I’m a small woman. My arms aren’t big and strong. I struggle to carry heavy objects.

In my previous relationship, my boyfriend expected me to go downstairs to buy 24pack of water bottles when we run out at home. We lived on the 16th floor, and there is a grocery store located on the first floor of the condo building. Half the time when we run out of water he would tell me to fetch more, but I did not like doing that because of the strength it took for me to carry the water from the aisle through checkout, parking lot, elevator, and to our door.

I’ve expressed this to him more than once how it hurts my arms to do this task because I do feel a lot of pain after each water run. He dismisses this by saying “it’s your turn to buy water, I do it half the time already”. He is a lot bigger and stronger than I am, twice my weight, and even he struggles with this task because of how heavy the water is and the distance we have to walk. I don’t mind paying half the time, but it’s the chores that require physical strength that I depend on him to help me with, but he made it my problem to deal with.

Once when it was his turn to carry the water, I saw him struggling and I did not react well to it and made a snarky comment the next time I saw him struggle with it. His arm was hurting in the elevator up while carrying the water and I said “it’s heavy isn’t it?”, which he did not appreciate and got mad at me for.

I was wondering how I could handle such situations with a gentle solution if something similar happens in my next relationship? Such that I expect my man to lend me his strength at times when I need it but he does not want to do it because it’s a burden on him also. I am thinking of putting myself on the dating market again but I know I still need to work on finding better solutions to problems. Thanks!