Dear Mathilde-S:

Feelings do change and flames can not continue forever. Thing is he already experienced that and so did you, neither one of you was always excited about the other, but neither you nor him thought about it much, if at all, and wasn’t alarmed by it.

Recently,  reads to me, he started thinking about it and panicked. A person panicking in this circumstance may think something like: oh, oh, I am not feeling the flames, this means I am not in  love,  oh, oh, am I stuck in a loveless relationship… I feel trapped, better get out of this!

You wrote about him earlier that he “always acts nonchalant and detached towards everyone”, including his family members. That leads me to think that he is protecting himself from too-much-closeness, that in his early relationships with his parents he was hurt and withdrew. Closeness with you recently may scare him for the same reason he was scared since childhood, to be hurt.

I wouldn’t ask him at this point regarding his childhood, if I was you, but I would ask him about whether he is scared, and if he is, rearrange your schedule and time together so that you spend less time together or have alone time while being in close proximity (you doing your thing, he doing his thing within the same location).

What do you think?

anita