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This is a difficult one. The solution may depend on the source of his drama and whether he wants to change.
At age 20, it's not unusual for guys to be really dramatic. When you're young, you haven't had much experience dealing with life's travails, so everything seems much worse and every crisis seems to be a major crisis.
However, there are people who thrive on drama - either by virtue of the family history or from learning that being dramatic gets them attention. Instead of learning to communicate, be assertive or choose their battles, they have learned these unhealthy behaviors and they don't have healthy behaviors to choose from. In time, they view people who don't respond to their drama as either being "cold" or they argue that they don't feel loved unless they get a dramatic response to their own drama.
You're at a point where you have to decide whether he will/can change. You can try to turn this around and instead of criticizing the behavior that you don't want, you can instead try to encourage/support the behaviors that you do want. But he just may be too young and too inexperienced to be able to develop the non-dramatic behaviors are more compatible with your style.
With that said... maybe you also need to do some thinking about whether your less emotional and rational style is making you miss how your words can hurt people. The example that you gave- of a comment about not seeing yourself with one person- is a perfect example of how something that you saw as innocent and honest really hurt someone that you didn't intend to hurt.
Maybe there's some changes that are needed on your part, too?
At age 20, it's not unusual for guys to be really dramatic. When you're young, you haven't had much experience dealing with life's travails, so everything seems much worse and every crisis seems to be a major crisis.
However, there are people who thrive on drama - either by virtue of the family history or from learning that being dramatic gets them attention. Instead of learning to communicate, be assertive or choose their battles, they have learned these unhealthy behaviors and they don't have healthy behaviors to choose from. In time, they view people who don't respond to their drama as either being "cold" or they argue that they don't feel loved unless they get a dramatic response to their own drama.
You're at a point where you have to decide whether he will/can change. You can try to turn this around and instead of criticizing the behavior that you don't want, you can instead try to encourage/support the behaviors that you do want. But he just may be too young and too inexperienced to be able to develop the non-dramatic behaviors are more compatible with your style.
With that said... maybe you also need to do some thinking about whether your less emotional and rational style is making you miss how your words can hurt people. The example that you gave- of a comment about not seeing yourself with one person- is a perfect example of how something that you saw as innocent and honest really hurt someone that you didn't intend to hurt.
Maybe there's some changes that are needed on your part, too?









