There’s a lot I could say here, so if you want the full story feel free to dm me.
tldr; Long history of my boyfriend waiting to deal with important issues until they become emergencies, and lying to me about them for months. Want to help him but not enable him or allow him to self sabotage. Need advice. Not sure how to rebuild trust if he can’t be honest about essential things.
So my boyfriend and I are wrapping up our third semester of college this week. We both are on scholarship advisory, meaning we have to both have a 3.0 GPA and pass 67% of our classes for the fall and spring combined. I am on it because I withdrew from multiple classes last fall due to physical/mental health problems. I got my shit together, and now I have all A’s and am 75% done with my degree, on track to start my master’s next fall.
He has changed his degree three times, has a GPA of 1.12 or something close. He also has some mental health struggles and has medication, but doesn’t see a doctor or therapist or regularly take it. He was in a support group, but with finals he has quit going to that as well. He has tried and had difficulty getting appointments, but gives up. Admittedly it’s not easy where we live, but I *know* that it’s possible because I did it and have attempted to walk him through it many times.
In fact, I have tried endlessly to help him make appointments, degree plans, calendars/planners, find jobs, pick classes, save his scholarship, look at other options. He always acts like everything is fine until his whole world is ending, and then (and ONLY then) he’ll enthusiastically take my advice. Or so I’ll think. I think he may be self sabotaging, but I’m not sure why. It always seems like things are going OK, he’ll INSIST that they’re better, and come to find out in reality everything had been falling apart just as I was getting comfortable again. I’m tired and not sure what to do.
We have been together for over a year now, and continuously had issues with him being honest with me. I’ve emphasized that the grades thing was a non-negotiable, and that I would support him in whatever path he chose but that he had to be honest. I asked him multiple times this week how his grades are, and he has been studying hard and taking his finals seriously. Assures me that they’re good. I look at his grades while he’s asleep tonight (wrong I know, but I had a bad feeling which has served me well in the past) and lo and behold he’s failing everything but one class, which he has a C- in. At this rate he’s guaranteed to lose his scholarship.
He has been talking for a good bit now about wanting to start flight school, but refuses to actually follow thorough with research or figuring out how to finance it, or breaking the idea to his parents. I don’t know how him failing out of college with no job or plan helps him with that. What really troubles me more than the lack of direction or motivation with school, is the inaction and the hiding it. If he wants to drop out that’s fine, but he has no plan. He won’t even be honest with me, according to him (in similar past instances) because he is ashamed.
How do I help him without enabling him? Is allowing him to stay with me and eat my food without contributing to groceries generous or should I show some tough love? He helps me a lot by providing transportation, to be fair.
We often discuss our future long term and he is supposed to be meeting my family this Christmas. I love him to death and can’t imagine my life without him, but this is really growing to be something I can’t be satisfied with. How should I address it with him? He set a firm boundary that we can’t be long distance, but won’t be forthcoming with me about dropping out of college and potentially moving back home, 10 hours away. It really affects me and he can’t seem to do anything more than say it stresses him out and he’s sorry.
7 comments
You said him lying to you about his grades was a non-negotiable. Did you mean that or not? Because if you meant that, then the relationship is over. I am concerned about the lying and such, but I am also deeply concerned about him being on a medication he does not regularly take. Depending on the medication, that could be worse than not being on it at all. But it definitely isn’t good to take it not as directed without a really good reason. Why doesn’t he take his medication as directed? Not doing so would probably have been a deal-breaker for me. That is such a small thing to do to try to fix a problem, that if he won’t even do that, then it would make it seem like he really isn’t trying. And if he can’t even do that, then I’d consider him too disabled to be in a relationship of equals, and getting into a caretaker-caretakee relationship is not to be done lightly.
Bruh, dude is acting like Scott Peterson. Run!
It sounds like your boyfriend is going through a difficult time and is struggling to be honest with you about it. It’s understandable that you feel hurt and frustrated by his behavior, but it’s important to approach the situation with empathy and understanding. It’s possible that his lying and inaction are a result of his mental health struggles, and it’s important for him to seek help in addressing those issues.
As for how to approach the situation, it’s important to communicate openly and honestly with your boyfriend. Let him know that you care about him and want to support him, but that his behavior is causing problems in the relationship. Encourage him to be honest with you and to seek help for his mental health struggles. Offer to help him make appointments with doctors and therapists, and to assist him in developing a plan for his future.
It’s also important to set boundaries in the relationship. If his behavior continues and he is unwilling to seek help, it may be necessary to consider ending the relationship. You deserve to be with someone who is honest and communicative, and who is willing to take responsibility for their actions.
Let him fail and pay his own way. Basically be prepared to break up over this
>Long history of my boyfriend waiting to deal with important issues until they become emergencies, and lying to me about them for months.
You’re 20, why are you wasting your time on this? Seriously now. I understand he’s struggling but you’re way too young to hitch yourself to this mess of a carriage that can derail your life. You can’t be his therapist or mother, and at 20 it’s bonkers to be worried about how to help your lying and flakey bf pass his classes.
You can’t force him to get help. You can’t waste your precious time or mental energy, that you aren’t getting back, on martyring yourself for someone else. You’ve given him many, _many_ more chances than he deserved, and he failed them all. In the end it doesn’t matter why, because the end result is the same: you’re frustrated and can’t intervene, with even more stress to deal with from his lies and needing to deal with their consequences.
You shouldn’t be giving any more love, tough or otherwise. Nor more time, money, concessions or effort, because he’s taken all of them and done nothing to bring positivity to this relationship — or if he did, the negatives _far_ outweigh anything he ever contributed.
Again: you are too young to waste your life like this. Don’t let guilt and pity override your common sense.
Girl – there’s nothing good happening here for you. Clearly you are super strong and well done on getting your shit together.
That does not mean he is capable of the same and that does not mean you should help him.
The dude is showing you who he is consistently – pls dont invest in the future version of him that has never even be there so far.
As someone who has ADHD this does sound very familiar to me, however I thrive on pressure (even if slacking is wrong) but I was able to keep my GPA around 3.4.
I have a feeling it would be worth looking into it, especially if he really did try to study and put effort and still keeps failing. For people like us it is truly hard to stay focused, have any kind of time management/feeling of it and procrastination is a daily base thing unless we‘re super passionate or interested that triggers the hyperfocus. It often leads to last minute situations where everything breaks apart like a card house. Undiagnosed it can cause a lot of mental health issues as one can just not fit into a functioning system as our brains work differently and we feel „odd/misplaced“. I would really suggest to him to have an emergency meeting with a therapist and let himself check for ADHD. I was diagnosed almost at the end of my studies but I always felt my efforts I sometimes put into subjects never paid off.
Keep in mind that he pretty much pressures himself the most and is already hard on himself, you to pressure him about potential future version of him won’t work and will make him cave and lie. If you want to help him go with him to an appointment and perhaps explain like in this post how you perceive it and how he sees it from his perspective. Try to find the root problem that’s causing him to fail. Best of luck!