My boyfriend(20M) and I(20F) have been together for almost a year in a monogamous relationship and things have been good for the most part. We are a pretty classic ‘best friends to lovers’ pair and I’ve been close with him for 5+ years. We kind of fell into a romantic relationship. We caught feelings at the same time, both in a stable place in life, and the timing just happened to be right. Unfortunately, there is one problem we can’t seem to overcome.
I’ll provide some history for context so I can explain where this issue is coming from. I have had relationships before with men/woman/others that extend from committed relationships, to flings, to hook-ups. I’m a huge advocate for open communication and in retrospect feel like all my romantic/sexual involvements have been really healthy with clear boundaries. Aside from another long term boyfriend most of my relationships have been open/poly/non-exclusive, but being committed to one person has never been hard or difficult and in situations where I have been the problem, I have either tried to work through it or broken it off.
I am my boyfriend’s first everything. He had never even been on a date before our relationship. We both have acknowledged this huge gap in experience, but he is very insecure about it and no matter what I do, nothing has been reassuring for him.
Right off the bat, we talked about expectations/communication/boundaries. It was especially important considering he’d been with me through most of my aforementioned relationships and I was worried he would feel pressured to accept or compromise on things he was uncomfortable with knowing my past involvement with non-monogamous relationships and people of other genders.
He has always been a very relaxed, ‘go-with-the-flow’ person, but he can be hard to read because of it. He’ll usually never bring up a problem on his own, so I regularly check in to see how he is feeling. The general, consistent issue is that he feels like he is lacking or can’t keep up with the way I handle our relationship. Despite expressing to him that I can adapt to his needs, he insists that he just needs time to get used to it, but we are coming up on a year and this insecurity regularly makes our minor disagreements affect him disproportionately.
Whenever he feels annoyed or angry, my patience and willingness to work it out makes him feel guilty later. Even though I reassure him that its okay and he doesn’t always have to be ready to meet me where I’m at, nothing seems to help him.
I’m really worried that as things between us become more serious, this problem will only increase. This is the man I want to be with for the rest of my life, but no matter how slow we take things and how many times I try to address this, I always end up accidentally making him feel worse. I have tried to encourage him to talk to other people (his family, close friends, ect.) and find guidance from someone other than his girlfriend, and I have even tried laying off and letting him work it out himself. Nothing helps and all my actions to help aid in making him feel inadequate.
How do I improve this situation? What am I missing? I feel like I’m stuck and like I’m hurting my boyfriend just by being with him.
1 comment
How does he feel about therapy? Because it sounds like you’ve done all the right things to try to help him, but sounds like his insecurities are deeper and require a bit of professional help, or he’ll never be able to have a healthy relationship with anyone.