Hi Treasamariam,

You’ve been in this very positive relationship for a year.  It sounds as if your boyfriend’s attitude has changed fairly recently – I am wondering why this would be.  People very rarely change from being studious/ambitious to being lazy and non-caring without there being an underlying reason.  Do you know why he has had this change of heart?

Your boyfriend is not your father.  Perhaps his expectations are not the same as yours.  If you have to ‘push’ him into becoming ambitious and ‘make’ him have a hardworking mentality, he might not be the right person for you.  Friendly, fun, caring, loyal and sincere are all extremely good qualities to possess.  Mind you don’t “push” him out of your life with your need for financial security so early on in the relationship.  Perhaps this is his way of telling you that he doesn’t share your agenda – not yet at any rate.

I suppose it’s pointless me telling you that worrying is futile.  You have your life ahead of you and it’s probably going to take all sorts of twists and turns.  The only thing that worrying will do for you is make everything seem worse than it is.  All that stress and tension in one so young!  It sounds to me as if you have a ‘beauty and the beast’ relationship – his light hearted approach attracts your stressed and worried approach.  A word of caution here – the very things that attract us initially (even sub-consciously) are the very things that drive us apart eventually.

There’s more to life than money – is there any possibility that you can change?  Looking at it from your boyfriend’s perspective, I would be very worried at the thought that I was entering into a long term commitment with a woman who wanted me to change.  If you don’t love him as he is, you don’t love him.

Peggy