My Boyfriend’s fear, How to deal with it?

Hi, I (31M) had a fight with my boyfriend (33M) two days ago, and while we made up, something still doesn’t feel quite right. I can’t articulate what the problem is, so I’m looking for advice.

I’ve spent most of my life abroad (Japan, S.Korea, Taiwan) and just moved to West Virginia last June. I hold an US citizenship. Where I live is my boyfriend’s hometown—he grew up here, as far as I know.

My boyfriend is genuinely a great person imo. He would always ask me about my day, what books I was reading, Who did I meet or if anything interesting happened. He genuinely loved listening to my stories. Sometimes, I even felt bad that I couldn’t give him the same level of attention he gave me.

After writing out my side of the story, I realized it's quite long and somewhat unorganized. So, I here is tldr

TLDR

I’ve been occasionally babysitting for a neighbor, a single mom. Her kids (10M, 12M) are well-behaved, and I enjoy helping out. My boyfriend knew I was babysitting but didn’t realize I was watching them at my home.

Two days ago, he came over unexpectedly and found one of the kids playing Nintendo in my living room. He was visibly uncomfortable and later confronted me, saying it was too risky for me, as a gay man, to babysit a stranger(in his view)’s children. He fears that the mother (or the kids) could falsely accuse me of something terrible, given how some MAGA-types view LGBTQ+ people.

We argued—he sees it as an unacceptable risk, while I believe in helping people, especially when they’re clearly struggling. Ultimately, I agreed to stop babysitting because I don’t want to keep fighting over it. However, I still feel uneasy and want to find a way to ease his fears.

Longer unorganized version with context

After moving to WV, I became close to a woman in my neighborhood. When I first told her I had moved in, she welcomed me and insisted that newcomers should definitely come to church. I’m not a Christian, but I appreciated the invitation and the effort to include me in the community, so I gathered my courage and attended a few times. Through the church, I made some new friends.

At some point, I felt like I should tell her that I’m gay. When I did, she was understanding. But she stopped inviting me to church after that, but our friendship remained.

As I started spending more time with my boyfriend, my interactions with her naturally decreased. Back when I was still going to church with her, she once asked if I could watch her kids in case of an emergency. I thought she was a good person, and she always seemed really busy. She never explicitly said so, but I got the impression that she was a single mom. I felt like it would be nice to help her out. And I liked being trusted

She promised that her kids wouldn’t cause any trouble. They were 10(boy) and 12(girl), which didn’t seem like an age where they needed supervision imo, but I figured they might be a handful. However, they turned out to be really well-behaved and easy to look after—not to mention pretty adorable. I ended up babysitting for her about twice or once a month. Even after we drifted apart, she would occasionally ask if I could watch them when she was busy. I actually enjoyed looking after the kids, and I liked maintaining our connection in that small way, so I continued to help her out.

She usually asked me to watch the kids on weekends or holidays. She would drop them off at my place around 10 AM and pick them up at 5 PM. A few times, they said they had things to do and left earlier.

I would let them play in the living room and make sure they had something to eat. The first couple of times, they quietly did their homework before heading home. but after that they stopped bringing their homework and just played games instead—though they would glance at me now and then, as if checking whether it was really okay which was pretty cute. I let them use my Nintendo Switch.

I had mentioned to my boyfriend once that I occasionally watched my neighbor’s kids. I remember him not thinking much of it at the time.

Then, two days ago, my neighbor asked if I could watch her kid on a weekday. Her younger child had refused to go to school that morning, and she had to leave for work but didn’t feel comfortable leaving him home alone. She told me that when she insisted he couldn’t stay home by himself, he said, “Then I can just go to the neighbor’s house!” That’s when she started looking for someone nearby who could watch him and ended up reaching out to me.

Since I work from home and I knew from experience that the kids usually just played games quietly when they were over, I told her it was fine.

The younger kid came over, and after making him breakfast, I let him watch TV or play games in the living room. I checked in on him from time to time while working, making sure he was okay and didn’t need anything.

Then, around 4 PM, my boyfriend stopped by. He had gone to work early that day and finished early, so he wanted to see me.

I explained why there was a kid at my place, and he immediately looked uncomfortable. When he saw the kid sitting in the living room playing on a Nintendo, his expression noticeably darkened. I had never seen him look that visibly uneasy in front of me before, and honestly, it caught me off guard.

I quickly tried to recall whether I had ever told the kids that I was gay. As far as I could remember, I hadn’t. I also wasn’t sure if their mother had ever mentioned it to them. And since my boyfriend had previously asked me not to introduce him as my boyfriend to others, I simply introduced him to the kid as my “friend.”

My boyfriend greeted the kid briefly, and by then, I was almost done with work. I suggested that the three of us play a board game together in a little while, but my boyfriend declined and left without another word. That had never happened before, and honestly, I was pretty taken aback.

About 30 minutes later, the kid’s older sister came to pick him up. That evening, my boyfriend texted me, asking, “Is the kid gone?” I told him yes.

He then came over, and since I knew he had left earlier in a somewhat awkward way, I tried to lighten the mood by joking, “Not playing the board game was a good call. His sister came to pick him up 30 minutes later"

But instead of laughing, he said “What were you thinking!” I had never heard him speak to me like that before.

I asked him what the problem was, and he said there were too many problems to even explain. Then, after a moment, he calmed down a bit and told me that I absolutely should not be watching kids like that.

I told him that I had already mentioned to him before that I sometimes watched my neighbor’s kids. But he shot back, “I didn’t know ‘watching kids’ meant having them over at your place to hang out.” Honestly, I still don’t know what exactly he imagined when I told him I was babysitting.

We both took a moment to explain our perspectives. Here’s why he was upset:

My boyfriend knew which church I had visited, and he said that church was not LGBTQ-friendly. From his point of view, my neighbor was an irresponsible mother. He thought it was way too risky for me to babysit a child I barely knew.

According to him, she was probably a Trump-voting MAGA supporter who saw people like us as predators. He said her kid could accuse me of something horrible at any moment, and if that happened, I’d have no way to defend myself. He kept pressing me, saying that I had put myself in a seriously dangerous situation.

I told him that I knew the kid wouldn’t lie about something like that, and I knew my neighbor wouldn’t either. She had always been kind to me, and when I first moved here, she helped me out a lot. So, of course, I wanted to help her too.

I also told him that when I was a kid, I used to visit my neighbors, have meals at their houses, and play there. I had always loved that sense of community. And now, as an adult, I didn’t want to miss the chance to be that kind of neighbor for someone else.

I tried to convince him that if my neighbor truly saw me as some kind of predator, she wouldn’t have trusted me with her kids in the first place. But he just kept saying that I didn’t understand the situation at all and begged me to just listen to him.

Our conversation turned into an argument. At some point, I realized that this was really a fundamental difference in our values. So I asked him:

"I understand that there's a risk. But today, she was clearly struggling. She needed help. Are you saying that because of this potential risk, we should just ignore someone who obviously needs help?"

He responded with a "Yes."

He made no attempt to show compassion or empathy. He just kept insisting, “You shouldn’t take that kind of risk for someone else.”

It reminded me of another time when he had taken issue with my volunteer work to check on homeless people’s health and guide them to services. He said the program probably run by church, and those program usually allowed ex-convicts to participate. And homeless people could expose you to diseases. But he didn't get mad like this at when we talk about that.

He told me that since I’m not American, I’m approaching these issues too naïvely. But honestly, I think I understand American culture and people just fine.

Normally, I would just talk about something like this with my friends. But this whole situation has so much context to just talk through, and I just needed to get it off my chest.

In two months, my boyfriend and I are leaving the U.S. together. I won’t have much time to see those kids again anyway, so I don’t want to keep fighting with him about this. So in the end, I told him I’d listen to him—I won’t babysit for my neighbor anymore.

What would be the best way to deal with his fear. I find it somewhat irrational but If those fear and precieved danger is really important for him I will probably concede and follow his advice, in the end he's the one that matters most to me. But I hope I can find the way to reconciliate his fear.

Edit:

I haven’t even told my boyfriend this—I just never had the opportunity. But since we're having this conversation, I want to share one last thing: why I trust those kids and feel that we have a good relationship.

I was craving red bean foods, so I ordered a big batch of sweet red bean paste. On the day I babysat the kids, I made them a meal and then served patbingsu(shaved ice with red bean and milk) as dessert. They absolutely loved it. I thought I had given them a generous portion, but they finished it quickly and asked for more.

Thinking it wouldn’t be good to let them eat too much sugar, I told them, “I’ll make it for you again next time, but let’s stop for now.” They simply said, “Okay,” without any fuss.

Wanting to tease them a little, I joked, “If you guys really insisted, I would given up.” It was half true.

But then the girl replied, “We know you're saying no for us. It's okay."

At their age, I didn’t have that kind of self-restraint. I also didn’t know how to express myself so politely. They were such sweet, smart, and kind kids.

I just realized today that I had completely forgotten my promise to make them patbingsu the next time I saw them.