Doomed? I moved for him, now he's supposed to move for me but really hesitates
- This topic has 83 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 11 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
JC is right. This personality you see is what you get. He’s 26, his personality is pretty set at this point. He obviously needs his rituals and routines. He’s not going to wake up one day and say, you know, I have a disability, I’m going to get help and fix all this. He’s not. But I see you falling into the trap of, oh, he has a disability, wouldn’t I be a bad person if I left him, this isn’t his fault, underneath the disability he’s a wonderful guy, etc.
You absolutely have to get back to Toronto and finish your degree. You’re making a serious and dangerous mistake to keep putting off the time when you start a career, earning a good income, saving for retirement. You need to say to him, look, I’m going back there on x date to finish my degree. I have to. I’d love for you to come with me, but if you can’t, you can’t. And then DO it. Rent an apartment you can afford, and go.
The fact that he says he doesn’t want to end things doesn’t really mean anything. That’s exactly what I’d expect him to say. You’re part of his routine and security blanket, *as long as you stick around on his terms.* And let him keep listing out his doubts and criticisms and still stay and cater to his idiosyncrasies (to put it kindly).
What I see happening if you don’t snap out of it now and move back for school – based on personal experience and years of reading these forums – is this: You’ve accommodated him and agreed to his terms for years now (since the very beginning). The terms of the relationship are that he and his career and education are important and yours are not. He will continue to lose respect for you. You will be increasingly sad, stressed, and unhappy. The relationship will deteriorate over the years, but he won’t end it. Nor will he propose to you or take solid steps to start a committed life together. He will just let you hang in there, hoping to be good enough to overcome his doubts, trying desperately to lose weight and hating yourself. You’ll have less and less sex until it stops. You’ll spend less time together. Finally you’ll snap and end it, but you’ll be 30 with no degree or relevant career experience or dating experience. You’ll have to rebuild your life, and you’ll watch him marry the next girl he dates.
Seriously.
Also, look, the symptoms A through G that you listed out, sorry, but you can’t go through life with a spouse like that and be happy, heart of gold or no. I have fallen into the trap of sticking with a guy who had serious personality issues, from childhood and likely exacerbated by an elective medication he was taking, because I felt he was a good person at heart. Big mistake.
And the issues 1-4 that he has with you, again I’m sorry, but you don’t bounce back from those. He’s telling you it’s over, even if he doesn’t realize it right now. He will always use those excuses as to why he won’t move to be with you, why he won’t propose to you, etc, but he will let you stick around.
Hi LW, If you move to the small city where his parents live you will regret it. You will slowly resent him over time. You will also come to think of him as a selfish person. He is reluctant to stick with your original plan because he doesn’t want to do it. He wants what he wants. This is a sign of selfishness in a relationship. You put your goals on hold to be with him, but now he doesn’t want to move for you. I know how these things eat away at you over time because I have been with my husband for 24 years, and it is very important to be equal in the relationship and compromise for each other. It’s his turn to compromise and he doesn’t want to…he is showing you his true self.
Agree with everyone else. The details of his disorder are good background, but really it doesn’t matter why he behaves the way he does. It still affects you the same way whether he’s just selfish or has a disorder or a mix of the two. It still means you aren’t getting the life you want for yourself.
Some people are the kind of people who are happy to take care of others. Who don’t have much of a plan for themselves and are happy to follow someone else’s. That’s what a guy like this needs. Not someone who wants the normal give-and-take that most relationships require. It sounds like he’s very willing to take, as long as he only has to give what he’s comfortable with. That’s not fair to you. Go back to school and start your life on your own terms. Find someone who’s happy to change to fit your life as much as you change to fit his. There are plenty of guys with hearts of gold who don’t expect you to make huge sacrifices while giving nothing in return.
And again, I’ll point out that he was able to overcome his condition when it was for something that’s important to him. He left his parents and went to a whole new city. He CAN do it. He just doesn’t want to.
At this point I’m sure you’ve figured out what you need to do, but I have to add something — if you stick together, you’d be setting yourself up for a lifetime of troubles. His needs would always come first.
Savings? No, need to spend it on a more expensive apartment. And maybe he does, because of his disorder. But he also denies he has a problem (a temper tantrum because dinner was late? He thinks that’s okay?) and that means he’ll never get help for it, and you’ll always be tiptoeing around his needs. He loves having you around, but that doesn’t mean he loves you. You haven’t ever come first to him.
If you leave him, you’re not missing out on “the one.” There’s never just one, and in any case you deserve someone who loves you.
When someone wants something they will move mountains to make it happen. When they don’t want to do something they make multiple excuses and drag their feet. Your bf is creating roadblocks. He doesn’t want to move and he likely never will.
Is this unfair? Absolutely! But regardless of how fair it is or not your two options at the moment are to either leave it to continue being the one doing all the heavy lifting in your relationship.
You deserve an equal partner.
Let this be a life lesson. Never put your dreams on hold for someone else. No one else will care about your schooling and dreams as much as you. If a relationship requires you to step away from what is important to you it is not the right relationship for you.
Also…
He has done you a huge favour. He has shown his true colours. You now know you can’t trust his promises. You also know he will never be an equal partner. This is useful information! It will help you get over him faster.Just because he doesn’t want to end things doesn’t mean that you can’t do it. You’re allowed to break up with him. You have that power. You’re so deeply in the habit of accommodating him that you’ve forgotten you have the right to walk away, with or without his ok. He does not have the right to keep you in his pocket as a back up. You’ve been together for way too long now for him to be keeping you in audition mode. You are allowed to stop trying so hard. You are allowed to walk away.
And, sidenote – maybe it’s a matter of degree, but every single one of his worries (with the exception of your weight which is a whole other can of worms) is TOTALLY NORMAL. Many, many, people have those exact same questions about relationships but dive in anyway because the relationship is worth the risk. He’s telling you you’re not worth the risk.
WTF LW. After all you’ve sacrificed for this relationship and all of his debilitating mental peculiarities you’ve put up with, he can’t accept you as you are — you’re too fat for him. He doesn’t know whether he will continue to love you as you are. It’s serious enough that he’s not willing to risk his half of a year’s rent for the relationship, because he is afraid it won’t last a year. That’s the true state of your relationship, even after you have been living it totally on his terms — he has enough question whether or not he can tolerate your weight and your personal eating/exercise habits that he threw this in your face. That is a gut check. If you have any sense of self=respect, you MOA.
Also, graduate school is not work life. Work life is not flexible and you can’t demand to stick to a fixed daily schedule with all your rituals carried out at a specific time. You don’t get to choose an office that suits you. In other words, if you err really big and choose to stay with this guy, your education is VITAL, because you cannot count on this guy as the primary earner for your family. You may end up having to be the sole support of your family. I’ve known guys, with fewer quirks than your guy, who ended up simply being unable to work for anybody else, be it a corporation or a friend they formed a business partnership with. Had to be lone ducks. That sort of thing will reduce your earning power, maybe a lot.
LW, you need to take back your power. You do have it, you know – the power to break up with him. The power to make the decision to leave and go back to school because YOU want to. You don’t have to wait around for him to drag his feet and make those decisions for you. Every update you posted is that much more evidence that you need to MOA. You have no obligation to stay with him. Don’t fall for the sunk cost fallacy. You don’t have to deal with bullshit because he has a disorder. If someone has a disorder (for which they refuse to get treatment) that causes them to punch me in the face every day at noon, I may refrain from punching them back because I know it’s the result of the disorder, but I’m still gonna GTFO of there and find someone who DOESN’T have an untreated disorder that causes them to punch me in the face every day.
Oh honey, no. The updates only make it clearer that this relationship is over. You’ve already sacrificed so much to accommodate the disability he doesn’t even believe he has. Frankly, for someone with such huge issues to deny that he has them says a lot about his character: he’s a selfish coward who can’t deal with his own shit. I know you’re probably hoping that there’s a way to change that. Maybe if he could just admit it? Get some help? No. That is not your responsibility, nor would it change the fact that he holds you in such low regard that he’d ask you to give up YOUR EDUCATION and your youth so that he never has to make the smallest compromise. I don’t care WHAT disability he has, that is just flat out douchebag behavior. Is this the life you want? Always giving and never getting anything back for it? The person you need to be giving to is yourself. Leave. Go back to school and reclaim respect for yourself. Do this and you will one day be amazed that you once settled for this kind of treatment.
