DP says he doesn't love me.

[CutAndBlowDry]

Six months together and it seemed to me that we were both in love. Never said but always inferred in the way we behave and the things we say on an daily basis. It was a committed, close, very loving relationship where I felt loved.

During of those late-night chats after a few drinks, I asked him if he loved me (as we'd never said it) and he said "no" without any hesitation.

I am questioning my own sanity now for so badly misreading the signals and also because I can't work out what he's doing with me if he doesn't love me. Surely you know after six months if you love someone or not? I knew I loved him about 3 or 4 months in, and while I never said it I think I showed it and got the same back from him so assumed we were on the same page.

Of course there was lot of explanations and reasons given (he thinks he emotionally stunted from past hurts, he thinks he is scared of being vulnerable). All of it just sounded like white noise because I think you really either love someone or you don't. I feel just horrible thinking back over the last few months where I am some idiot wandering around thinking one thing and really it was another.

To make it even more confusing, he wants to "work it out" and get through whatever issue he is having. I am just more confused by that because why would you want to work at a relationship problem if you don't even love the person? Surely you just go and find someone you do love.

I am not really sure what I am asking for in posting but maybe just feeling so humiliated and rejected and worthless today because the person who knows me best and sleeps next to me most nights and shares my good days and bad days doesn't feel love for me, and that's something I can't say to anyone IRL because I'd just be too embarrassed.

To make it worse, DP was a great DP in every sense, and I haven't got anything bad to say about him, which further aggravates how crap I feel about the fact that his heart didn't fathom any love for me because it's not like I can blame him for being a bad person or a bad judge of character. He just doesn't love me.

I've ended the relationship because I can't have a partner who doesn't love me but I feel a bit today like I am (a) completely unlovable and (b) completely mad - I mean, how did I misread my own life in this way?

Has anyone ever been through anything like this?

Emotionally unavailable is a thing but he has loved other women so unlikely to be unable to attach. Initially I thought it was just timing but he didn't seem to offer you can kindness which isn't right. There is often one person who feels more earlier on but the other partner should be sensitive and kind..he could have been kinder.

However I wonder why you have felt so knocked back by this? Your comments seem disproportinate and suggest you need his validation.
Can you change your thinking, it's his loss?
You are worth more.

Google 'attachment styles'. He might be the avoidant type.

He did use the word "timing" quite a few times and said the last time he fell in love was 10 years ago and he thinks he's changed since then and built walls emotionally after his last breakup.

They actually only broke up couple of months before we met and at the time I told him I felt the timing wasn't good and that the last thing I wanted was a man who was a mess and he assured me he wasn't and then spent six months acting like the ideal man.

It's always in the past been me who felt something slower than the other person, as my feelings of love are often linked in with the growing relationship and intimacy and I need the other person to be fairly loving and intimate with me before I allow that to happen, but I felt it was reciprocal and mutual (he seemed smitten).

I am not sure what you mean by disproportionate and I am not sure why I feel the way I do but I think many things factor in to me being angry more than sad. I think he knew he was being misleading and allowed me to carry on investing in him, and I had honestly made it abundantly clear that I wasn't up for casual. Or that several times over six months I had questioned the relationship for various reasons (I was quite nervous about getting attached and felt worried about how different we were) and he had always taken great pains to convince me we were perfect for each other. Also that this only became apparent after me prizing it out and he would have just continued had I not asked.

So many reasons that add to making it more difficult but I think mainly it's just that he acted like he really loved me. And I don't think that's nice.

How did he take it when you finished it?

Emotional unavailability is definitely a thing. I was for a long time. It took some serious internal work and space and time for me to be ready for another proper relationship.

You did the right thing. He was very quick and sure to answer 'no' which shows he probably didn't see potential or want to develop seriously. He was being honest and well done you for walking. Others wouldn't have been as strong.

How did he take it when you finished it?

He was really upset. He wanted to say or do whatever he could to make me feel better (he's a nice person as I said). He then wanted to explain the emotional unavailability to me and said he wants to try and work through it because he wanted a future with me. All that contradicts the "I don't love you" stuff so that's why my head is a mess.

Emotional unavailability is definitely a thing. I was for a long time. It took some serious internal work and space and time for me to be ready for another proper relationship.

Thanks for saying that, sorry you went through it but I appreciate knowing there's a chance it's not just me not being enough for him.

Perhaps he do love you, but doesn’t want to admit to it yet. Maybe he’s scared to admit to it, because losing someone you love is still very real to him.

Only you know if you’ve made the right decision for you, but like others, I do think 6 months is a very short amount of time.

I think if you asked me what I really believe in my heart based on every day for six months, I would say my gut feeling is that he loves me and genuinely has some kind of issue going on. I don't think he'd ever lie, but I think he's pretty disconnected emotionally in general.

I also think he will be gutted now, and that's only going to get worse because the natural reaction to losing me is going to be that the fear of commitment reduces because of my absence and so I think he'll feel more love once I am gone.

I think also though, that I am just at a point in my life where I don't want it to be that hard. I want someone to take responsibility for their issues and not make them my problem or allow them to cause me pain or to miss out on the normal things people should get from loving relationships.

I'm not unsympathetic to pain - I've got issues too, but I don't mess with people heads and hearts in the process - I try and sort it out. When I was having worries about committing to him, I saw a counselor and talked to him about it and I got through it without pushing him away or acting badly to him.

I don't mind supporting loved ones, but he's saying he's holding back from me deliberately due to his fears and I just feel that it's his issue, not mine. I don't want to sit there feeling like I need to "help" or "convince" my partner to love me or to resolve his issues (and for me to then feel like crap when I can't because I can't). Been there and done that with my Dad and my exDH.

Had a lot of years of feeling not good enough to be loved, and it was always about someone else's issue. My Dad is massively emotionally unavailable and I am 40 and still sometimes walk out of a room after seeing him and burst into tears because I feel so unloved. I want my partner to love me - without hesitation or without me feeling like I need to do something.

I've been a great partner. I'm not saying he hasn't reciprocated and being just as loving because he has, but I have listened to him, been there for him, looked after him and let myself be completely vulnerable and open with him and we've been together for a long time (by my standards) and I have given my all to this. If that's not enough, I haven't got any more.

Now what I want is honestly just someone who loves me and knows it and says it and never makes me feel for a minute that I need to doubt it. It might be asking for perfection, but I think I am just too tired to want anything else at this point in my life and I'd rather be alone than to have anything less.

I'm not a cold, hard or even particularly strong person. I just don't think I can bear going through this. If he's not ready, emotionally unavailable or otherwise not in love with me then he can take the side exit and leave me alone. That's purely down to how completely deflated, sick and tired of disappointment that I feel.

I think it's highly likly that he will get in touch with his feelings of love once he loses you (as you predict, too) - maybe he feels numb from the previous and needs a simple jolt. Likely to come after you very strongly, in my opinion. I wonder if that would be enough for you or have you been put off him for good?
For what it's worth if he can be jolted into working out his (genuine) issues, I'd give him a chance.
As many have said, six months is really not enough for everyone to be sure of committed love after being drained by a recent other r-ship. Sometimes it just kicks in after x amount of time.

Better for you to move on now, and have a real chance of happiness with someone that truly loves you.

He is either stringing you a long until something better comes along, is emotionally deficient or is into power games. None of above are conducive with a contented long term relationship. You can do much much better 💐

I don’t think it is a coincidence that you have chosen an emotionally unavailable man, similar to your father. Now this relationship has ended I would explore with a counsellor why you were ever drawn to him in the first place.

Actions often speak louder than words, if he has treated you well and you’ve felt loved by him seems a shame to throw it away just as he won’t say those 3 words after 6 months. But you know what you need to do so fair play for ending it, all will work out okay.

Every bloke I’ve been in a relationship with, every single one, has pulled this don’t love you, can’t give you more because xyz crap on me. And when I’ve ditched them because of it, every last one of them has back pedalled madly, with the same old scared to get hurt tripe. It got boring eventually, so I told the next one pretty much from the off that if he started that crap I was out. He didn’t start it.

You have done the right thing OP. It is his remark that he had realised you were feeling more for him than him for you that would have been the nail in the coffin for me. I totally get that some people struggle with using the ‘love’ word but his response feels unfeeling.

Waiting around while he tries to resolve his issues would potentially be painful for you. I think you are absolutely right to realise that you are in different places, with different levels of emotional maturity / availability and do something about it. Either this relationship is going somewhere or it isn’t and I think six months of the kind of relationship you describe is enough to determine whether you have a future.

Better to act now than wait six years. You can do better than this. for you.

So he convinced you that you were ‘perfect’ for each other and acted smitten, all the while knowing that he wasn’t as invested and that the relationship was ‘lopsided.’ He carried on anyway because of .....the ego-boost of being with a woman who loved and adored him. Nice.

This man is a manipulator who pulled out all the stops to get you, but suddenly now has issues that make him ‘emotionally stunted.’ I would feel angry too. Kudos for moving on.

I had exactly this experience after 18 months with someone who I thought was 'the one' after a long and abusive marriage. Although he never said he loved me, I interpreted his loving gestures and compliments of me as love. When it finally came out, similarly after a few drinks late at night, he said he never had, never would, but wanted to keep seeing me as it was a 'good distraction' for him. Blamed his inability to love me on his wife leaving him (tho he'd had the affair).
We were over within 24 hrs. My choice.

Is so hard OP to walk away from someone you love. I too felt embarrassed. A fool. But it was the right decision. I'm so sorry for your heartbreak

I always went for very emotional men in touch with their emotions most of my life. xDH was really loving and emotional and the end of the marriage was fairly freak circumstances without which we'd have probably been happily together forever. I was single for a few years after divorcing, was devastated by it completely and did a lot of "me work" and then got back on the horse.

Only since then did I come across men with commitment issues (maybe because I was dating men in the divorced bracket for the first time and also doing OLD instead of meeting men from work or through friends) and I did have a string of them muck me around. Usually only for a few weeks before I sensed they were being off and told them to take a hike.

I was looking to meet someone nice, but just kept getting men who'd act in really funny ways to chase after me then push me away.

All of them (literally all) still try and message me and back peddle over how much they regret not being ready and how they behaved. And hindsight I see they were just using dating as an ego outlet rather than with a genuine wish to meet someone.

The ex right before the current BF was an emotionally stunted nightmare and put me through the wringer although we were on and off together for over a year it was never a relationship like this one was as we were never properly together due to his problems. He did eventually get counselling after I broke it off and is in a committed relationship now.

When I bet current DP I told him I had no patience whatsoever for any man who had issues that were going to make me unhappy, or who wasn't ready or who couldn't behave in normal, committed ways and that I would be out the door instantly if he ever did any of that. I'd had enough for sure, and just wanted a normal relationship.

I read over that convo this morning, and his response was to tell me he couldn't believe men were so stupid and from day one of the relationship he did everything the other men hadn't done. He always called, he was always consistent, happy to meet my friends and family, there for me no matter what, always open, always happy to make plans for next week /month /year so it felt to me like a completely committed and loving relationship that developed really naturally with no angst.

I did know he was bad at saying the lovey stuff but he always showed love and commitment so I never felt phased or worried. Hence me being so utterly blindsided by this and so angry because he turned out to be like the others despite seeming so different.

It's exhausting. I just feel like it would be nice for a relationship to end for once because the two people didn't want to be together rather than all this psycho babble and "baggage" and complications which to me just seem so counter-intuitive to the basic process of just meeting someone who makes you happy and vice versa.

Out if interest on this, does anyone think "emotional unavailability" is a real thing? I tend to think if you love someone you just love them, if you're "not ready" for a relationship it's just the wrong person; but does anyone think it's actually a real thing to be hurt by something or a situation and to become resistant to love / intimacy? He claims this is the reason and he wants to find a way past it with me but there's nothing in me that feels like that's an actually real thing

What I see is this - lots of men who have no trouble “committing” to a relationship when that means they get

Regular sex on demand
Someone to share the bills/ rent
Domestic labour
Emotional labour

But as soon as they are asked to GIVE something eg emotional labour, a sign of commitment such as being exclusive / saying I love you/ getting married .....

Suddenly they are not ready for a “ relationship” because of their “issues”.

I would find this all a lot more convincing if men’s “issues” stopped them getting what they want. Whereas it always seems to be a reason for the woman not to get what she wants.

And before anyone says this, yes I know I am generalising. And NAMALT blah blah blah. But I see it all over this board and in RL.

Amen to that. They're willing to take the bits they need but that's it

Yeah why commit to anything when they already got all they are wanting and to hell with your wants and needs.

Do you think it’s a modern phenomenon.
I’ve encountered similar, it’s very odd. If you really like someone, get on with them, share interests. Why is it so hard to have a relationship.
I did start to think it was me not them, but perhaps I am wrong

It is likely that he figured you would stick around ‘to help fix him,’ since you were the more invested one. You caught him off guard by having none of it. Don’t be surprised if he tries to creep back in, having suddenly ‘seen the light.’

It is probable that he also played games in his previous relationships.

I agree it's a modern phenomenon but I think it's linked to internet dating, which I think allows people to try and get all the things they want (like attention) and present themselves as they wish they were rather than reality. It also means you kick off relationships that you don't know from a wider circle. It's good in some ways and bad in others as it opens people up to all these kids of silly games.

If you really like someone, get on with them, share interests. Why is it so hard to have a relationship

Exactly that, it really shouldn't be this complicated and I wish I had known this earlier but I think 0% of the time do relationships work out well this way. One of the key parts of this is meant to be trust and caring to the other person and how are you meant to be doing that if they have some sort of agenda which includes them secretly not participating fully. It's a bit like having an employee who's on drugs. Not fit for the job!

I honestly handled this so badly the times before and this time I have just had enough. I decided enough was enough, and him acting like this made me lose respect for him, trust for him, tenderness for him. He was supposed to care about me, and there's nothing caring about taking my time, kisses, bed and life without having a real intention of giving any of that properly back.

I got up, went to the gym, spent the day there on the treadmill and having lunch made for me and then a swim and hot tub and tomorrow I booked a hair appointment and an appointment with my counsellor to rant a bit and I am just going to take care of me.

As far as I am concerned, I have stopped feeling like this is me. I went into this on honest terms - two people meet, if you like each other it grows. I had no idea there was a secret agreement I'd never signed up for that once I had needs beyond the initial that he was not going to give them.

I thought about this over the day and I think liking someone is all about having fun with them, fancying them, wanting them to be happy, wanting to spend time with them or have sex with them or talk to them and actual "love" to me is about a conscious choice to be that person's partner. I don't think he's incapable of love, I think he just decided his life was easier if he had a zero risk / investment situation and screw what that meant for me.

So much sympathy for anyone hurting or unable to love because of past pain (been there myself) but absolutely zero for a grown man who goes looking for a relationship and then grows one with a person he claims to care about and then says he's not ready. Well boo hoo. go get a therapist and get out of my way so I can give all the things I have been giving you to someone worth my time.

That's how I feel this time around, and while he shocked me, I honestly think he's going to end up being more shocked than I was. All these months of sweet and lovely me who's so understanding and open and warm and he will miss it more than I will now it's gone.

Chin up to anyone going through this. It's rubbish, but I really don't think they are worth a single tear.

I think you've done the right thing. Anyone who says wait around, you're throwing away a relationship... Rubbish! You deserve a man who will be open and be mature enough to be committed and in tune with his feelings and be in love with you. Why waste your time on a fickle boy x