I had posted this in relationship advice but it’s not posting due to me being a new account, I believe. I really just want some advice or what some people would do.
I’ve been with my boyfriend of three years, and we had lived together prior for a year lease. (Moved in after the first year of being together, and recently I moved to a different state.)
I had this amazing opportunity for college and my dream career that I couldn’t pass up. I was from Texas, and moved to the state we had met for what was supposed to be temp, but ended up falling in love with him and the west coast. A few months ago, I had gotten approached for some opportunities that would’ve seemed crazy of me to disregard. I’ve been living by myself for four months here.
He’s amazing to me, and I really love him. He had no disagreements and gave no pressure about moving down there to finish up college and do an internship. He supports me in every way.
Here’s the thing, it seems like I’m the only one that’s hurt about the distance. We don’t really talk anymore either, and he’s always been terrible at communicating over text. Our phone calls are only initiated when I strike up conversations about anything and everything.
I’ve talked to him about this twice already, and he says he would rather have one phone call per week that’s hours on end versus meaningless conversation daily. We tried that for about two weeks, and it just was kind of the same. He gives me no effort now.
He’s not affectionate with me anymore either, in the manner of telling me he loves me. He hasn’t once said he misses me, and he said that thinks it’s good we’re having space. I just feel a bit upset that I don’t feel loved or wanted anymore, despite me communicating that. He says that he would never move to where I was because he loves his job. Which is great, his job pays wells. I had no issue with that. But as I came back to Texas, I’d like to stay here. He said he would only consider moving if his job went remote, but it won’t for years.
As much as I love him, I’m just having a really difficult time with someone not there I’m supposed to be dating. I’m happy in every single other department though. I wouldn’t say I’m needy, but I did enjoy coming home to him and kissing him. I miss physical affection from him, and affection in general from him.
1 comment
I will state here that I have the same massive problem with long distance relationships and generally, doing relationships over text. I just can’t do daily texts, I rather message when I have something interesting to share (which isn’t a lot of the time).
We’re “terrible” at communicating over text because we _hate_ communicating over text. There is no intrigue, every word you say can be easily misinterpreted (just yesterday I massively offended someone by text with something I could have fixed in .2 seconds offline) if you don’t craft your messages well. And very, very few people are good at (online) prose. We call them writers.
The reason for the ‘one phonecall a week’ is because phone calls are generally much more expressive than text and actually can mean catching up, but even once a week can seem like a very short time if you’ve just been working and playing videogames all week and have nothing new to share. After all, regular ‘how are you’ talk is just _boring_, honestly.
Is this a reason to break up? Maybe.
Are your feelings valid? Hell yes!
Are his feelings of not wanting constant meaningless (to him) talk valid? Also yes!
My suggestion is, find friends to hang with locally, hobbies, stuff that isn’t him. That will dramatically reduce what you are feeling and reduce the pressure on both of you to find things to talk about. Maybe suggest the same to him.
It will make every conversation you do have, much more meaningful and reduce your dependency on each other for basic communication.