I apologise for how long this turned out and thank you anyone who reads it.
What does this really mean? My boyfriend of two years said this last night when he was breaking up with me. I've sensed something hasn't been right for a while and I pushed the issue. About a week ago he said he didn't want to break up with me but wasn't sure about moving forward. We live about an hour apart but manage to see each other at least four days a week, sometimes seven days a week. He says he still loves me. I asked him to say he didn't because it would make it easier for me to understand. He said he didn't think he could commit to me or possibly to anyone. He's thirty-six and has had a series of long-term relationships all of which end because he says something didn't feel right from the beginning and he just stayed. In September I thought we were going to break up and then we had a conversation where he asked why I didn't seem to want to move things on since I was in my late 30s and we ended up deciding we would move in together and plan on having a child. We'd had a similar conversation three months before that where we didn't discuss children but he said he wasn't ready for me to move in with him and he would 'see how it goes over the summer'. This is a bit confused, I know. I suppose I just want someone to make me feel okay about being single in my late 30s. I thought he was the one when we met. I had this feeling that I'd met my husband. Absurd I know now. The big problem in our relationship has been that when we're with his family and friends we speak my second language and I struggle a bit to keep up and get quite nervous and a bit awkward because sometimes I lose track completely of the conversation. The first time I met his family we'd been together about four months and I was very nervous and he was just very off with me after it. It felt like anger to me but he calls it frustration, which just made every social encounter after it very stressful. Everytime we did something with friends, he would go a bit cold on me. I'd text to say good morning and he wouldn't reply for three hours, that kind of thing. We were having less and less sex. Last night I asked him if he'd gone off me since we hadn't had sex since January. He just said that sex is psychological, which I think was his way of saying yes he has gone off me. In the conversation we had a week ago I suggested I leave because we were in his place and that we take time to think about it but he didn't want to. I slept on the sofa that night because I couldn't sleep and when he woke up he thought I'd gone and was really upset. He did say that he knew he wasn't being nice to me, that if I treated him the way he treated me that he'd have been very angry a long time ago, but that he didn't know if he could be nice to me. He also said no one had ever been as good and kind to him as I had. He also said things about being cold and broken inside. He was very upset when he left. It was hard for me to see him cry.
I don't know what I'm asking. Just, how to see this. Does 'I can't love you the way you deserve' really mean 'I don't love you but don't want to hurt you'. Any words of wisdom or advice on how to get over this would be great. I know some people might think it was only two years but it was two years of constant contact and during lockdown we spent every minute together. So far I haven't contacted him. I'm still a bit in shock. If you've read all this, thank you :)