How do you know when to keep trying to fix it?
Hi all, I’m really struggling with this decision. I’m a 25F and my boyfriend is a 35M. We’ve been seriously dating for almost 5 months now.
When we started seriously dating, I had already been looking into buying a house. I already had a realtor and had almost closed on a townhouse but backed out at the last minute. I told my boyfriend about my plans to buy a house and he was super supportive. I’m a very future thinker so I asked pretty early into our relationship what he thought about the potential of moving in together when his lease was up (end of May). He thought as long as things kept going well, it was a good idea.
We did have some ups and downs. The biggest downs/fights we had were about me feeling like he didn’t show interest in my life and was a bit self-centered; I feel like he talks a lot about himself and I struggle to see him emotionally connect when I talk about my career, my emotions, or things going on in my life. After a lot of discussion, he aimed to work towards asking more about my life to show interest. He did do this for a while, but I was still struggling to feel like we were really emotionally connecting. Idk if that’s on me or him or both of us.
Another big fight has been about alcohol. He used to have a pretty serious drinking problem that I think he’s struggled to acknowledge. He claims he wasn’t an alcoholic but there was a period where he was drinking/getting drunk almost everyday before we were dating. Recently, After a really nasty (verbally, not physically) fight where he was drunk and we almost broke up, he swore to take a tolerance break from drinking. He did do that for 3 weeks - month ish I think, but then we recently had a pretty bad fight again after us going out for mexican food and margs.
My other biggest concern about this relationship is that I worry he’s not mature for what I need out of a relationship. He struggles a lot with depression, which has been emotionally taxing as I feel like I’ve tried to support him through this. He has been trying to get in with a therapist again but no success yet. He’s also not as clean as I’d like, he’s not a morning person like I’d like, and he’s kinda stingy with his money. He doesn’t take care of his health - like he snores so bad and I’ve asked him to get it checked out because it’s affecting my sleep (and presumably his) but he’s still not done that. I want to be with someone who has their life together - who I could feel confident raising kids together and that they’re not going to fall apart under stress or distance themselves / lash out when they’re stressed.
This all sounds pretty bad writing it all out. But things have honestly been net positive for most of our relationship. I do feel like we’re compatible in a lot of ways (politically, religiously, we do have a lot of fun together most of the time, I really admire and respect his work and his friendships, the sex is good). I know we love each other, but I’m wondering if love is enough.
This is all boiling to I need to make a decision about staying together or breaking up as we’ve planned to move in together. I bought the house, we’ve been working on it together the past few weeks - he’s put a lot of time and even a decent amount of money into helping update it, he already his apartment complex he wouldn’t renew. It feels so shitty to break up right now, but I would also hate to keep trying to break up a few months from now when he’s moved all his stuff in and no chance to stay in his current place.
If we broke up, I would probably try to pay back at least most of what he paid in terms of updating the house (though that’ll suck financially but I feel ethically is right). I just don’t know whether to keep trying on something I have so many doubts about. He claims he wants to work on all the things I’m concerned about but I feel I’ve been down this road before with a man and I worry how much people can really change. I also worry I have too high of expectations of people.
TLDR: I need to make a decision on whether my bf and I should stay together as he’s supposed to move in with me soon. I’m wondering if it’s worth it to keep trying when there are so many ups and downs.