I (25F) have been with my boyfriend (32M) for 5 years. He’s kind, supportive, and my best friend, but over time I’ve become exhausted by carrying almost all the responsibility in our relationship.
We’ve lived together for 4 years, and I do nearly everything around the house while also working full time. He helps, but usually only after repeated reminders. Most of his free time goes into gaming and relaxing, and I feel like once he became comfortable in the relationship, he stopped putting in effort.
I’ve tried communicating calmly, encouraging him, giving him space, and even spending 6 months abroad hoping he’d focus on personal growth. Very little changed.
The biggest crack in my trust happened when he went to Thailand for kitesurfing and met another girl. He admitted they flirted and danced together, and I later found messages where he asked to see her again while I was asleep. He claimed it wasn’t serious, but it hurt that he hid it from me.
To be fair, earlier in the relationship I also became emotionally attached to a coworker because I felt emotionally neglected. Nothing physical happened, and I told my boyfriend immediately.
The problem is that my boyfriend only changes when he thinks he might lose me. He improves temporarily, then falls back into the same behavior.
I love him deeply and can’t imagine life without him, but I’m also scared of building a future where I feel emotionally alone and responsible for everything.
I don’t know what money’s like for you two, but couple’s counseling sounds like it would be useful. Get in a room with a mediator, talk about your feelings, etc.
It could be that you’re doing things and feeling overwhelmed by them, and he literally doesn’t even know you’re doing them. I’m not saying that makes it okay, but it is the kind of thing you’ll talk about in counselling and when you’re talking through your side of the story it might shock him that these things have been going on. And then it’s on him whether or not he changes from that.
One thing that can be a common source of friction between any groups of people is different standards and thresholds. Like, how many dishes is too many dishes. It may be that while you were gone he maintained the kitchen to his standard, which worked fine for him, but that many dishes would be considered unacceptable by your standards. And so in your day to day life, you’re always the one doing dishes because when you walk by the sink you go “I should really do something about this”, and when he walks past it he might not even notice them because there are “barely any”. And then you’ve done something with them, he doesn’t notice that either, and they never get to the level where he’d feel naturally inclined to do anything. This results in you always doing dishes, without him making a conscious choice of “screw her, dishes are her job”
But, figuring that out doesn’t necessarily mean it can be solved. There could be chore rotations, like one might do between roommates, that may work for you or may not, depending on how he feels about this and how you feel about managing that. Neither of you want it to feel like nagging, but clearly waiting for natural impulse to kick in doesn’t work.
So talking through things in a controlled space can make things clearer, and there may be strategies to address these things, but ultimately if coming to meet in the middle isn’t comfortable for either of you, then it may be too much work to maintain a lifestyle together and you might have to make the painful choice to stop trying, for your own health.