My (23m) boyfriend (20m) is to overwhelmed to have serious discussions, and it’s causing me to lose feelings

We’ve been together for 1 1/2 years now, and I feel like it’s naturally the time where the honeymoon phase has ended, and while the affection and excitement doesn’t have to stop, it is also time to start seriously considering what the future will look like, and if we are compatible in that manner moving forward. We’re both in college locally, but he has started to look at transferring to a university in another city, and I’ve thought about the same, so I feel like that has made it extra important to me that we start to have more serious discussions.

While we have worked through a very considerable amount of problems in our relationship, very effectively, it is like pulling teeth to have most serious discussions. My boyfriend has a very low tolerance for conflict, and gets emotionally overwhelmed easily, which I totally respect but it is starting to majorly effect our relationship.

He will act passive-aggressively towards me, going silent, stomping around, and I have to drag out of him what is wrong, which is exhausting, because that isn’t my job, and I have told him this. Further, whenever I bring up serious discussions, about things I’m not happy with, or possible plans, or even want to just sit down and try and find a better way to communicate, he gets super tense and silent and shuts down, and after we have the conversation he needs a week to recover. There didn’t seem to be a problem with in the beginning, but now when we’re going through a rough patch, the involves a very significant amount of serious conversations I find myself just having to bottle things up all the time.

Everytime I bring up and issue he reminds me that he is very busy with his school, and issues he trying to smooth over with his family, which I do respect, but I do the same amount of school as him, and work, and at the same time hold the weight of all the discussions we aren’t having but also emotional support him, and I’m an orphan so I don’t have family to lean on. I have to admit this does make me resentful because he doesn’t have to work, and he has people that take care of him, and I don’t. I don’t expect special treatment but when I go to school for 6 hours and work for 5, then go make time to visit him after my shift and he gets upset because I want to talk about something that is upsetting me, and he is to tired. Yea. I feel irritated.

I want to acknowledge that everyone’s threshold for things is different, that his life is as overwhelming to him, as my life is to me, but it’s so difficult to have a partner just refuse to share the emotional workload with you so consistently.

I know that I’m feeling resentful, I’ve just completely burnt out, I haven’t seen him in 2 weeks, I don’t have the energy to talk to him or text him because unless I can talk about what is bothering me, I just don’t have anything to say to him, I can’t physically force myself to make conversation anymore.

And whenever we do talk he just talks about how busy he is, and how overwhelmed he is with school, and it makes me want to scream. He called me last night because sometimes he can’t sleep without having me on the phone, I’ve been getting nauseous a lot lately because of a chronic health issue I have, I started to feel this while we were on the phone and was really struggling to not throw up, and he asked if it would be wrong of him to go to sleep because he had to be up early. The question itself pissed me off, because even if it was reasonable for him to want to get some sleep, it just brought back those feelings of not being cared for, and of dealing with everything by myself and being overwhelmed, and I just muted myself to cry.

I love him, I know that I do, I care about him and I don’t want to hurt him, I just literally can’t even stand to text him back because I just feel angry, he texted me that he misses me and I don’t know what to say because I don’t even feel that right now. Suddenly all the warm and cozy feelings have been sucked out of me, I just feel cold and shutdown, I know that this is probably just a response to my overwhelm and that it isn’t the truth of how I feel deep down. I seriously cannot stand another day of this, I am so stressed out, and I just wish I could talk to him but I think if I try to do that and he brushes me off again that I’m going to explode.

And whenever we do talk he just talks about how busy he is, and how overwhelmed he is with school, and it makes me want to scream. He called me last night because sometimes he can’t sleep without having me on the phone, I’ve been getting nauseous a lot lately because of a chronic health issue I have, I started to feel this while we were on the phone and was really struggling to not throw up, and he asked if it would be wrong of him to go to sleep because he had to be up early. The question itself pissed me off, because even if it was reasonable for him to want to get some sleep, it just brought back those feelings of not being cared for, and of dealing with everything by myself and being overwhelmed, and I just muted myself to cry.

I love him, I know that I do, I care about him and I don’t want to hurt him, I just literally can’t even stand to text him back because I just feel angry, he texted me that he misses me and I don’t know what to say because I don’t even feel that right now. Suddenly all the warm and cozy feelings have been sucked out of me, I just feel cold and shutdown, I know that this is probably just a response to my overwhelm and that it isn’t the truth of how I feel deep down. I seriously cannot stand another day of this, I am so stressed out, and I just wish I could talk to him but I think if I try to do that and he brushes me off again that I’m going to explode.

TL;DR: everytime I try and bring up a serious conversation about the future, or our relationship with him boyfriend he shuts down, and tells me he is too busy/overwhelmed to deal with it