Hi everyone, i just want an advice from experts 🙂 hope you could share some thoughts..So I’ve been in a secret relationship with my current boyfriend for 11 yrs now. We haven’t made it official to the public, to our friends and family just because we’re afraid to be bashed and be judged not until 2019 we had the courage to introduce each other to our family but my side didn’t like him because of the nature of his job. They didn’t want us to be together however we still continued our relationship and promised that he’ll get a better job. Until now, nothing happened. He’s still in his job and not doing anything to improve himself. We had petty fights recently because of his jealousy and insecurity with my friends (boys) but I assured him that there’s nothing going on. We even lived together for a year. Now I want to break up with him but im hesitant because I feel like everything will be put into waste if I did that. Im also not sure if I still love him or just trying to save what’s left in our relationship. what should I do?
3 comments
How long have you been thinking about Breaking up?
I was in a similar situation in my last relationship. The part where you feel like you aren’t sure if you love him or if you’re just trying to salvage whatevers left because if all the time you’ve invested with him. And let me tell you, you probably aren’t in love with him anymore. Not the way you were in the begining. There may always be love there FOR him, but if you’re questioning yourself about these things then you are most likely not feeling like you love him and are in love with him. After being with someone for that long it’s easy to fall out of love and lose that intimacy that comes with being in love with your partner. If he isn’t doing anything to better himself and you’re easily getting into petty and meaningless fights or arguments over things that really won’t affect you in the long run, it sounds like you just want healthy change and he isn’t looking to change a single thing due to becoming comfortable in his routines. Making a big ir drastic change to that would cause anxieties, or potentially stress and people like that often find it’s just easier to get lazy and stay in their same old habits to avoid dealing with all of that. Even if it means they aren’t going to do better for the self or make improvements to benefit themself or both of you sharing a life together. If you want to break up, it’s likely because that love you had isn’t the same anymore and it was sufficient to you for a time but you’re priorities and your ambitions and goals change over time, and sometimes even become bigger than your partner can handle or bigger than what your partner is willing to make sacrifices, changes or compromises for, even small ones. Seems like it’s time for you to leave and move on, and nothing says you can’t separate in good terms with eachother. How he reacts to the breakup is a reflection of him, not you, remember that. He may be inclined to say things like “I’ll change, or ill get a better job or do x,y,z to make it work/make you happy” but 9 times out of 10 it’s a way to guilt you into staying because you leaving would also uproot their routine that they’ve become used to for all those years. So it isn’t your responsibility to keep them from feeling uncomfortable or to feel guilty if that’s how it affects them or makes them feel. That means that they’ve become codependent on you, which is unhealthy on its own. All of these are hypothetical facts and things that could happen, obviously you will know best how things will go or what will happen as it’s your relationship. But at the end of the day you deserve to spend your like and give your time to someone who you feel has equally as much ambition to always be or do better for their life and keep that love alive by always changing things up. And making sacrifices or adapting to changes is part of a healthy relationship. So just my thoughts and opinions, but I would leave if it were me. I spent almost 7 years with someone and it was a similar situation and the change never happenedvand he never ended up wanting or being able to give me the things I wanted , and was never able to make healthy positive changes for himself or for us, it was only until well after we separated that he realized he couldn’t get by forever with the way he was doing things in his life and then he started working in making beneficial changes. Hope this helps
Figure out whether he is fixable. If he responds to training, then he might be subject to improvement. If he does not show capacity to learn and change, then move on.
If you detect that he can learn and change, don’t just let him be “who he is”, guide him along a path to improvement.