Thank you, Anita.

What I meant is that he has a very stable, unshakeable, unmovable spirit. He is independent and emotionally sturdy like no person I have ever met before. He is usually bright and cheery, and totally level-headed. When I am feeling anxious and extremely stressed about my demanding life and goals, this is a great comfort to me (when we’re together). He has immense patience and never seems to feel the need to rush anything, ever. It sometimes calms me and gives me confidence, sometimes causes me great distress not being able to have him somewhere on time. Examples that come to mind are showing up with eggs as planned so the cornbread could be done on time for Thanksgiving dinner, and being half an hour late to meet my older brother for the first time. When we’re not together and I can’t reach him, I feel as though he doesn’t recognize any urgency I am trying to communicate, so it serves as a source of disconnectedness. He almost never answers the phone if I call. I feel disrespected as a result, too.

We don’t live together yet, but we are supposed to move abroad together in a couple of months for my job. We see each other for 1-2 days/nights every weekend, and sometimes 1-maybe 2 times during the week. He is always delighted to see me, and everyone knows how in love he is. It’s plain to see. He is very affectionate, always paying attention to me, always playfully bragging about me to my friends and complimenting me for my intelligence, ambition, little successes, looks, whatever it is he likes. We share almost all of our interests and core values, and have the same priorities and goals for our future together. He wants to get married and have kids in the next years, we’ve talked about it several times.

But unfortunately, yes, as you said, “on his own timing, his own chosen place and time? Not when you are waiting for him, not when and where you need him?”. He works a lot (as do I) and is also dealing with some legal issues that are very time consuming (but not his fault). So what little time we spend together is doing things I planned or else sitting around watching Netflix, and for example, even though he’s close to his mother and sees her every couple of weeks, he doesn’t make an effort to bring her and me together or get her to accept me. I met her twice, and we’re supposed to move away soon. He says there’s no reason for me to worry about that but I feel rejected by her lack of interest too; another thing that I said hurts me that he hasn’t made any effort to change.

Their culture is rather cold, and I do think they’re just being how they are. It’s inconsiderate and it hurts me, and it doesn’t seem to change although he keeps saying it will, that it takes time. I love many things about him and am working on loving myself and being totally self-sufficient without having lingering sadness anyway. My plan is to see how it goes when we move abroad, how he responds to living in another country, far from his mother for example. But right now his behavior keeps making me feel panicked and unloved, and I am fairly sure that if something terrible happened and he were busy, I wouldn’t be able to reach him. I feel as though I’m being uncaring towards myself for tolerating a person who makes me feel that way. But I love him so much and I don’t want to break up over one (albeit big) issue.

Sorry for being so wordy again.