I (23F) struggle with seeing my partner (20M) as reliable

Hi all! I am struggling a lot with a specific issue:

I (F23) love my partner (M20) and want to keep making the relationship work. However, I have a hard time seeing my partner as reliable and therefore frequently doubt his ability to achieve the lofty goals he sets. This is bad, because when he share goals he’s excited for I can’t be excited and supportive the way I wish I can.

I just graduated and have a full time job lined up. I take pride in the work I put in the past four years in looking for internships, etc, since I don’t naturally think I have the best work ethic so I’m always looking for tricks/emotional regulation techniques/etc in order to compensate for that. I also really value stability/predictability due to anxiety around uncertainty.

For my partner, the past year he’s switched majors many times, from math-computer science to cognitive science to psychology to literature back to cognitive science.

He is also often late to things thanks to time-blindness, and says he does not like to plan. He also like to go out a lot and experience new things, sometimes even while he still has a lot of work waiting for him at home (he says it sometimes helps give him motivation). He is okay with cramming all his work in at once. Versus I prefer to do things little by little each day.

I helped him get into a research lab I used to be a part of. He has joined projects, but I have seen some of his work and am afraid that perhaps he is not being proactive enough even though I know he is truly trying his best. His work is not *bad*, it is good, but there are some mistakes/decisions in the project that seem very obvious to me, even back when I did not have background in this field. (We both are pursuing Product Design in the tech industry.).

As someone who grew up in an Asian American family, I feel very anxious without a sense of stability. And in a partner I want to feel that they are competent, reliable, and I can trust their decision making. Like a good partner in a group project — someone, who though may not know *everything*, I can trust that we can figure it out together and they’ll get their work done in time steadily.

He says that he just has a different way of doing things. And part of me wonders if I am just being too judgmental about a different approach to life and work (perhaps he has ADHD?) and I should be more patient and wait for results (I.e.: if he secures an internship). He also says he is very ambitious and I guiltily think, “But you have not accomplished that much…” (I know it’s mean and judgmental, and I want to know how to get rid of these feelings). I know he is trying the best way he knows how.

But I wonder if I am being hypocritical.

After all, though I do plan, and I take pride in how proactive I can be at work, I also have days where I don’t follow the plan exactly. And I am not a workaholic working around the clock either. It’s partly that I think I do not naturally have a good work ethic that I want someone with at *least* my current amount of work ethic. Do I have unrealistic standards?

And he is not getting *terrible* results. He found a part time job this summer from the research lab, he generally gets alright grades (and my own grades weren’t all straight As either).

I am open to the possibility that his methods work despite them being completely counterintuitive to what I think I *know* to be true (I.e.: I believe motivation follows action, planning is important, self-learning counts for a lot, procrastination is an emotional regulation problem, and showing up everyday is important). This involves waiting to see if he manages to find an internship (which, even if he doesn’t find one, I know is not completely within his control). However, in the meantime, he will likely want to tell me about work/career ideas/goals he is thinking of, and I want to be supportive, but deep down I feel a lot of worry and doubt. It’s different if he tells me about actions he’s *already* taken; I feel very supportive of those. I feel anxious when he shares abstract ideas / goals since I start to wonder, “Are you willing to put in the blood, sweat, and tears to get there?” since he’s switched plans several times. But maybe that’s my tendency to look at failure / worst case possibility first, and therefore feel anxious about the whole process.

TL;DR: I want to be supportive of my boyfriend in his career ideas/goals, but the way he wants to work runs counter to everything I’ve been taught about how to succeed and my own ways I’ve succeeded. When he tells me his goals, how can I honestly be supportive? How do I change my mindset?