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There are a couple of posts that may help to make people understand your pain.  I wrote one a little while ago about taking meds for the pain and Karen Lee Richards over on our Chronic Pain site wrote a letter to family and friends that offers a great idea for really making people understand.   It's hard to adjust to having this kind of illness and if you're able, I would recommend counseling, especially if you can find somebody who practices cognitive therapy. It teaches you different ways of thinking about yourself, the world and you with a chronic illness and it can be very helpful. You can also direct your boyfriend to our area about the basics of RA, which may give him some more insight into the disease and you can check out our area for the newly diagnosed where there are posts on a number of different aspects of living with RA, e.g., relationships and parenting.   Hang in there. It's not always this hard. Once you get your RA treated, you'll start to feel better - although you'll probably always have some level of pain, it will become easier to live with it.