I (25F) have been with my boyfriend (32M) for 5 years. He’s kind, supportive, and my best friend, but over time I’ve become exhausted by carrying almost all the responsibility in our relationship.
We’ve lived together for 4 years, and I do nearly everything around the house while also working full time. He helps, but usually only after repeated reminders. Most of his free time goes into gaming and relaxing, and I feel like once he became comfortable in the relationship, he stopped putting in effort.
I’ve tried communicating calmly, encouraging him, giving him space, and even spending 6 months abroad hoping he’d focus on personal growth. Very little changed.
The biggest crack in my trust happened when he went to Thailand for kitesurfing and met another girl. He admitted they flirted and danced together, and I later found messages where he asked to see her again while I was asleep. He claimed it wasn’t serious, but it hurt that he hid it from me.
To be fair, earlier in the relationship I also became emotionally attached to a coworker because I felt emotionally neglected. Nothing physical happened, and I told my boyfriend immediately.
The problem is that my boyfriend only changes when he thinks he might lose me. He improves temporarily, then falls back into the same behavior.
I love him deeply and can’t imagine life without him, but I’m also scared of building a future where I feel emotionally alone and responsible for everything.
That hit harder ,but maybe eventually he will . He is really loving ,caring and supportive person ,but not attentive and trying enough. This is the reason that I cannot make a desicion ,because it is really hard to find person like him
Have you been looking the last five years, how do you know there’s no one better? If he was really caring, loving, and supportive he’d help out not leave it all on you.
A supportive person provides support. If he’s not helping around the house while you’re working full time, he’s not being physically supportive. If he’s flirting with other girls and trying to arrange secret meet-ups, it sounds like he’s not emotionally supportive, either.
A friend of mine is going through the same thing right now. She’d been with her husband since high school, and over the course of twenty years, she fell into a pattern of working full-time, cooking, and cleaning so that her husband had time to relax and play games. She wasn’t happy, but thought he was a good guy and didn’t want to blow everything up. A few weeks ago, he told her he wanted a divorce and promptly moved in with his new girlfriend. She was an absolute mess for a couple of weeks, and he’s become a mask-off villain now that he’s not pretending he needs to fix things. But she’s realized how imbalanced their relationship was and how much better off she is now.
Loving and caring but willing to emotionally cheat?