Boyfriend is not as motivated and ambitious as me

[Zanetka]

Hi everyone,

 

My boyfriend and I are 21 years old. I'm very ambitious, hardworking and I enjoy planning out my future and achieving my goals. Im currently in university and have been working almost full time every year. I dont do it only for money, but its because of my personality.. Im a go getter, it makes me feel important and busy.

 

My boyfriend has always been alittle different.. he lacks motivation sometimes and has a history of depression and some insecurities which often results in him giving up easily and becoming overwhelmed. He had top marks in highschool, but dropped out of University in Dec 2012.. and has been working part time for his dad since. He hasn't really shown any sign of wanting to try any type of schooling or getting a full time job. He doesnt have alot of work experience, so even getting a part time job hasnt been easy.

 

I have been very frustrated inside for many months... He hasnt been doing anything too productive since Dec 2012 and Im going crazy. Im getting resentful... I have told him to work on his future. I have given him mannnyyyyyy suggestions about colleges, universities, tradeschools, courses, jobs, etc. He would be perfectly comfortable taking another year off to think and "wait" for an epiphany!

 

How do you motivate someone? Honestly, Im getting so worked up inside... I hate watching him sleep in, work for 2-3 hours a day, go on trips, drive his parents car, eat their food and then complain that Im a bad girlfriend because I work full time and my schedule sucks.

 

He is a wonderful person, very loving and caring and we have been through a lot in the past 4 years, but I have goals and if Im almost done university and ready to buy a house.. and he's got no savings, almost no real job, and no education.. I will be a very frustrated person... I dont want to end up being his ''sponsor'' or the breadwinner five years from now...

 

Help!!

[abitbroken]

You can't motivate someone. You need to accept that he will do something only when he is ready, and is content at working part time with his dad. Is it a role where he would step into dad's business and take over someday? Having a high le level job doesn't make him feel important and busy.

 

 

If that is not what you want, then you need to find someone else. But he is not defective. He is just not what you want. He might be right for someone else. Don't browbeat him or shove college course books in front of him - either accept him or reject him.

 

He may change someday - but right now he lives at home with his folks and works with his dad and enjoys what they have.

[Captain Obvious]

Maybe he is just not the right person for you.

[Capricorn3]

I just see incompatibility. I don't see this working out in the long run. Maybe time to rethink the relationship?

[SilverFactory]

I dont want to end up being his ''sponsor'' or the breadwinner five years from now...

 

Would you be ok if he is the breadwinner five years from now?

[Zanetka]

Would you be ok if he is the breadwinner five years from now?

 

No, Im naturally competitive and not working wouldnt be an option. But if Im working my absolute hardest and he is too, and one of us ends up making more money than the other, I'll be okay with that.

[Moontiger]

I dated a guy like this. Such a nice guy...but no drive. I had to make a choice. Either I accepted him the way he was or I accepted that I wanted something different in a relationship. That's all you have to do.

[hopefully]

Just because some people choose not to exhaust themselves chasing after superficial material possessions or social power does not mean that they are not motivated or that they are losers. It just means that they have different values.

[Clio]

My boyfriend has always been alittle different..

 

So you knew from the start where you were getting into and you chose to go ahead...And then you seem to have turned him into a project...

 

People mature at different paces and that's OK. At 21, he is still young and it is not unheard of not to know what he wants to do as a career. Plus, some people feel important by being 'go getters' while some people feel important by being 'loving and caring' to the people they love. Just because your idea of 'success' and happiness is different from an other's, that doesn't mean that you are better/more 'important' than them, just different. He grew up in a different environment than you that made him who he is. The last thing he (or anyone for that matter) needs is a partner making him feel bad about who he is. You need to either accept him as he is or let him go. Like he does for you. 'Go getters' are not that fun to be with you know... Being with a person who are often not around because they are always chasing after some goal and are imposing their standards on their partner can be pretty exhausting. He is probably making some compromises of his own in order to be with you...

 

My advice to you is to talk to him extensively about your concerns. Tell him what you wrote here. Tell him about your goals regarding buying a house, cohabiting, whatever, your timeline (e.g. where you would want yourselves be in 2 years or whatever) and clarify whether he would be willing to sign in for such a common project and how he sees himself contributing to it. Based on the answers you get, you can then chose your next steps.

[nutbrownhare]

You can never, ever change another person into something they aren't - though you can cause yourself a lot of frustration, and them a lot of pain while you try. You need to decide whether his kind, caring nature is enough for you to want to stay with him.

 

It might also be useful to reflect that he is very unlikely to change in the face of pressure from you - any more than you've toned down your 'go-getting' because he's told you you're a bad girlfriend and that your schedule sucks. We all like to feel that we're in charge of our own lives, no matter what a hash-up we appear to be making of it - and that includes him. Even if he were to pull himself together to please you, unless his motivation came from within, this would not last very long.

 

You could try backing off, not nagging him or trying to manage and control him, and put the energy you're currently putting into telling HIM what to do into something that would enrich your own life. Workaholism is as much of an addiction as addiction to any drug - though it tends to be culturally sanctioned rather than seen as such. It still serves the function of staving off low self esteem and a host of other uncomfortable feelings, and will stand in the way of rewarding relationships. Your statement 'I'm a go getter, it makes me feel important and busy' makes me wonder about that; would you feel like a worthwhile person if you didn't work so hard?

 

Also, if you're at university you are probably surrounded by people who are ambitious and hard working. Do you find any of them attractive? Do you know anyone who's actually doing, or preparing to do, all the things you want your fella to do? Again, this is just a guess, but I'm guessing that you probably wouldn't be that interested in someone who was already fine as they are, and didn't 'need' you to fix and motivate them.

 

If you back off and let him do his own thing, he may get his act together because he doesn't feel pushed - he may not. You have no control either way, and you need either to move on from this relationship or let yourself feel content with things the way they are. In your current situation you are causing yourself a lot of stress which will not only affect your studies and your plans - but ultimately your physical health too.

 

Good luck with all this!

[aseeker]

My ex was a bit like your boyfriend, except he complained a lot about his current situation, which meant he was unhappy. So I decided to try and help him. He was fresh out of high school, no ideas of going to college, only of joining the military. But he needed an eye surgery first, and no money, so he started looking for jobs. No one accepted him and he didn't actually look very hard. He wanted specific jobs for which he had no qualifications for, and whichever job he found seemed to be sketchy enough for him to give up.

 

I was in college, just like you, and we saw each other once a week. I grew frustrated too, just like you, and told him many times he should look harder for something, anything, if he wasn't happy with his situation. But he just had no motivation, was depressed, and liked to play games all day. Rarely went out because he had no money, but he didn't save up any either, and when he did, he spent it on stupid things like cigarrettes. But he and your bf are in different situations: yours seems perfectly ok with his life right now, it's you who are unsatisfied.

 

My ex and I are not together for 4 months now. I do feel guilty for pressuring him and trying to help him so much before, because it probably stressed him out and made me look like a resentful . That's not what I planned on being at all. I had backed off in the last few months, which I guess made him think I didn't care anymore - and was way worse than caring... It's a tough choice. In my case, he didn't lack ambition (he had too much of it), he just wanted everything to come easy to him without much effort. And that wasn't going to happen. The fact that he had no money meant I was the one always coming to visit him, among other things. It was exhausting and unproductive and we were in way too different pages to be able to work out. But I'm not as ambitious and motivated as you say you are. I was probably less ambitious than my ex. I just worked harder to be able to get an education (had to get good grades for a scholarship) and help my parents; I had to. But I don't ambition anything and am as motivated as a fly.

 

So, for the sake of living and let live, just help him if he seeks for your help. Don't go and shove opportunities in his face to make yourself feel useful and caring. It's not your place. He has to go and get his chances himself. He would just feel frustrated if he got a job because of you, much like he got with his dad. No self credit, no fulfillment. That's not what you want him to feel, right? So let it go. You say he's loving and caring, and he probably feels you're neglecting him over your goals. It frustrates him too. You either need to accept the way he is or move on to someone with the same drive as you. But then don't complain you're never together and that he doesn't care enough. You chose someone who has goals besides the relationship.

[shes2smart]

You're not his mother, his boss, his coach or Tony Robbins. But it sure sounds like you're acting like all those things rolled into one.

 

If he has had a depression diagnosis, it's quite possible that what he's doing is all he's capable of for the moment. Untreated/unmanaged depression can make it difficult to even get out of bed, shower and dress everyday...as it can all seem rather pointless. If you don't understand that and have never experienced it, be thankful, then wrap your head around the fact that some people wrestle with that throughout their entire lives.

 

Have you considered changing anything about yourself here? Like maybe accepting that not everyone is going to have the same level of drive/ambition as you and giving them enough space to be who they are without your judgment or input? Or maybe deciding that you could benefit from slowing down a little and not stuffing your schedule so full of things targeted toward making you feel "important and busy?" I see so many people on here run into snags with their SO and they put so much focus on what their SO needs to change that they totally miss the fact that the only person they can change is themselves. Oh, sure you can have discussions, make compromises, even make ultimatums....but, really, you cannot change another person you can only change yourself.

 

Oh, sure, you can keep trying to find some way to motivate him and live up to whatever standards you think he should be living up to....but in the end, your options will likely boil down to 2 basic options:

 

1. Accept him as he is, where he is, right now....as if he will never change.

2. Decide you cannot do or don't want to do option 1, and find another Type A who'd be a better fit for you.

[lavenderdove]

OK, I was married to someone like this for 8 years and of course he never changed. He was always 'gearing up' but never accomplished anything. He was perfectly happy to live off of someone else's efforts financially (parents, sibling, or me) as long as he had cable TV and a roof over his head.

 

Eventually i totally lost respect for him because any effort he exerted was totally into 'fun' for himself. He had energy and drive when it was seeking something HE wanted (i.e., a trip to the superbowl, hanging out with his buddies or brothers) but he never saw any real obligation to be an adult and support himself and do anything other than whine and coast thru life. But people who coast thru life ARE dependent on other people financing their ability to do so because nobody can live on a 2 hour a day job unless someone else feeds, clothes, houses them.

 

So I think you want a real partner and he wants to stay a big kid. Some people do grow out of it, but frankly over my life I have observed that people who prefer this kind of life at 21, will still prefer it at 41. What they do rather than seeking to improve themselves via their own efforts, they instead put their efforts into cultivating someone else to take care of them. In my case, before me my ex was living with his sister or brother or parents while they supported him with plenty of talk about what he was going to do in future (but never did). Then i believed that his status was 'just temporary' as he spun it for me, and I married him (too quickly) and ended up being his 'caretaker' for 8 years. When i dumped him, he immediately latched onto another woman and he sponged off her for 14 years. Then when she got fed up and booted him, he ended up living in his brother's basement yet again.

 

So lazy/aimless people supoprt themselves by getting someone else to do it for them. That is what your BF is doing. He wants to skim the cream of life without putting the effort into anything and just wants to have 'fun' and no responsibilities.

 

I would say wholeheartedly that you need to break up with him, and make a point of telling him why, that you want a partner and don't want him to live his life as a teenager living with you as his 'Mommy'. He'll either straighten up really quickly if he wants to be your equal, or he'll just wander off to the next GF who will be content to support a slacker.

[lavenderdove]

btw, re: the 'depressed' self diagnosis, my ex tried that too. He was only 'depressed' when he had to work and perfectly happy/gleeful when he was pursuing fun activities he wanted to do. He tried to use 'depression' as an excuse for not working. I insisted he go in for treatment and get diagnosed when this continued to drag on, and basically 2 different people (a counselor and then a psychiatrist) diagnosed that he DIDN"T have depression, he was just chronically immature and didn't want to grow up.

 

He even convinced the shrink to give him strong tranquilizers for a while on the supposition that he had an 'anxious depression' and that tranquilizers who help him function and get/hold a job, but the shrink eventually figured out he was just having a whole lot of fun with 'legal' drugs that the shrink was providing while he watched sports on TV all day and had no responsibility at all. So the shrink cut him off the fun drugs after about 8 months which really pissed off my ex. When i left the ex, the shrink also told him he understood exactly why i left him, that i was tired of taking care of him. So he quit the shrink when the shrink no longer provided him with drugs and told him it was time to try to grow up. He never did either, just went looking for the next person to take care of him whenever the prior one got fed up and booted him!

 

So lots of slackers claim they are depressed because illness is 'sacrosanct' and we don't want to appear unsympathethic or 'mean' about it. But many times they are just lazy, not depressed. One way to tell that is if they are fine and happy when getting their own way and doing 'fun' things, but depressed whenever you ask them to do anything they don't want to do or work. That's not depression because true depression colors EVERYTHING and can and will be fixed with proper treatment. Most genuinely depressed people hate to feel that way and want to improve and live a normal life so they do try and they do seek treatment and they do want to succeed and hold down jobs. While slackers just latch onto that idea they are depressed as an excuse to buy them time and space to goof off and avoid responsibility.

 

Another sign you may have a slacker on your hands is when they refuse to seek treatment. They are not really depressed and they don't want to be 'cured' because then they don't have an excuse to slack anymore. So they frequently will just keep slacking, while refusing to actually get treated or go to the doctor to fix it.

 

My ex's 'depression' was nothing more than a whole lot of pouting like a 5 year old when he didn't get his way or when someone expected him to act like an adult and get a job and shoulder his own burdens as an adult. But as gleeful as a 5 year old with a plate of cookies whenever he was doing things HE wanted to do like watching sports, 'hanging out', NOT working.

[shes2smart]

Another sign you may have a slacker on your hands is when they refuse to seek treatment. They are not really depressed and they don't want to be 'cured' because then they don't have an excuse to slack anymore. So they frequently will just keep slacking, while refusing to actually get treated or go to the doctor to fix it.

 

As someone who has dealt with whacked-out brain chemistry my entire life, I agree with this. Seems like I've spent huge amounts of time, energy and money trying all manner of things to manage it because untreated/unmanaged life is pretty much unbearable.