I am in my third year of a position that I absolutely love. When I first started I lived further away and my manager and I rarely spoke; we mainly had biweekly or even monthly check-ins. Things were amazing. He is not a “micro manager” and I do not like to be, nor do I need to be micromanaged as I’m very self sufficient and excelled in my first year of the role (won an award for my performance). I moved closer to my manager within the past year and our communication and interactions have increased. Not necessarily meetings and such, just that I’m closer so he’s more involved with my work and we go to the same office sometimes (I work from home but he has an office in the building and I go there occasionally for meetings, etc.). I’m finding my Ts about him are getting worse and I avoid him more and everything he says now annoys me almost. I feel like I can no longer say the right thing and I go to him with things I wouldn’t before; more venting and frustrations and believe this is making things worse. He’s very blunt and direct and he says I can talk to him about anything but I’m not comfortable with talking to him about much other than work. I keep thinking about how happy I was at first when we rarely talked and when we did, it was all good- I gave the impression all was well even if it wasn’t but this was overall better for me. But now we are communicating more so if he catches me on a bad day, I vent or complain but then immediately regret it’s wishing I just wouldn’t have said anything, or lied and said all is well. I always feel awful after any conversation with him, unless I tell him everything is rainbows and butterflies. I’m struggling with my models even :

C- R is my manager
T- the more frequently we communicate the worse our relationship gets
F- frustrated
A- take everything he says/does personally, go through withdrawing then venting cycles with him, regret when I vent, close up to him, act desperate, tell him what I think he wants to hear, complain to my husband about him
R- I make the relationship worse???

I know I’m ultimately sabotaging myself here as my result …

IT- I can focus on doing my job well
F- motivated
A- continue to do a great job in my role, don’t reply to him when upset or frustrated (process these first instead of being reactive), be open to seeing what I can learn from him, in calls focus on the good stuff
R- I show up how I want to in my role

What am I missing here?