Hello!
Boyfriend and I have been in a relationship for 3 years in December. We live 1 hour and 30 minutes apart and meet as often as we can, usually that‘s once or twice a week.
My boyfriend has changed a lot this year and it has sent me down a spiral. We barely talk, even if he is home all day. When we do talk, it‘s me doing the talking. He responds to my texts maybe 2-3 hours later which usually wouldn‘t be an issue but i‘ve been with this man for 3 years and he was NEVER like this. He told me that sometimes he just doesn’t feel like responding to me anymore, which again i understand but with everything else it just bugs me. The last time we spent quality time together was maybe a month ago? when we meet we don‘t talk much and we don‘t go outside either because he doesn‘t feel like it. I feel used and i feel like my emotional needs are not being met. I asked him many times if he is okay and what‘s wrong but there is never anything wrong. He doesn‘t seem depressed either. He seems okay with all of this. I am very confused and i communicated my confusion so many times, i feel like my tongue will fall off if i do it again. When we do go outside or when we are in the car, i want to use that opportunity to talk to him because i feel so disconnected from him but he always listens to loud music in his earbuds and it makes me feel like he doesn‘t really want to speak to me anymore. It was my birthday a while back and he had nothing planned, which made me really sad because i planned so much for him. He didn‘t even get me a small cake or a muffin, nothing. He also, and i know this doesn‘t matter but it just upset me, he makes 4x as much money as me because i am a college student with a part-time job and he works full time. I got him a gift over 150 bucks and his gift was maybe 30 max? not even what i wanted and he didn‘t have it ready on my birthday.
2 weeks ago we had an argument. I was at Uni and i had a terrible day and was crying on the train back home and he wasn‘t responding to me the whole day, so i texted my friend and she comforted me and offered to watch a movie online together when i am home. So i did that. My boyfriend was upset that i didn‘t call him when i got home and didn‘t want to speak to him after. I was hurt, because i really was struggling and i don‘t ask for help often but he wasn‘t there even though i know he was on his phone because i kept seeing his reposts.
I really don‘t know what to do anymore. When i try to communicate he really seems like there is no issue at all and he is okay with not speaking to me. He also told me that he is tired from work and can‘t help it but i just don‘t understand. He talks to other friends but having a conversation with me is too much for him.
Does this sound like he doesn‘t love me anymore?
Does he acknowledge that something is different between you than before?
What exactly do you understand and why do you understand?
Did you and him talk about emotional care, like how when one isn’t available or stressed out over something, that it’s OK to meet your emotional needs with other people like friends or so? Or what everyone would want or give in an emotional time?
He said a few months ago that he doesn‘t know what changed. I promise i tried to talk to him but he gives me nothing to work with. He always just doesn‘t know.
I understand that sometimes people want to scroll on tiktok and don‘t feel like responding when it‘s not that important. Sometimes it‘s not convenient to text back and i understand.
We never talked about anything like that. We also never really had an issue like this. When he needed emotional support i‘d comfort him and the other way around. I was never dissatisfied with what he gave during an emotional time.
I hope I don’t lean into too much opinion, but I feel like expectations of outreach don’t work too well just one-sided, so for example if he expects outreach from you, but you do not get to have the same expectation or face anger from him, that’s not based on equal standing.
Labour sometimes creates emptiness (nothing to talk about, head empty) or puts stress into free time, but I feel like that isn’t the case here, right?
When you needed emotional support though, you asked your friend for help naturally, so why do you think was he upset at that time?
probably because he was expecting me to text and call him when i got home because that‘s what we have been doing since forever. He stopped, i continued and that day i just really did not want to speak to him after he had ignored me like that for hours. It probably didn‘t have anything to do with me asking my friend for help