This is a post about my amazing SO, who absolutely drove me up the wall today. Here goes: My boyfriend and I have been living together for nearly 5 years, during which we’ve rented 2 apartments. In both places, I’ve been the one responsible for handling the rent payments. Each time we move, I set up a recurring transfer from my bank account so the landlords are paid on time - by the 28th of each month. My boyfriend is responsible for contributing to half the rent. Each month, he pays me back on a different day, though usually sometime in the first few days. Several times he's thrown out an offhanded comment like, *“Oh, it’s the 2nd already, I should send you my half of the rent.”* Whenever he says this, it sounds to me like he’s surprised by the date on the calendar. The way he phrases it makes me feel like I’m dating an irresponsible teenager. I don’t have the luxury of being *surprised* by the calendar, because *I have to* pay the landlords *on time* every single month, in a reliable way. I’ve told my boyfriend that I’m sensitive to him treating his half of the rental payment in this way, almost as an afterthought. I often had to take on a parentified role in my family growing up, and his casual attitude about payment times really triggers that old unwanted role for me. From my boyfriend's point of view, he thinks that I’m just being fussy and uptight - that as long as he pays me back, the exact day shouldn’t matter. To him, I'm at fault for being overly sensitive to his casual “thinking out loud” about remembering to pay me the rent. He almost always pays me back during the first week, although there have been times that he's only remembered a few weeks into the next month. My boyfriend refuses to set a calendar reminder to send me his half of the rent on a fixed date, and he won’t set up a recurring payment to my account for his half, because he says that would make our relationship feel too “business-like.” Our new workaround - an idea I came up with an hour ago after our latest fight about this - is that he’ll pay the landlords directly each month, and I’ll transfer him my half. (I'll do this with a recurring payment from my account to his so I don't forget). He has not only agreed to this idea - he's in fact gone and set up a recurring payment for the landlords! So apparently my boyfriend has *no problem* setting up a recurring payment with *the landlords or paying the landlords on time*, but he does have a problem doing that with me... I know we’re probably both being overly sensitive and that this is slightly pathetic. But still - who’s the bigger asshole here? Him, for refusing to just quietly send me the money on time each month, or me, for getting irritated and angry every time he “thinks out loud” about paying me back a few days into the new month? **Update** 1: I have a well-paying job and have enough in my account that I don’t need his half to be in by a certain date to cover the rent. I’m certain that if I *did* need his share to make ends meet, he’d be 100% diligent about sending it on time. In general, we don’t track every single expense - sometimes I cover groceries or gas, sometimes he does. **Update 2:** When I brought the rent issue up again, he explained that he sees this as part of our “we don’t count every penny” approach. What I struggled to convey to him is that rent feels different to me: I just want his share to come through reliably, quietly, and without fuss. From his side, it seems he feels like I’m trying to “control” him or signal that I don’t trust him if I insist on a specific date, especially since I can cover the full rent myself and, in his view, a few days here or there don’t make a practical difference.