer to your question too. Do I bother to continue working on my relationship with an insensitive person?
I hope my answer helped. I look at relationships like I look at the profit and loss statement of a company. The progress line in a profitable company will go up and to the right, indicating higher returns year after year. A relationship going in the right direction has a progress line that is either steady, slightly up and down but mostly up, or going up and to the right. However, if the progress line is going right and down, then the past often equals the future.
Yes, work on the relationship like I mention above, but also watch the progress line. If, in general, it goes down and to the right, then you have to accept it will continue going that way so that you can make the next right decision for you.
I’m sorry, but telling someone who is insensitive to you being sensitive that they don’t love you or respect you is just as bad as them calling you too sensitive. If you tell someone that they don’t love you and don’t care about you because they said something without realizing, what does that make you?
My goal was to convey that it feels like you aren’t loved by the person not being sensitive. I didn’t mean for it to sound like I was telling you to tell them they don’t love you because they are insensitive to your sensitivities. I apologize that the message came out that way, that wasn’t my intention.
You are spot on with your comment though, I agree. The way you stated it could be interpreted as manipulation and control.
Thank you for this clarification! I know it will help others.
This is a brilliant article. I am a HSP male and daily life is a struggle being that way .Alot of the time it’s been other men putting me down and trying to destroy my high sensitivity, but girls do it too and attack your masculinity esp where i’m from in northern england. I do apologise for saying this but I felt uncomfortable reading that you were abusive-really made me have a reaction. I’m glad that you are helping others now.
Thanks so much for your comment Wayne. Yes, anyone can do it to anyone. And thank you for telling me you felt uncomfortable reading that I used to be emotionally abusive. I get it.
It has taken a lot of healing and humbleness to grow from the person I used to be. The trouble is so many people that are this way don’t change. There are those that do (I’ve met and worked with a few), but there are less than there should be.
If you have any interest in learning about my healing journey, feel free to read it here:
https://theoverwhelmedbrain.com/the-healing-journey-of-the-emotional-abuser/
Otherwise, thank you again. I appreciate your words.
Thank you. I needed your honestly and introspection. My fiance does the same things you did in your marriage– the silent treatment, the “you’re too sensitive”, the withdrawal, the dirty looks. From reading your story, it seems he will just have to come to his own realization, and your story has lead me to hope. Your self-awareness is refreshing and actually brought me to tears. Simply knowing that someone with those tendencies can understand what they’ve done is cathartic and quite the emotional experience.
Thank you so much for your comment. If he is able to access empathy, and he really does care about you, he will realize his behavior is hurtful. I didn’t know how much my silence was hurting my wife. She even told me when I’m quiet, she feels so alone and doesn’t know what to do. There were things I wanted to say to her, but they were mean things so I never did. This kept me silent.
In my current relationship, I was receiving the silent treatment from my girlfriend in the beginning. She would withhold “mean” things because she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. It was so much worse when she was silent and avoiding me. I figured this was payback for my marriage ;). But I decided I wasn’t going to allow the silent treatment in my relationships anymore so I learned the magic phrase:
“Just be mean then! I’d rather you be mean to me today than to hold it in for days or weeks keeping me in the dark.”
My girlfriend looked at me funny and asked, “You want me to be mean?”
I said, “Yes! If you have something to say, I’d rather you say it even if it sounds mean or comes from a place of anger. It’s a whole lot better than walking in the door and you don’t even want to look at me for weeks.”
She reluctantly said, “Okay, if you’re sure.” I said, “Absolutely. Be mean. Get it out, put it on the table so we have something to talk about.”
A few weeks later she asked, “You remember when you said it was okay to say something even if it sounded mean?”
I said, “Yes.” And she replied with something I did that upset her. It was something she normally would have held in for weeks, but this time she was letting it out as soon as possible.
And it was awesome. She got it out, we talked about it. Got through some tough emotional stuff and resolved it. We were able to move forward without silence. Liberating!
I hope this gives you some ideas. Silence and withholding love and affection dissolves love and affection. Don’t let it get so far that there is none left. Your relationship cannot withstand it.
I appreciate you. Thank you again.
My fiancé says I’m too sensitive I feel like almost everyday, he knows that it really hurts me and we get in a lot of fights about it but he just will keep saying “is it done?” “can you stop?” I’ve tried everything to get it to stop. I’ve showed him articles like this, I told him I’m not taking it anymore, I even broke up with him once over it for weeks because it seems that I’m always changing myself and he just never wants to accept that he has some things he needs to work on it this relationship is going to last. Now that we’re engaged I’m scared of future mental abuse because I already cannot handle it but I keep saying I’m not going to give up and love is hard and he’ll one day see it. His ex even killed herself from his mental abuse and I don’t want to be next. Do I keep trying or get the heck away from him?
Everything you are sharing here is your opportunity to assess what you really want in a relationship. Your vision of a better future is not the gauge you use to determine if you should stay in a relationship or not. The only determinate of a relationship’s future is what you’ve experienced up to now. That’s it. The past determines the future, and the future always amplifies the past.
In other words, what you’ve experienced up to now will only continue and what you will experience will only be exactly what it was but more so. Look at the trend line of your relationship so far. Like in a meeting in a conference room, the trend line represents the level of progress in a company. The trend line of a relationship represents the level of satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness.
If it has been going up and to the right day after week after month after year, then that’s what to expect in the future. If it’s been steady with ups and downs, then that’s what to expect. If it’s been going down, or has been down a while and stays there, that’s what it will be.
You have to look at what’s happened, not what you hope will happen. A person is as they show up TODAY. A person will act as they are acting TODAY and as they have been acting up to today.
What you have written here is already full of red flags, but the “reddest” flag is the comment, “I’m not going to give up,” because that tells me you are willing to become more tolerant of abusive behavior just to keep the relationship going. Your investment into this relationship seems to be 10X his investment. Relationships require two people who take full responsibility for their role in everything. If there’s a problem, they both address it and ask themselves how they can improve the problem. If he’s laying it all on you to fix the problem and doesn’t seem to care that his words or behaviors hurt you, then even if you are “too sensitive” then his unwillingness to work with that shows a lack of caring about your needs.
Many, many red flags in your short comment here. I won’t tell you what you need to do, but I will tell you that what has happened will continue to happen and there’s nothing you can do to fix this. It takes two to work on things together. Love is EASY, but taking responsibility is hard and it seems he doesn’t want to do that.
If you’re not going to give up on something, don’t give up on yourself. Listen to all my episodes again because you are letting him rob you of your power by making you believe everything is your fault and you are to blame. He won’t stop because the accountability isn’t real. Even when you broke up, you came back. That shows him that he can do anything he wants, and you’ll still return. So no loss for him at all.
I wish you much strength through this.