My (20s M) boyfriend (20s) feels like I’m destroying him in our relationship. We’ve been together for nearly three years and it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. Sorry for any formatting issues because I’m on mobile.
We’ve been living together for almost a year and our relationship has probably been in steady decline since then. His main problem has consistently been that he doesn’t feel like I have been giving him enough consideration consistently and that I’ve shown no improvement and he feels like nothing has gotten better for him. I don’t know that it’s worth including examples…
From my perspective, I have been trying and I’ve found it difficult to concretely find a way to do better. A lot of the time he gets upset and feels like I’ve not considered him, or worse yet I’ve not done something that he’s asked me to do it’s been an accident. He’s verbalised that at some point forgetfulness becomes negligence. I also understand that accidents can still be hurtful and I won’t invalidate that he’s still hurt by what I do (or don’t do).
It’s gotten to the point where he feels like nothing is getting better because similar situations keep arising and i feel demoralised because the effort I put in is dismissed. I believe that a key difference is that we just think differently, he puts lines of thinking and interprets actions in such a different way than I do.
We get into conflict about all of this regularly.
It might’ve come to a head in the last week in particular. We’d agreed to buy a car together months ago (I already had one before our relationship) and share ownership of both. It’s worth adding that either of us could primary afford a car on our own and I also came into a sum of money last weekend.
I raised a concern that I think having more shared property (the car) will actually make us argue more and negatively impact our relationship and that I wanted to know if he felt similarly or had a different view that might reassure me. That didn’t go down well. I think that conversation went down a lot of paths.
1) that I was just using him for his money and now that I have this sum I’m ditching him
2) that we made an agreement and that I should stick to it and this is breaking his trust and that I’d given no indication that I had any doubts previously and that’s poor communication
We both work similar jobs with similar compensation and have our own individual savings, so it’s pretty frustrating to even type out 1) because I don’t think anything has indicated that I want any of his money.
He also said that he has no interest in persuading me of something that was discussed and already agreed. So we’ve not gotten anywhere good with that.
It’s been a few days since then and there’s just been more things to “argue” about and we’re on terrible terms. Most conversation has been unfriendly. We’ve also barely seen each other in person because he spend two nights away for work and I’ve been away for with friends for a trip.
I think I asked and he said he stays in a relationship with me for security and out of cowardice. And has probably said (and I’m paraphrasing) “if you don’t see/understand/have input on X then I’m breaking up with you” so clearly it’s not working for him.
I am waiting for an upcoming therapy session to really process my own feelings. But until then I was hoping to get crowd source some advice on what to do. Or if there’s anything obvious that I’m missing. Especially around how I handled that car conversation.
Thank you for reading this far, I feel like this post has become a mess of thoughts.
TLDR: Boyfriend of nearly three years says he’s afraid to end the relationship after relationship and I don’t know what to do.
4 comments
It sounds like he has told you he has already given up on this relationship, so I don’t see a reason to drag it out. I get that there are difficult logistics in breaking up, since you live together, but it is probably worth putting more effort into sorting those out than in trying to make the relationship work when he isn’t even in it anymore.
Your relationship is over. You don’t even like each other any longer. It sucks you live together and have to work out how to separate, but it’s going to have to happen. You’re both going to feel so much better in a little while without the constant, soul sucking negativity between you.
You deserve to be with someone who enthusiastically wants to be with you. He’s told you he would have broken up with you if he wasn’t a coward, he’s accused you of only being with him for money, and it sounds like you argue constantly. What do you get out of this relationship that makes it worth staying? Is this the kind of person you want to marry and stay with forever?
Jesus, just break up with him. He sounds like he’s got very deep insecurities and he needs to go figure himself out before he is ready to be in a relationship.
In regards to the car, I’d just tell him to buy it off of you so you don’t have to deal with his messiness. If he kicks up a stink, idk, sis. The sooner he is out of the life to quicker you are going to realize what an emotional drain he was.
It just takes one person to end the relationship, which is exactly what you do when you know the person isn’t a compatible partner to you…and he doesn’t sound like a compatible partner.