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 thatās 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, itās me doing the talking. He responds to my texts maybe 2-3 hours later which usually wouldnāt be an issue but iāve been with this man for 3 years and he was NEVER like this. He told me that sometimes he just doesnāt 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 donāt talk much and we donāt go outside either because he doesnāt 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 whatās wrong but there is never anything wrong. He doesnāt 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 doesnāt 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 didnāt even get me a small cake or a muffin, nothing. He also, and i know this doesnāt 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 didnāt 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 wasnāt 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 didnāt call him when i got home and didnāt want to speak to him after. I was hurt, because i really was struggling and i donāt ask for help often but he wasnāt there even though i know he was on his phone because i kept seeing his reposts.
I really donāt 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 canāt help it but i just donāt understand. He talks to other friends but having a conversation with me is too much for him.
Does this sound like he doesnāt 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 isnāt available or stressed out over something, that itās 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 doesnāt know what changed. I promise i tried to talk to him but he gives me nothing to work with. He always just doesnāt know.
I understand that sometimes people want to scroll on tiktok and donāt feel like responding when itās not that important. Sometimes itās 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 iād comfort him and the other way around. I was never dissatisfied with what he gave during an emotional time.
I hope I donāt lean into too much opinion, but I feel like expectations of outreach donāt 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, thatās 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 isnāt 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 thatās 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 didnāt have anything to do with me asking my friend for help