Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

My boyfriend does not love me after 1 year. Should I leave?

95 replies

Foodx123 · 19/04/2023 12:56

I do have BPD and I am very self aware. My boyfriend is also learning but he has a very negative view on BPD patients having worked with them. I am currently seeking therapy but this is something I cannot get my head around and need advice.

I love my boyfriend and we have been together for a year now. I have expressed my love for him since 8 months in. He has never said it back. I asked if he loved me in November and he said he wasn't there yet which I understood. But he said he struggles to "get there fully" because he was worried about the future... I have a 2 year old daughter. Naturally that upset me but it was early days so I brushed it off. We spend a lot of time together now and we stay with each other most nights now, either at my flat or his. Including my daughter who really likes him. We have a really special bond, it's really intimate and we both agree we've never had a relationship like this. He frequently tells me he cares more about me than any other girl he dated, he feels closer with me and he has more feelings for me than any other. However, he dated a girl for 6 months who he's actually friends with and during a random conversation months ago I asked if he'd ever been in love and he said he was "close" to loving her. They barely saw each other and he said she was unsure whether she wanted to be with him or someone who was a Muslim, as she's a muslim herself so naturally that put him off as she was unsure of what she wanted. Naturally I'm a bit confused how his uncertainty about me affected his feelings but not for her? Especially after he frequently tells me all these loving things.

It's now been just over a year and I summoned up the courage to ask again. There had been small hints like when we argued he made a comment "I guess now you're going to say I don't care about you anymore, I don't love you etc" and I replied how can I say you don't love me if you've never expressed it and he said "fair enough".

When I asked him today his response was ~

"I guess when does caring about you a lot become loving you"

I just responded that he knew he was close to loving an ex so he must have a pretty good idea. I just don't know what to do. And then he said this isn't something I can be annoyed at him for. Clearly as someone with BPD and ADHD this doesn't sit well with me and I find him incredible hard to talk to at times. Whether he's got some form of autism I'm not sure but it's a struggle.

OP posts:
monsteramunch · 20/04/2023 14:38

OP you really, really need to step back from dating and focus on your daughter.

She's been put in a completely inappropriate situation staying overnights with a man you've only been with for a year.

It's way too much, way too soon and you need to create some real distance between your dating life and your role as a mum until a relationship reaches a much more serious stage.

Can you see that having her stay there with you is inappropriate, confusing and unfair on her? Let that fuel you to make some changes.

monsteramunch · 20/04/2023 14:39

And this guy sounds horrible and frankly it's scary he works with vulnerable patients needing mental health treatment.

module · 20/04/2023 14:43

You'll be getting some weird PMs now OP, I'd get your very nice picture taken down if I was you.

monsteramunch · 20/04/2023 14:44

I agree re your picture OP, I reported it so that MN can ask if you want them to take it down so you aren't identifiable from this thread.

ChristmasFluff · 20/04/2023 15:22

The only thing I would add to what has already been said is that blocking is not something you do as a 'punishment' for bad behaviour. It's a boundary you use as needed to keep people out of your life that do not belong in it.

At the moment, this applies to him, for your own mental health, to allow you to heal from the breakup without him contacting you and messing with your head.

Even if you want to be friends, it's never going to happen whilst the breakup is so raw, and so blocking him for a good 6 months at least would be a very good idea - after that, you may find you don't want to unblock him anyway.

Original poster
Foodx123 · 20/04/2023 19:26

ChristmasFluff · 20/04/2023 15:22

The only thing I would add to what has already been said is that blocking is not something you do as a 'punishment' for bad behaviour. It's a boundary you use as needed to keep people out of your life that do not belong in it.

At the moment, this applies to him, for your own mental health, to allow you to heal from the breakup without him contacting you and messing with your head.

Even if you want to be friends, it's never going to happen whilst the breakup is so raw, and so blocking him for a good 6 months at least would be a very good idea - after that, you may find you don't want to unblock him anyway.

He would probably turn up at my flat if I blocked him suddenly.

OP posts:
Tabby87 · 21/04/2023 19:18

Foodx123 · 19/04/2023 22:10

It's strange because he never usually fights back. I mentioned about moving back home and there was never a "please stay" he said he was said but thought it'd be good for me because I had no family here. He's very selfless in that sense but surely as my boyfriend you'd make a point of being upset? And naturally I don't take that reaction well. He does not show much emotion but claims to feel it. I and others have made suggestions he may be on the spectrum but I guess because he's very successful as a doctor it's rarely been questioned enough to warrant an investigation.

Show quote history

Not to sound harsh but he possibly just doesn't care?

Some men are horrible and will go with a relationship of convenience believing they owe you nothing.

You don't have to diagnose him with ASD etc.

Tabby87 · 21/04/2023 19:25

Foodx123 · 20/04/2023 13:23

I didn't know until months later. He told me that everyone on the ward who committed suicide had BPD and that the ones he met were insane and didn't want to be helped and don't want to change who they are.

Show quote history

I'm sure that weird opinion from him must have made you feel so much better. He has little empathy.

Morrrrecake · 21/04/2023 19:25

Please get rid. You can’t make someone love you, and you deserve much much better. What would you tell a friend who told you this?

5128gap · 21/04/2023 20:23

Three possibilities:
He's a tedious over reflective bore who needs to analyse his own every thought.
He's playing power games withholding his love to keep the upper hand.
He's keeping his options open so he can trot off without guilt if someone he prefers turns up 'I did SAY I didn't love you...' but you'll do for now.

Original poster
Foodx123 · 21/04/2023 20:35

Update:

Even though I've now called it quits, I've had a lot of reflection and realised that I don't think it's that he didn't care about me and I do know I deserve better. I genuinely believe he is emotionally vacant and although he has feelings he doesn't know how to show them, or how to react. Yet, whilst we were dating he would give me so much of his time, would help me as much as he can, couldn't seem to get him to not cuddle me whenever we were together. He loved me being there, he spoke of our future and wanting a house and children. When we spent weekend together without my daughter as she was at her dads we would go away on spa breaks, Center parcs, london. It was always so intimate and I thought there was something special. But at the back of my mind it was always lacking the words of affirmation I needed. Sometimes I'd wake up early in the morning and he'd be laying there looking at me and stroking my head. He told me he had very deep feelings but I just don't think he knows how to love or cannot explain what he feels. In general he's quite a vague person in terms of hobbies and interests. He doesn't take a particular interest in music, he likes "easy" films that don't require much thought. He's 31 and never been in love or had a long term relationship. Struggles to communicate with his mother and claims he is a Catholic, yet goes to church very little. Is very pro life which again proved another issue. He is very happy to have sex and date multiple women for a few months at a time who then leave him, for which is is surprised. If you'd get pregnant he would want you to keep it. It never made sense to me and the way he worded things always seem so blunt and emotionless. Big topics didn't seem a big deal to him and that hurt me. He never understood me or my feelings. I don't think he registers his own feelings let alone understands them. I have told him unless he begins to look at himself he will unlikely find true happiness.

OP posts:
Opentooffers · 21/04/2023 20:40

The problem with his experience on a psychiatric ward is that it's filled with worst case scenarios that are under section - scary, understandably, but at the rare extreme end of behaviour and not a yardstick.
Could you have been on an artificial high when you met him that lead you to involve your daughter with everything at such an early stage? Perhaps you are more stable in mood now and so seeing the wood for the trees. I'd say the anxiety was your inner voice telling you that things were not right about him. I get insomnia when I things aren't right, it's difficult to know if it's needless worry, but looking back my uneasy feelings have always been bang on the money.

curious79 · 21/04/2023 20:52

You don’t love yourself enough to see this man for what he is - a controlling waste of time. If he’s not there after a year, he’s never gonna be there. All the stories you tell, including relating to his exes, scream someone with commitment issues or some inability to form relationships

curious79 · 21/04/2023 20:55

I would also add that I have professionally encountered a lot of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists and they’re certainly not necessarily empathic/ loving - indeed I think the professionals who are find that environment very hard to cope with.. I would definitely describe several as sociopathic with their ability to understand people occurring through frameworks of personality rather than ‘feeling the person’

Original poster
Foodx123 · 21/04/2023 20:55

Opentooffers · 21/04/2023 20:40

The problem with his experience on a psychiatric ward is that it's filled with worst case scenarios that are under section - scary, understandably, but at the rare extreme end of behaviour and not a yardstick.
Could you have been on an artificial high when you met him that lead you to involve your daughter with everything at such an early stage? Perhaps you are more stable in mood now and so seeing the wood for the trees. I'd say the anxiety was your inner voice telling you that things were not right about him. I get insomnia when I things aren't right, it's difficult to know if it's needless worry, but looking back my uneasy feelings have always been bang on the money.

I do ask myself what was wrong with me. There were a few red flags at the start. For example, after a date he wouldn't respond for hours on end. And when he did, they'd be no talk of our date. He was always very sexual and would respond quite easily to that. I then realised people with emotionally unavailability tend to be more physically affectionate and sexual as it deflects from the emotional side.

In October I went through some intense anxiety that I'd never felt before. I couldn't leave the house, I felt sick 24/7. There are no words to describe the panic I went through on and day to day basis. I would lay in bed at night listening to sounds designed for people having a panic attack to take me away from the emotionally torment I felt. It made me physically ill. I couldn't eat, I ended up in a&e one night after calling an ambulance because I thought I was having a heart attack. I am a student paramedic so it'd take a lot for me to do that! I went for blood tests because my hair starting falling out more and I convinced myself I had a variety of diseases. The constant feeling of being with someone who wasn't sure about me but yet would do so much for me was so difficult for me to comprehend. Everything just felt like a huge contradiction. And whilst all this was going on he never understood that it was him, and neither did I. It wasn't that he didn't care, he really did not have a clue, which is terrifying. Hindsight is a great thing isn't it.

OP posts:
Original poster
Foodx123 · 21/04/2023 20:59

curious79 · 21/04/2023 20:55

I would also add that I have professionally encountered a lot of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists and they’re certainly not necessarily empathic/ loving - indeed I think the professionals who are find that environment very hard to cope with.. I would definitely describe several as sociopathic with their ability to understand people occurring through frameworks of personality rather than ‘feeling the person’

Hi,

He's isn't a psychiatrist or psychologist, he went on those wards during his foundation training. It's not a choice. He's an anaesthetist, but yes he sees people die everyday in ITU and he says it's "sad" but that's as far as it goes. I get some doctors are jaded in ways but he does show some sociopathic tendencies. I wouldn't say he had anti social personality disorder though. I don't like to diagnose people obviously I am not accredited to, but unfortunately I have spent a year trying to work out what's "wrong" with him.

OP posts:
Thoughtful2355 · 21/04/2023 21:28

Jeesus Christ start thinking of your child rather than some guy who doesn't love you at 1 year in! I've always felt love for my partners and them me by 4-6 months

MissLucyLiu · 21/04/2023 21:30

The clue is in the title itself my dear. Wake up!

ladykale · 21/04/2023 21:33

frayble · 19/04/2023 13:04

OP, this is not the relationship for you. Ditch him.

THIS!

Original poster
Foodx123 · 21/04/2023 23:26

MissLucyLiu · 21/04/2023 21:30

The clue is in the title itself my dear. Wake up!

I've left him x

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread