Reader’s Question

My boyfriend and I have been going out for about 5 months. At first he seemed like he really cared about me. He wanted to talk to me all the time and missed me when we were apart. (We see each other once a week, and I stay over at his house where he lives with his parents.) But for the past few months he has acted as if he couldn’t care less about seeing me. We have sex when we see each other, but I’m starting to get paranoid and believe this is all he wants from me. He’s not very “giving” shall we say.

My boyfriend doesn’t seem to go out much but stays in his room on his computer. He’s not a complete hermit, but I get the impression that he stays in most of the time. When he stopped talking to me so much online I thought he was putting me off. But then he said that we should keep seeing each other once a week. I understand that he wants his space, but I do miss him, and I wonder if he even misses me. At the beginning of our relationship, he said he was in love with me. I’m wondering if that was just because it was all new?

My boyfriend also likes to drink. He doesn’t get violent, and he can go without drinking for a long time. But when he does drink, he can drink a lot and for several days. He also has a bit of a shady past, staying in hostels, and engaging in some law-breaking, but that is behind him. And I think he even gets paranoid about me cheating on him because of past experiences; he makes these “jokes” where I wonder if there’s anything behind them, but I’m not sure.

He doesn’t want to come over to my house. I live with my parents, and they have never met him. We also haven’t gone out anywhere together since some months ago. He doesn’t seem as if he wants to, even when I offer to pay. We’re both out of work, so I know money is tight, but seeing each other more and going to a pizza place is still possible.

I guess I feel like I’m doing all of the work to keep the relationship going. When I confronted him about all of this, he said he doesn’t want to break up but just doesn’t always want to talk online like before and doesn’t want to see me more often because he thinks couples who see/talk to each other too much tend to break up.

What gives?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

It’s always a problem when one party is “investing” more in a relationship (i.e., working harder to keep things going). You need to take a serious look at whether you’re in a basically one-sided relationship, which is always unhealthy. One way to test whether you’re setting yourself up for heartbreak is to be candid and specific in telling your boyfriend what you need from him. If he’s not willing to come through, that should tell you plenty about a future with him. If you determine that you’re truly in a one-sided relationship and still have a hard time moving on, it most likely indicates that you are struggling with some fears or insecurities which you’ll need to overcome if you’re ever to be happy and fulfilled in a relationship.