This is going to be a long post, I want to make sure I include as many details as possible so anyone reading can understand the story as best as possible.
I (28, female) met my current boyfriend (28, male) on a dating app in 2021. When we first met, we hit it off instantly, or I thought so at least. He lived an hour away from me at the time and I was driving practically every day I wasn’t working to see him. He is a single dad and has two young children from a previous marriage, so coming out to see me an hour away was difficult for him. For the first 6 months of our relationship I guess you could say I was in the “honey moon” phase. We didn’t argue about anything, everything was blissful and happy and I was convinced I found my person. Fast forward to about 9 months into our relationship we went on a road trip for a beach vacation with my brother and his girlfriend (we drove to our destination and they flew). It was my understanding that we would be splitting the cost for most of the trip expenses as we both agreed to go on the trip. While on this vacation, his debit card “stopped working”, and I paid for everything for the two of us. Meals, gas, entertainment, anything we did. I was very frustrated by this as he seemed to make excuses on why he couldn’t contact his bank to figure out why his card wasn’t working. When we got back from the trip, I calculated the total expenses and I had a discussion with him about if he would be paying me back. It was an uncomfortable conversation for me (as I don’t like confrontation) and talking about money this early on in a new relationship was uncharted territory for me. This was the first red flag of our relationship and definitely gave me an uneasy feeling. He eventually paid me back in full for his portion of the trip expenses. On this trip we did also get in our first “real argument” as I drunkenly made a comment about another guy being attractive in front of him. He was very upset by this, understandably so, and we did both end up saying things we regret as we had a fight about it. All in all, when we got back home from this trip, things seemed to shift in my mind about our relationship.
Fast forward three months from the trip, he texts me out of the blue when I got home from work (I worked third shift at the time), and says he feels like we are sexually incompatible and he doesn’t want to continue the relationship. I will admit our sexual chemistry seemed a bit off from the start but I loved everything else about our relationship so much it didn’t seem to matter as much for me. I was balling on the phone to him, asking him what made him think that and why he would text me out of the blue like that with no warning. He says that he tried to bring it up before but I didn’t take it well and he was tired of the way things were. Meanwhile to me, this felt like it came out of nowhere. After a long discussion with him on the phone, we decided we would stay together and he discussed his concerns with me regarding our sexual incompatibility. He basically told me that he didn’t like how shy I was in the bedroom and that I don’t put any energy into making the experience good for either of us. He also complained about how I never initiate sex and he has a much higher sex drive than me and that I should come up to his level regarding sexual drive and energy. He never really explained to me what he wanted as far as “turn ons” in the bedroom and explained that if he told me about what he wanted it would “ruin it” or that “I should know” or that he was “coercing me” into liking something he enjoyed. I did explain to him that I have a reactive desire and that he should make me feel sexy and hot and I don’t often get that from him. He told me this should not be his responsibility and that my self-confidence should not rest on him. I tried reading books on sexual compatibility, watching videos, reading other peoples stories but not much changed. I will admit my energy to improve this was not at top priority as it didn’t feel like much of an issue to me at the time. We did however decide to move in together a year later. After a few miniscule conversations about this (and then several major conversations), not much changed on either side in terms of improving our sexual compatibility. We would circle around talking about the actual problem instead of solutions and if we did come up with solutions, they didn’t last long. After a year of living together, we had so much built up resentment from things that had happened between us and his issues with me sexually. He was tired of the way I was in the bedroom and I was tired of feeling like his mom. I would constantly come home late from work, need to cook dinner and complete the household responsibilities. He would rarely help. I presented to him that I was very frustrated with his lack of participation and help with the household responsibilities and he has told me that it is too much for him to be asked to do anything after work and that he prioritizes his relaxation (I should mention that he does have ADHD and is currently un medicated). He would constantly leave trash laying around, dirty dishes, leave the laundry over flowing and I would have to clean up everything. In fact, I had to deep clean his entire laundry room prior to moving in with him because you could not even see the floors due to the mess. The laundry room was hardly functional before I cleaned it up. So back and forth with these issues for the both of us lead to a lot of resentment and probably made both of us a little depressed and very unhappy in the relationship. There were periods of happiness and times where I finally thought, wow, we are both putting in effort to make things work and things are improving. But it never lasted. Things would always go back to the way they were eventually.
We were going through one of those periods of good times (I thought) during the summer of last year when all of the sudden I get a text at work saying that he no longer wants to be with me due to our sexual incompatibility and that he is not happy. I had a meltdown in the middle of work. I asked him if we could please talk about this in person when I got home but he refused to talk to me for the next four days. Whenever I would go to talk to him, he would ignore me and say he didn’t want to talk to me. I spent three days in bed, crying my eyes out over this relationship and my sadness and grief from it all. But I still wanted to be with him, I had so much love and care for him and I knew that if we both continued to put effort in we could make things better. After about the third day of him not speaking to me, I did send my ex a message asking how he was doing. We had a brief conversation (nothing sexual or directing in any other way than small talk). I wake up the next day and go about my day (meanwhile I am still living with him while he is refusing to talk to me) and he texts me that afternoon telling me I need to get out of his place and that my ex had let him know I reached out to him to talk. He was fishing with a friend and I tried to meet up with him to talk things over as I had the past 3 days but he again refused to talk to me. He called my parents saying they needed to come get me and my stuff and that he wanted me out of his place. I also just want to clarify there had been no infidelity on either side of our entire relationship and I was really not looking to do anything with my ex when I reached out to him. I was simply lonely and depressed and wanted someone to talk to. I realized I looked in the wrong place and shouldn’t have done that, but I really thought “my boyfriend” would continue to not talk to me and we were over. He did tell me later that he would’ve eventually talked things out with me if he hadn’t got that message from my ex, and he probably wouldn’t have made me move out.
Ok, so we break up, my parents and some close friends/family come help me move back home. Meanwhile, I moved to him so I could spend more time with him and live together and uprooted my entire life (an hour away from where I’m from). So I needed to figure something out to avoid the over hour long commute to my job I now had here where he lived. My parents did start to have some negative feelings about him as I had discussed with them my concerns as far as him helping out with household responsibilities as well as financial concerns and overall the way he treated me. The text message breaking up with me while I was at work really was the straw that broke the camel’s back with him and my parent’s relationship. He also really didn’t like that I talked to my parents (or anyone else) about our issues or my feels and said that our relationship should be kept between the two of us.
After two weeks apart I was out of town for a friend’s bachelorette party and he sends me a very long and sincere text message about how he thinks he made a mistake by leaving me and that he wanted to talk and he apologized for breaking up with me over a text and realized that was wrong. He asked me if I had time to talk and that he wanted to talk to me on the phone. I immediately felt relief as I had been miserably depressed the last two weeks– going to work, going home, crying, going to bed and repeating. I was hopeful that he would talk to me and we could work things out yet again. I called him after I was able to and he didn’t answer and continued to not respond to me the entire night. He didn’t answer me until the next day actually where he gave me a few minutes of his time on the phone and told me he actually didn’t mean what he said and he stands firm in his decision. The next several weeks go by and I am texting him begging him to be with me, to talk to me, to let me come over so I can talk to him in person. I would’ve done anything to fix things with him and I was motivated to try as well. He did finally let me come over and we talked, argued, cried. He was hesitant but after several discussions we decided we were going to give it another shot. I ended up moving into my own place closer to my job and where he lived and we continued to hang out every day as we normally did prior to the break up. I didn’t tell my parents I was talking to him again as things were still unsteady and I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to make it work.
After a few rough patches, some arguments, and long discussions, we both realized that at the end of the day we wanted to be together and would both put in effort for our relationship and to make each other happy. He has told me countless times that if “we fixed the sexual issues, all of our other issues in the relationship would be improved.” I worked on his issues surrounding our sexual incompatibility and he was working on things that I needed from the relationship. Things were finally settling in to place and I felt like we were both making improvements. I told my parents about the relationship again and some other close friends and they were disappointed that I had got back together with him.
Now skip to November of last year. I hadn’t felt right for a few days and had been off birth control since the spring as my boyfriend thought it may be contributing to my lack of sex drive and other issues (plus I wanted to be off it as well). We also weren’t being “careful” by any means. Definitely not doing anything to prevent pregnancy. I took a test on the weekend just to be safe and after a few “invalid” tests and negative tests I still wasn’t convinced. I was also very concerned as we had slipped back to our old habits again and just the week before he was threatening to break up with me. He was being very rude to me, shaming me for my body (I have large breasts and he doesn’t like large breasts) and constantly sending me photos of other women wishing I looked more like them. He made me feel terrible about myself which only made the sexual problems worse again. My brother is also getting married in August and I was concerned about the timing of all that as well. Needless to say HORRIBLE time to get pregnant. Ended up taking another test on Monday morning and sure enough it was positive. I fell to the ground and immediately started crying. I didn’t know what to do. He was with me at the time so I showed him the positive test and he seemed somewhat happy. He held me for what felt like an hour and explained how much he loved and cared for me and how this shifted all his priorities. His main priority would be us and having a family with me. Over the next several days, he was so kind to me, made me feel like things would work out. He focused less on getting our sex right and felt like he was really prioritizing me and making sure I was doing okay. This continued for maybe a month or so until he started to bring up the sexual incompatibility again. He said that I wasn’t putting effort in, was upset with the frequency (meanwhile we have sex 2-4 times/week) and all of his other concerns he had brought up before. The pregnancy and life stresses had certainly not helped my sexual drive. I felt like all he cared about was how many times he could have sex with me and how good our sex was which I felt was absolutely not the priority. He made me feel bad again about my appearance regarding my breasts/hair/clothing choice and jokingly called me “bulbous” due to the pregnancy. He then brought up that I put no energy into our sex and that it makes him feel unwanted and undesired. I explained this is probably not the time to be focusing on that and we should focus on mending the relationship and making a stable environment for our unborn baby. He said he was tired of years of bringing this up and nothing changing which I understand as well. He constantly tells me that the downfall of our relationship is my fault. He tells me that I cannot self-reflect or taking accountability for my actions and says that his instability/constantly threatening to leave me or break up with me is a result of my actions. Not only has he made me feel awful about the way I am this entire pregnancy, I feel as though I have been robbed of this experience of having a child (especially my first one) by the way he has treated me. I have spent many nights awake crying, constantly stressed and arguing with him, and I feel like this should be a happy & blissful time where I am respected and cared for. Unfortunately, I’ve had the complete opposite and I can’t help but feel bad for myself about that.
In May my lease expired and I expected to move in with him again so we could get everything ready for the arrival of our baby. My parents really did not want me to do that after everything that happened in our time together and were concerned about his instability (as was I). Just before my lease expired (three weekends in a row) he threatened to break up with me over something very trivial. For example, he threated to leave me because I had plans and couldn’t go get him an extension cord from the store that he “needed to vacuum his apartment.” He seriously texted me and told me he was going to break up with me over this and that I wouldn’t help him out (even though I already had plans). He was also mostly living with me during this time and hadn’t paid his power bill since September and had an overdue bill of $1,000 and they shut his power off. He implied that I should pay the bill or even part of it (even though I hadn’t lived there in over a year), and that I shouldn’t be expected to move in “for free.” I did tell him I would help him with bills as I had before when we were living together and he was well aware of that but I don’t think I should be responsible for bills when I was not living there. It was the night before my lease expired, we got in a big fight and he told me he was breaking up with me (yet again). Texted me all kinds of horrible things like he hated me, he didn’t want to talk to me, he no longer wants to be in a relationship with me, I am a horrible & evil person. So, my parents came up yet again and moved all my stuff back home and I was yet again trying to figure out what to do with my job that was over an hour commute. He ended up talking to me again, I have been staying at his place intermittently through the week, and I have been looking at other places to live on my own. A few weekends ago my mom and I went to tour some houses and he got so upset with me, was threatening to break up with me yet again and told me that if that’s what my plans were that I should just get out now and not be in a relationship with him. He says that if move into my own place I am being “too cautious” and not showing him that I’m committed to him. I also have asked him several times if he wanted me to move in there with him and he said “I don’t care.” I told him that I am committed to him and making this relationship work STILL but I would feel more secure if I had my own place for my future daughter and I to live as he has shown me numerous times in the last month our relationship is unstable and I would not want to put my baby through that. I tell him that I am putting our daughter first and that that is the best choice for us at this time. He continues to tell me I am the cause of our relationship instability and I am the problem and that I need to “commit” to our relationship. Prior to him threatening to break up with me 4+ times in the last month, I was ready to move in with him and get everything ready for our baby. But the instability of our relationship over the past month as well as our relationship history of instability, I have concerns about putting all this energy in to move when I’m 8 months pregnant (I’ve also moved 5 times in the last year). Especially if things are just going to come crashing down at any moment. I told him last night my concerns again and told him that I disagree that me not wanting to move in with him doesn’t prove or disprove my “commitment” to our relationship and he told me “well we should just break up then.”
There’s many more parts to this story that I am leaving out because it would be too long and of course this is only my side. But I need some perspective here.
Am I wrong to have doubts? Do you think my loyalty to the relationship should be questioned because I want stability for my daughter and I in having a place to live? What would you do if you were in my shoes?
TL;DR : boyfriend and I have broken up multiple times throughout our 3 year relationship, I’m now 8 months pregnant and he is saying I’m not committed to him as I don’t feel comfortable moving in with him. Need advise.