Hi Bun,

I feel like I can relate quite a lot to your situation. I am with my current boyfriend for 1.5 years. At first, I felt exactly like you – that he didn’t match my ‘successful’ lifestyle, he couldn’t afford to take me places, he didn’t fit in with my friends and was immature. And I think this unspoken arrogance I had was sensed by him for sure, because a year into our relationship he cheated, which I never thought in a million years would be possible.

I ended it at first, but in the end we spoke and the floodgates opened. He admitted he was depressed, stressed and struggling in life. He was stuck in a dead-end job and for entire year I knew him he said he wanted to change careers but he didn’t do anything about it. It would have easy for me to mark it off as him being lazy. But when you truly understand people, you realise that nobody is lazy, just uninspired.

He started going to therapy to work through his issues and was in fact diagnosed with ADHD. Things started to make sense and it made me realise that its not always what is on the surface, there is so much beneath the surface and now I have made a choice to be more understanding and give love unconditionally.

I think you are scared of committing to him because you think you can do better, which isn’t a bad thing but nobody is perfect, and its very much worth it to work through issues together. I think this generation of dating culture always teaches us to strive, never settle, ‘you deserve the best’, but if you keep thinking like this you will keep chasing something unattainable. I believe the message of, ‘don’t give up so easy with people, work through things if you truly care about someone, dig deep to understand someone who deserves to be understood’ should be message to each other.

I hope that helps.

xxx