Dear Lara:

Welcome back to your thread. On July 15 you shared about this man: “when we moved in together, he suddenly changed.. He became cold, preoccupied with something he wouldn’t talk about, uninterested, would distance himself physically and emotionally, stopped telling me how much he liked me.. He used to be the kindest person, very attentive, very loving and affectionate”. You talked to him about it and he told you that he was “feeling so stressed and overwhelmed” regarding matters not related to you, and that he will change, and he changed, “He became affectionate and loving again”.

About three weeks later, you shared today: “I asked him about his feelings for me.. He first joked around the question and then said that he cares deeply about me because I’m amazing”. You figured that he doesn’t love you because he didn’t say that he does (“So I guess I got my answer about whether he loves me or not”).

You also shared that before you left North America back to Europe, you had an amazing last week together with him, “He has been his best self, always supportive, patient, willing to accommodate all my wishes, doing everything he could do to make me happy even when he was exhausted. Why did he do that?”, you asked.

You shared: “he is super sweet and smiling with me but always pretty bad with waiters, salesperson, cashiers.. He never smiles, is barely polite, always cold… I don’t understand why he treats other people like that when he can be so warm and nice with me”.

“He would get a passport done and would come to visit me in 3 months, but I kind of doubt he is going to do it. And we don’t have much to say to each other when we call… I’m really lost”.

These are my thoughts this morning (my time, North America): I think that he is likely to travel and visit you like he said he will, so be prepared that he intends to do that, just like he said he will. I think that he does love you as much as he can love a woman, that he doesn’t feel comfortable saying the words or otherwise, talk about his feelings, but he does feel love for you and is serious about you. The fact that “he was doing everything he could do to  make (you) happy even when he was exhausted” during the last week you were together, is evident of his love for you.

But- there is a big But here: he is not naturally inclined on a regular basis to be attentive, affectionate etc. If he is distressed in life, his inclination is to withdraw. Also, if a person is not important to him (waiters, cashiers, etc.) his inclination is not at all to be attentive and affectionate, his inclination to be these things with people who are not important to him is zero percent.

What all this means is that you can rely on him to be attentive and affectionate toward you only in the limited times that he feels this way for you, or when you bring it to his attention. Again and again, he will go back to being inattentive and cold with you because of life challenges or because he forgets to try hard.

I am guessing that he was as attentive as he was to you, and that he tried really hard to please you during that last week you spent together, because he knew he had to work that hard only for one week. Like I suggested to you in July, I don’t think that he is a bad person. I think that he has trouble with his emotions, with expressing his emotions, that his strong inclination, or tendency is to withdraw- from you and from everyone, and therefore the best you can expect from him is that he will be very affectionate and very attentive toward you for limited periods of time with long stretches of cold withdrawal.

What do you think about my thoughts this morning?

anita