“My Boyfriend Won’t Give Me Any Affection in Public”
He says he feels anxious expressing any affection in public and that he doesn’t want to boast about our relationship in this way. He wouldn’t even let people know we were dating at first, but he has come around on that matter. I’m quite certain that he’s not cheating on me. He’s simply very private. We’ve held hands in public before, but only in relatively people-free areas or at night, and he was horribly nervous while we did so. I don’t want him to do something that makes him uncomfortable just for my sake, though he claimed he enjoyed it. I don’t really believe he did though.
He did say that he really wants to change this and that we’ll work on slowly working our way up to holding hands and occasionally hugging and being able to tell each other “I love you” in public without any anxiety, but nothing has changed. (For months, he’s refused to try hugging in a deserted-ish area, claiming “he’s still not ready.”) I doubt it will ever change. He’s very affectionate in private, but I hate the distance we have in public. I don’t want to break up with him for this – I love him deeply. But this has been making me sad for the majority of the length of our relationship, which he’s aware of and feels bad about. I don’t want to be sad and I don’t want him to feel bad. What do I do? Can I get over this? — I Want to Hold His Hand
First of all, your desire for affection is valid, normal, and healthy. Your boyfriend’s desire for privacy, while also valid, isn’t very normal when accompanied by his extreme anxiety during any attempt at even the smallest gesture of affection in even mostly deserted areas. There could be a variety of reasons for your boyfriend’s behavior, including potential neurodivergence, and it should be addressed with a professional if, for no other reason, he is not meeting your needs (and he’s not). But your boyfriend has to WANT to address this issue and so far, it doesn’t sound like he has any interest in doing so. He’s giving you lip service about wanting to change and about “working your way up to holding hands.” But it doesn’t sound like he’s done anything to actually get there. He’s just buying himself time and hoping you don’t notice that nothing is changing.
You may love him deeply and may not want to break up over this, but this is much more than his not wanting to hug you or hold your hand in public. That’s just a symptom of bigger problems in your relationship, which include his disregard for your needs, his debilitating anxiety, and his inability to communicate WHY he desires so much privacy to the point that he doesn’t feel comfortable with people even knowing you’re a couple a year into your relationship. Something just isn’t right here. And his saying he’ll work on hugging you eventually without feeling horribly nervous about it ain’t gonna cut it. When you’re dealing with pathological behavior like that — and that’s exactly what this is — you need professional help to change. If he won’t seek help with a therapist, you need to move on because, without help, he will never be emotionally and physically available to you in the way a healthy relationship demands one to be.
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Yeah this is something you don’t just “get over.” Either he’s not ready for any relationship or you’re not his person. If he genuinely respected and liked you, he’d have been in therapy for at least 6 months by now or already holding your hand and hugging you. In my experience people that think they “aren’t affectionate” just aren’t admitting to themselves they’re not into that person because they suddenly become affectionate when they find a better match. Sometimes people just don’t have chemistry even if they like them in a platonic sense and that’s ok. Attraction and love can’t be forced. And many times when we’re in one of our first relationships we don’t know what a genuinely healthy relationship looks like so instead of saying “well we just don’t have chemistry so we should go our separate ways” we say “I’m just not the affectionate type” because you are still learning what your affection looks like.
I am like your boyfriend. I am also a therapist and I do not think my way of being is “pathological”. What a deranged and cruel thing to say.
I am simply a private person who does not love to be perceived by strangers, especially about things that feel very private or personal or special to me. That does include PDA. Probably the MORE I like someone, the more precious they are to me, the MORE that PDA makes me intensely uncomfortable. It can feel like anxiety but really for me it’s vulnerability around letting strangers see something that feels intimate and private.
I am not interested in changing this about myself or forcing myself to extreme lengths of discomfort because other people think my needs are abnormal. I have dated people who pressured me to have more PDA faster than I was comfortable with or would grab my hand in public suddenly without asking which made me feel panicked and kind of violated. I know that hurt them. And so I broke up with those people. They also aren’t wrong for wanting/needing something different here — but they are incompatible with me and my core human need to feel safe in my relationship.
I am best partnered with people who are no pressure around this and chill/happy/neutral on me taking as long as I need to build stability and comfort in a connection. It is a real slow burn for me. I have been with my partner for 4 years now and we hold hands in public and occasionally lean against each other or hug or quick kiss goodbye. But it took several years to slowly get to this point. They are similar to me and never rushed it or never really even initiated PDA themselves. It just happened when the time was right for everyone.
Either work WITH your boyfriend on this (the right approach is NOT, ‘how do I get him to change’ it is ‘how can we both continue turning towards each other in conflict and how do we figure out how to make both of us feel safe, secure, and satisfied in our connection when we have clashing needs’). If you can’t or are unwilling to do that (if this is an important need to you that cannot be worked around or compromised on), then you need to break up because you are not compatible.
It’s been a year and he’s making *no* effort to work with her at all, so who is the one who’s unwilling to work on it here? She’s *been* patient.
Well said. It’s not pathological. I have a very, very private husband, we are both neurodivergent (so when I first started reading the reply I was happy to see that mentioned), but his discomfort is by no means pathological and doesn’t necessarily need to change.
I’m going to side with the boyfriend on this. I *hate* PDA, and from what I have seen and heard, most bystanders don’t enjoy it either. Many of us were raised that private things, such as physical affection, are private. I’m going to wonder why you need your boyfriend to say “I love you” or talk romantically in public around strangers or why you need to announce your relationship by touching in romantic ways when others are watching. From what I’ve seen here and on other social media featuring this question, it’s not the popular opinion, but it is what it is.
He won’t “hug me, kiss me, tell me he loves me, or anything of the sort in public.” Grow up. Save it for private places. No one else wants to see it or hear it. I was told the appropriate response to this behavior is, “Don’t you two have somewhere to go?”