My (23M) BF (22M) hasn’t spoken to me in 5 months since a death. I feel guilty, but I still need him.
Hi, before you judge me, I need you to understand why I feel this way at all.
My partner has a bit of a self-destructive streak, and has talked about purposefully abandoning relationships slowly in the past. He said he wants to fix that, and I believe he’s been doing the best he can, and we promised to never give up on each other. Back in March, a great-aunt of theirs got sick, who basically acted like their mother for the majority of their life and was the reason they felt comfortable coming out, and unfortunately passed away.
He stopped responding to my messages abruptly for days on end, or would begin to avoid speaking to me for longer than 5 mins at a time a day. I finally pressed for an answer and he told me his situation. Immediately I felt awful and wanted to be there for him as much as I could, but he said he’s the type to “need space from everything” when he’s mourning. I, as someone with an anxious attachment style, did immediately get a small ping in my chest at the thought of not being able to be there or help them work through his emotions, but he’s a grown adult and this is an aspect of his personality that has come up in smaller moments before so I know there’s no way to change it. I try my best to support him regardless, giving him his space while sending gentle reminders every week that I hope they know so many people are proud of them and are here for them in every step of the process.
Cut to this month, and I’ve noticed they’ve been hanging out with some friends, many of which I’ve been introduced to quite a few times and have posted about being out and about with him multiple times, and we actually got to have a few longer conversations for a change. However, when I tried to reapproach us having a good conversation about everything or doing anything together, I get hit with “I’m on a mental health break and this is good for me” and “talking to (you) just hurts a lot more right now”. This has begun to develop a bit of an ache internally, and I thought, briefly, that maybe I also needed to have my needs met at some point. I messaged them how I’ve been feeling lately about this, and they said they wanted to “take care of (me) in the same way (I) have taken care of (them)”. When I said all I want is more time together, they stopped responded and went back to very terse “hi”, “i’m okay”, “just at work” type responses, and only if I force the conversation at all. At this point, our anniversary is coming up and I’m so certain he’s about to not say anything about it, as he already forgot to say anything on my birthday until the last second despite me asking multiple times to plan to see each other again for it. I wanna give him the benefit of the doubt in all this, but I’m beginning to fear that this is grown from a weight on his chest to an excuse to begin his self-sabotaging behaviors again and not get much pushback about it from me or our friends. I feel awful thinking this way, but I genuinely don’t know what else to do for them at this point?
EDIT FOR UPDATE:
I finally bit the bullet and told them that I think it’s for the best we don’t see each other anymore. Strangely, they started crying and talking about how happy I’ve made them and start putting themselves down. Like nose so runny they’re using their sleeves crying. And I felt nothing, not even an urge to comfort them. It just felt really sad. I think this made me open my eyes and see how pathetic all of this was. I wasted my time, and he wasted his breath trying to fix anything anymore. I think neither of us were really ready for a relationship, and I could be angry or bitter about that but I think I’m just happy I’m free of the burden of another person. Like my day isn’t controlled by whether today is gonna be a good day or not for him. I see a lot of people mention that I might need to go to therapy, and I agree. I think I realized I blend into my partners so much that it feels almost bad when they’re not present, so I’ll be working on that. Thanks reddit for finally freeing me, I honestly don’t know how far it’d go if I didn’t ask.