I can't believe that I have never thought of posting on a site like this before. This seems like a great site and I hope to get some good feedback on my problematic relationship and offer my advice where I can.... I have always been the person that people come to for advice and now I am in desperate need of my own...
My relationship problems are rather complex and I believe that they are plentiful in number, beginning from the very start of it.... after three years I stand baffled on problems with my boyfriend and have exhausted so much time and energy into my relationship with him that I feel lost with no solution in sight. This will not be an easy post to address, I have so many issues and questions. If you get through this post and can help with even one part, I would appreciate it so much.
I had always been a very solitary and independent person. The relationships that I valued most were with my family and friends. I never really felt the desire to seek out anything deeper or romantic because I honestly did not need them. I felt complete with the ones I had. I offered a great friendship but I was standoffish with people who wanted to date me. For my friends and family, this was odd and for people who showed interest in dating me, I came off cold. I have always been odd and reclusive though and I was happy.
I met Daniel in one of my high school art classes. I would help him with different projects and we hung out outside of class later when we started to get to know each other. From the very beginning I knew that he liked me. I recognized it and knew what happens when it goes on unaddressed because of previous friendships so I told him that I was not interested in a relationship with him but would really like to be friends. He has always been clever and smart, he would always tell me that he was going to win me over. I moved to be with my family during hard times after I got out of high school and returned after a year for college. We stayed in moderate touch in between then and when I came back we were friends again. We spent almost every day together. The whole time he was still desirous of me and I found him charming and sweet, he had become my best friend. There were a lot of things about him though that made me believe that I could not date him. This first problem still remains part of our problems today We come from very different economic backgrounds. His family has a lot of money and both of his parents are very doting and compassionate with him. Giving him all his cars, spending money so that he never needs a job, pays for his school and rent, throws parties for his birthdays where all the family comes and expresses their love for him, accommodates him in every way... I on the other hand, have had almost the complete opposite. My parents were extremely young and poor when they had me. I have 6 brothers. My parents never valued education and went though very little schooling themselves. When I was fourteen, my mother left my father, all of my little brothers, and me. I spent most of my teenage years working as the mother of the house, thrown into replacing what she was to us. My father worked all day and night and we barely saw him. I understood that he had to work a lot to keep all of us clothed and alive. He had me get a part-time job at 15 and start helping with the bills. I also had the job of caring for my brothers. I went shopping and cooked all the meals, did all the laundry, helped with all the school work as well as doing my own and did school meetings with teachers and drove them to and from school long before I should have ever had a license. I also had the hard task of raising them morally, teaching them right form wrong, how to treat themselves and others, to value education and art ect, ect.. My father was always too embarrassed to thank me for the help I gave, only recently has he done this. But I went though many years without it. My mother and I have no contact and I dealt/deal with a lot of abandonment issues over her.
Now the problem that this posed for Daniel and I is in how it shaped our values... Because he has always been given everything in his life, he was incredibly ungrateful. When I met him, he had already gone though 3 cars and I had never owned one. He never thanked his parents for the things they gave and did for him and I could not relate to that. He has never know labor and has no work ethic which I believe is very important to human character. Before we were dating, it was just sad to me but never really bothered me like it did when we got together.
I remember the first time I acknowledged that I had feelings for Daniel. His parents had bought him a trip to Europe when he graduated high school and this is the time where we were spending a lot of our time together. When he was gone I missed him. And this was in a way I had never felt before. It was so alien to me, I thought about him all the time, it was a wonderful refective longing. He was gone for two weeks and I thought about him all the time. After he came back, I told him how I felt and we decided to date. I lived with a crappy roommate at the time and we were always together so we decided to get a place together. A lot of our problems begin right there.
His parents paid for his part of the rent and other bills while I went to work for my part and saved for school. This got old really fast and I felt like he was not doing anything to contribute to the economic unity of our relationship. When I expressed that I wanted him to get a job and help me, he said that he would. He made excuses constantly, worked on his resume for months. And two years later, still never got a job. It turned into that his parents wanted him to focus on school and he was okay with that. I feel like that is good for him, I wish I had that comfort really. But where does that leave us?
While living together, I stated to have emotional affairs with other people. I spoke to friends about how I felt so distant from him and how I couldn't relate. I called him lazy. Everyone was shocked on what a rut I was in over him as it was not like me to be so hung up over someone and their advice was often that we were too different to be together. I started to spend all of my free time away from home and stopped expressing things that bothered me to him. He had always been weary of other friends I had, saying that I was so much happier when I was with them and in his opinion, I was too close too them. It really hurt that I had more in common with my friends then my lover and that I desired their company over his. This distance drove us to a lot of trust issues and he started disapproving of all of my friendships.This really messed with our social lives and we almost completely isolated ourselves from friends trying to get things right with each other. Currently, we have no mutual friends and little personal friends... we both hate this and wish that we could know people together.
I moved out because I was miserable and I could tell that he was too. I want to point out that I never felt that I loved him any less through this. We always shared wonderful platonic love and a very beautiful and passionate sex life. These are the two pillars that stand for our love today.
When I moved out we "broke up" but really only in the social sense because we are still seeing each other and sleeping together. But now now we use not dating as way of excusing ourselves from each other when things get to hard to deal with. We have both done this and it is really painful in that it doesn't ever really resolve anything and often adds to the distance we both feel. We keep saying that we will work on things so that we can be together again but this just seems like some kind of crazy head game that is not geting better. What kind of distance is appropriate? How can we work on being together while we are apart? How can we be apart when we are always together?
Not living together eased up a lot of our problems but did not make any completely go away. He still has problems with my friends and has told me that unless I stopped seeing some of them, that we would never be together. The major one is my current roommate. He is a wonderful person and a great friend. But because we met online though a friend/dating site, Daniel really hates that I know and live with him. My roommate and I have never been romantically involved in any way. I am confidant that our relationship is healthy and not wrong. I will not surrender this friendship, no matter how this goes with Daniel. I really don't think its fair to put these types of childish ultimatums on relationships. I have really tried to get him to understand this but am only met with anger. How can I get him to realize that this is not right and to try and share this friendship that I have as it is very important to our relationship?
When we fight now, it is often triggered by small things that erupt and I feel so frustrated in the aftermath because our arguments start so petty. When things are not good with him, I suffer in all other aspects of my life. I can't sleep well, I am down at work, I can't concentrate at school, I am miserable when we are not in good standings with each other. Nothing else compares to this desire. I can't understand it as I have really never felt anything like it before. Is is unhealthy to need this so badly?
We communicate well in a lot of ways, better than ever before. I realized how wrong it was to use his wealth as a way to degrade his character. I would often tease him for never earning anything in his life. Place myself higher then him for the struggles I endured in my life which made me stronger. Of course this was out of our control and to use that to make him feel small was completely wrong of me. Sometimes I still struggle with this. It has become more internal now though, with me feeling that we are worlds apart when it comes to goals and everyday worries and commitments. We have become better at forgiveness and have grown a lot as individuals. I feel that he has become more appreciative of his life and he has grown more kind and compassionate. It was both beautiful and painful to witness the transformation. I have learned what love is. I never knew anything like this until Daniel and I were together. I want nothing more then to see though this with him and we share this feeling. We both want to be each others life long partner. What can I/he/we do now? I feel we have platonic, romantic, and sexual love, what are we doing wrong?
If you got though all this, I thank you. If you can give me some advice, I implore you. Thank you for your time and consideration. I am eager to hear what can be said for me.
muse
