TL;DR: asked my boyfriend of one year why we haven’t said “I love you” yet, he said we have “different energies” and he hasn’t “felt the urge” to say it. Am I freaking out for no reason?
Background: I’ve been dating this guy for a year as of last week. I was in a 4 year relationship before this, then single for two years, now this. I moved in with him 2 months into quarantine but then this August I moved across the country to start grad school. We’ve been doing long distance, calling most days, watching shows together. I’ve met his parents, he’s met mine, we’ve all had meals together. I thought it was relatively serious and going well, although I know that 3 years of long distance (until he finishes his MS) after 1 year together is not great.
I had to fly home for a family emergency thing this week, and while he was driving me back to the airport today i asked him if he thought it was weird that it’s been a year and we still don’t say “I love you”
I think if he said “I just don’t feel ready yet” or something like that I would have totally understood. We’re 25, we’re not super emotionally dependent the way I was in my last relationship, we kind of do our own thing and then have fun together in between. So if he doesn’t feel super intense about it I understand.
But what he said was “well, I guess I feel like we have very different energies, like on the weekends I want to get up and do stuff but you want to sleep in until 11”. I wasn’t expecting this to turn into talking about things he didn’t like about our relationship, but it did. I of course am now freaking out about this.
The end of the convo was him saying that he really likes me and he thinks that we share a lot of important values (social justice and autism advocacy stuff, and we’re both bi), he just hasn’t “felt the urge” to say he loves me yet.
He’s coming to stay with me for two weeks next month, he bought the ticket like a month ago before this last minute trip home. So I don’t think he would spend that much money and time if he didn’t like me, rationally. But maybe he’s not as serious about this relationship as I am? Maybe for him this is a fun thing, not a long term thing?
Am I totally overreacting? I promise he isn’t mean, he’s a super respectful good dude, legitimately feminist and not just for show, makes me breakfast most mornings and is just very sweet and affectionate. He’s not good at talking long term, he never wanted to talk about whether or not we would break up when I left for school, so it kinda makes sense for him to not be good expressing this sort of thing. But responding with things he didn’t like about me is weird? Maybe he felt like he needed a good reason? Ahhhh.
Is this normal? Is this a giant red flag I’m trying to explain away? I need a sanity check.
Submitted October 25, 2020 at 12:03AM by hollowHemoglobin https://ift.tt/2TqbZt2
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