I’m sorry if this comes out scrambled as the feelings I have in this situation are so complex and my words are so much better spoken then written. Me and my boyfriend have been together since we were both 16 so about 2 and a half years. I myself am pretty mature for my age, but he’s about average. He is great and his intention is so good, the problem just comes to his execution.
A lot of my issues come from the fact that I simply don’t feel loved. I will tell him exactly what I want him to do, and I will feel like he’s just brushing it off or he will do it for a week and then come up with excuses for why he can’t. A big example of this is at the beginning of our relationship, for about 7 months he never bought me flowers despite me asking and then finally when I felt so drained after asking so much and always bringing it up, and I was considering leaving, he bought me some. I promised myself I wouldn’t make a fool out of myself like that again and ask for attention, but it’s honestly been downhill from there. After the flower incident, I could see that he was trying to ‘love’ me more the way I want to be loved- I told him my love languages were acts of service, quality time, and gift giving, but his progress was just really slow. Like when I asked him to do more, I thought he would do more right away, not a little more only a little bit of the time.
After the flower incident, there were much more. Literally for the following 6 months after that I felt like I was just constantly nagging telling him that he wasn’t doing enough, not because I wanted to make him feel bad, but because that’s how I felt. Countless times I’ve felt like I was settling, but he keeps promising that he’ll try and get better. My biggest foe is the fact that I feel like his mom. I feel like I’m teaching him to love me- which I know is normal but with every piece of information I give him I feel like he never gets it. I give him ideas on what he can do for me, and it’s like he doesn’t spend any time even thinking about it. He’s one of the types of people that doesn’t think in their free time- his mind is just empty most of the time, and at this point I don’t know if I can deal with it because he really just does not think things through all the way. I know it’s a lack of maturity and it makes sense considering our ages, but am I expecting too much out of him? I know other guys our age who are willing to do more and put in more effort and thought into their relationships, so why is this such a big thing for him?
Another big thing is that to soothe my mind he lies a lot. Not about anything scandalous, but he’ll lie about things like his grades being good when he knows that I want him to be focusing on school. Then a couple weeks later, when I’ve felt disconnected enough from that lie, he’ll bring it up in a joking manner and try to make me laugh about it, knowing that it’s been long enough so I’ll be like ‘whatever’.
The latest big thing I’ve been nagging about is him planning dates for me. He barely works so he doesn’t have any money and complains about it, but I told him it’s ok he can show his love through other ways, like planning dates, but even that is going wrong. I told him everything he was supposed to do basically step-by-step and he still doesn’t get it. He won’t let me know the times he wants to pick me up or anything, and just half asses ( I feel like it’s half assed ) the plans and deals with most of it by the time we’re already there. It’s so tiring especially since I have to teach him all of it, I just feel like his mother.
I feel like it’s gone on for too long and don’t want to stay if the truth is that he will never really try for me. The issue is he’s such a good person with such a good heart, it just feels like he doesn’t use his brain when it comes to me. I really don’t want to break up with him, but I don’t know what else I can do to make him understand what I want. I try to communicate all the time, and have told him all of this several times, but it feels like he doesn’t get it/if he does he doesn’t execute it and it’s just so draining. What do I do?