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Our wedding venue and honeymoon for next year are booked but our relationship is a disaster, my boyfriend refuses therapy and I feel unloved, unwanted, sad and totally lost

Tagged as: Big Questions, Breaking up, Cheating, Dating, Family, Health, Troubled relationships, Trust issues<< Previous question   Next question >>
Question - (7 July 2019) 4 Answers - (Newest, 9 July 2019)
A female United Kingdom age 30-35, anonymous writes:

My boyfriend and I have been in a relationship for over 7 years, and for 5 of those years we lived together. We had our fair share of arguments but otherwise have had a pretty stable relationship. He proposed last year and we're due to be married in the Summer time next year.

A year or so ago he took a job out of town that I didn't really want him to pursue (it's dangerous). He argued that it was good money and it would be "for our future" and I wasn't going to stand in his way. He became tired often from the long expensive commute and after about 9 months of being in the role, told me he didn't think we should live together anymore.

Most people who I told about it initially assumed this was his way of trying to break off the long term relationship, but I'm not so sure. He explained that if we lived separatley we could both be closer to work and save for our futures / clear our debts. I was very upset about it but I couldn't argue his logic so I agreed reluctantly. About a week later he started renting a place and has been there ever since.

I ended up moving back in with my parents, which was really hard because my relationship has never been great with them (I moved out when I was 18 for a number of reasons). My mental health totally plummeted and I don't think I had ever felt so low in my life. I was living away from my friends, I had bad relationships at work and I wasn't getting any breathing space in my living conditions. My boyfriend is notoriously bad at keeping in touch and I had basically no support from anyone including him. I have a history of self harm and had massive issues trying to supress those urges to hurt myself, even though it's been a number of years. I was so stressed. It was so so bad.

I managed to pull myself out the hole about 5 months ago, I took up a new hobby and made lots of new friends. I started working out consistently. But the contact with my boyfriend continued to be an issue I pushed to the back of my head while I was trying to sort myself out.

At the end of last year (before I started feeling better) our relationship took a massive U turn and I found out he had downloaded Kik looking for local hookups. He basically broke down, swears he never contacted abybody and essentially told me he had been feeling miserable and lonely too, and he wished he had never moved. His job is really emotionally taxing. He usually surpresses his feelings so it was scary to see him like that. I'll point out it's not the first time he's done something like that, I have also caught him on OkCupid and Tinder as well but I chose to forgive him at the time. As far as I'm aware he never cheated and I believe him. He was a total mess.

More recently he broke down spontaneously again after a drunken night out. Says he really hates his life and he thinks he is depressed, and that he's considered suicide a few times if it wasn't for his "online friends". I begged him to get help and he won't. He won't do anything. He won't move even though he hates living there, he won't take driving lessons (something he needs to do as currently I am expected to drive everywhere), won't register with his local dentist, won't look for another job. The list goes on.

I am so worried about him but he doesn't bother contacting me often, most days he won't even message me. He works, comes home, eats, watches porn and plays MMO's with his online friends. The weekends we do get to see each other, he is seeing his other friends in my hometown where I live. The weekends I go to see him he is working. He doesn't visit during the week because he can't drive / can't be bothered.

He has never actively avoided me or tried to cancel plans, so I don't feel like it's entirely deliberate but I feel like recently it reached a head, where he started to fall asleep when I was talking to him on the phone, or not listen because he was busy doing something else. He often won't answer my messages unless he wants something. Because I've been trying to work on myself I feel okay in my own body for the first time in years, but I also feel unloved and unwanted in this relationship. I was in hospital having a scary operation recently and he didn't even call, or text, even though I contacted him about it, he says he forgot. I feel like I have already gone through the grieving process of losing this relationship to a degree by being put in a situation that I didn't want in the first place. I speak to my friends, family, colleagues, literally every person on the planet more than I do him.

I have spoken to him about it, he says he never wants to leave me and doesnt know how to make things better, I don't feel like I need to spell it out to him as I've already been clear about how I feel and telling him what I want him to do doesn't seem fair on me, shouldn't a relationship work 2 ways? He still won't get therapy and we're slipping into a dead bedroom situation too. Our wedding venue and honeymoon for next year are already booked, his family is fighting over mine about the wedding so I am already stressed about that too. But gradually I am feeling more and more sad yet accepting of the situation I am in. When I think about our relationship the way it is now, I feel tired and embarrassed and sad. I really love him - he is my best friend and used to be the person I used to go to for comfort.

I don't think I want to leave him and I don't think he wants to lose me, but he doesn't seem to have any fight in him. He says he is depressed but he won't get help. I can't keep living like this. The only thing I've considered is telling him I am leaving him until he gets help. But what if he doesn't? We usually communicate about everything but this time I dont know. Any advice would be massively aporeciated. Sorry for the long wall of text, I feel so lost.

tl;dr boyfriend of 7 years proposed we move away from each other, he is bad at keeping in touch and depressed so our relationship has been gradually getting worse ever since, I feel unloved and unwanted and I'm running out of energy trying to keep our relationship alive.

View related questions: at work, best friend, debt, depressed, drunk, money, moved out, porn, text, unloved, wedding

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A female reader, anonymous, writes (9 July 2019):

Sounds like he gets any emotional needs met through his chats online and any sexual needs met through porn so seriously what is the role of you and your relationship in his life . It really sounds like he uses you as a support person and prop which means it’s all take and no give for you . Do you want a guy who’s so emotionally and sexually unavailable . Or do you want and deserve a partner who is present for you . I think you know the answer You deserve so much better than being used as an unpaid personal

Carer. Can you imagine how much worse this would be if you

Became his wife and kids were involved

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A female reader, anonymous, writes (9 July 2019):

I'm sorry but if my other half told me . His only reason for not committing suicide was his online friends . I'd walk . What are you getting from this .. really ? As I'm sorry I read your post hoping for some ray .. little tiny bit .. of hope and I found none. He isn't interested in you both . Your convenient handy unless he gets something better. And come on he hasn't been with any one else . I'm sorry

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A female reader, Honeypie United States + , writes (8 July 2019):

Honeypie agony auntI think you need to accept that your relationship has reached it's expiration date. :(

You need to make YOURSELF he priority here. Which to me would mean a few things. 1. look for a new job with less drama. 2. find a new place to live (even a room mate situation) 3. look LONG and hard at this relationship and YOUR own future.

He is downloading chat apps (and not to chat with you...) he CHOSE to move AWAY from you.

OFFERING marriage means he WANTS to keep you sticking TO him. But as I see it... moving away from you, not keeping communications up, downloading apps to chat to other people THAT all seems to point to him acting SINGLE.

I DO think getting rid of debt is a GREAT idea before marriage... but he could have suggested that YEARS ago, even before marriage was in the cards.

Therapy isn't going to help. Especially, if he DOESN'T want to do that.

So as things stand now, DO you think marrying is the right thing for you?

If you don't want to end it, Cancel the wedding plans and postpone them.

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A female reader, Youcannotbeserious United Kingdom + , writes (8 July 2019):

Youcannotbeserious agony auntIs this how you want to live for the next however many years until you eventually split up and get divorced? You do realize marriage is not going to change anything, don't you?

Reading this brought so many flashbacks for me to a relationship I had years ago when, like you, I was in my 20s. At the time, I would have walked over hot coals for this guy. He used to date other women behind my back. He even used to borrow my car to go on dates with them! Whenever I caught him out, he always "broke down" and told me a pack of lies about the other woman "tricking him" or "blackmailing him" into meeting her or there had been an accident and he was giving the woman a lift home (when I found something belonging to another woman in my car). Women used to phone the house (this was before the days of mobile phones) and he would get me to answer the phone and tell them he didn't live there any more, telling me they were "after him" and he was not interested and couldn't shake them off.

I always asked him, "Do you want us to finish?" and he would always assure me he did not. Turns out, all that was happening was this guy could not bring himself to be the "bad guy" (to me or anyone else). He kept cheating on me until I ended the relationship. That was what he had been trying to achieve all along. Then he went round telling all his women friends what a bitch I had been to him and how I had dumped him.

One important lesson I have learned in life is that you should always take note of people's ACTIONS, rather than their WORDS. Your boyfriend may be paying lip-service to staying in the relationship with you but what is he actually doing to back up what he says? Absolutely nothing, from the contents of your post.

It takes two to make a relationship work but only one to break it. What are you getting from this relationship? You have managed to pull yourself out of a dark place, you have made new friends. I would suggest this is a fantastic time to dump this guy, get a place of your own away from your parents and start living a life that doesn't leave you feeling lonely and unwanted. Just cancel the wedding. It would merely be a farce.

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