It's 3.00am and I feel a bit bad that I am feeling sorry for myself today given all the awful things everyone is going through around the world. I just feel alone, lost and couldn't sleep and thought maybe someone could given me explanations, advice or a pep talk as I feel like I'm not losing the plot.
I've been in an LTR for two years. It's a relationship that has always had a lot of hugely positive aspects that made me very happy, but has also been problematic since quite early on. He has some intimacy issue, and over time there's been a lot of normal, every day things most people probably take for granted that he's been completely unwilling to give to me.
Examples of what's been great: we're best friends, he's reliable like clockwork, we have great sex, he's very kind to me and everyone, he is affectionate and is always touching me, he's always trying to help me and do things for me without being asked, we laugh all the time, he plans great dates and things to do, he supports me in everything, he says he wants to spend the rest of his life with me, he makes an effort with my friends and family and being with him just feels right like I am with the right person.
Examples of what the problems have been: He has to keep an absolute firm line between me and his family (he's with mine every week, his don't even know I exist!), he won't add me on social media (seriously, after two years!), he makes life choices that make intimacy difficult (eg: taking jobs a distance away or obsessive hobbies), he changes the subject if I bring up marriage (but if pushes says he will marry me if required), he has never said "I love you".
We both have teenage kids, so the biological clock isn't an issue but at the same time I am early 40s and really do want to get married, which might sound like I am being a total saddo, but I never got all that and it's important to me. I also feel insecure. Not in the sense that I think he will leave, but more in the sense that I feel like I want a really committed relationship where I know I have someone I can fully count on.
In the early days, I went to see a therapist to discuss my concerns. She told me that he was obvious he loved me from all his actions, so why did I need to hear the words and she suggested some strategies to help him with his fear of intimacy. A lot of that helped, and some progress was made. That said, it's ALWAYS felt like an uphill battle and it gets tiring and disheartening when you need to work so hard to get things other people get given so easily.
So much time has passed now, and it's become really painful to live without some of the things that would make me feel committed, connected etc. and I feel I have given him plenty of time to move forward. If I ask him why he won't tell his family about me, he says he has a weird relationship with them. If I ask him why he won't add me on social media he says he doesn't really use it for anything other than following work and hobbies. If I tell him I love him, he kisses the top of my head and tells me I'm his favourite person. If tell him how much it hurts me when he won't talk about marriage and the future, he says he has some issues and will have to "get over them" because he wants to spend the rest of his life with me.
The truth is that he tries deliberately (subconsciously) to avoid and of the hallmarks of real commitment to a person. Like letting them into other parts of your life, or saying "I love you". We have split up probably 5 times over this, and each time I say I have had enough and need him to stop placing these ridiculous limits on our lives together and he is devastated each time and promises it will change and then 4 or 5 months later we are right back where we began arguing about the same thing. All he ever does is says he is so sorry for making me feel bad. He just can't seem to actually stop doing it.
A few months ago, he took a work posting a long way from home with the idea being it was temporary, good for his career, great financially and he'd be home for weekends. I supported him, but feel to be honest like he did this deliberately to avoid moving in together. He doesn't seem to even like this job but he immerses himself in his life there by taking up every possible hobby you can think of. He's in a cricket club, he plays golf, he's joined community action groups and so on. It's like trying to get 5 minutes with him is like being granted audience with the Pope.
I travel a lot for work, and so it's meant not seeing each other for weeks on end at times, and while he's like clockwork with messages he doesn't make a lot of time for romance or to make me feel actually connected emotionally. His idea of a long-distance date night is him showing up exhausted from a run and having to dash somewhere ten minutes later. He does call and text for hours and hours and he's filled his flat up there with photos of me and I know for sure he'd never be interested in anyone else, but it still feels like I am only getting crumbs emotionally and there is this wall up that I can never penetrate.
A long time ago he got very drunk, and told me I was too beautiful, too perfect and would surely leave him. He said he kept all his feelings locked away because it was easier and I feel this sense of overwhelming frustration that he seems to have such massive intimacy issues that it's making a relationship between two people who I think really love each other, completely impossible.
When the virus came, I asked him to come home before lockdown. He insisted he had to stay where he is as he was needed (he's a key worker involved heavily in the planning for coronovirus) and so I understood, but now it means obviously we can't see each other at all for possibly months, and he's working insane hours and we have barely spoken for weeks. During that time, like everyone else I have been through all the fears and difficulties of all this and on top of that been very ill - we think with corona - and was obviously as worried and isolated as everyone else.
I really needed him, and he wasn't there. I don't mean physically, I mean it's like he just distanced himself from me when I needed him the most. On Mother's day we had a family zoom meeting and all my siblings showed up with their husbands and wives and mine apparently "forgot". I understand he has work stress but while every other person is pulling in closer to their loved ones, he pulls further away.
After 9 days spend coughing up a lung with a fever, he'd not even called me. Not once in all that time. And I'd had enough, so I broke it off with him with a long, ranty text message about how I couldn't live with it all anymore. I was upset, and felt just totally abandoned. to be honest I was quite scared I was going to die and he wasn't even available to talk to me. He barely even replied to be dumping him, other than to say "okay" and to apologise for not being the person I needed.
Since then he's texted to check in every day to see if I was better but that's it. Like I said, I don't want to feel sorry for myself when I know people are in truly dire circumstances right now, but I just feel so confused over why now, when everyone else is really treasuring their loved ones, that mine decided to act like he couldn't care less.
I think for all this time of him being unable to say he loved me or propose to me or introduce me to his kids I always thought "ah yes, but he really DOES love you and if the chips were down he would be there". And he wasn't. My sister tells me he just can't love me the way I need to be loved. I know that's true, but I don't know why I feel as badly as I do.
I look around me and see everyone together with their loved ones and leaning on each other for support and feel so utterly alone.