Hi Michelle,

I think you hit the nail on the head earlier when you suggested that fear of being without him is what’s keeping you in your current situation.  Ending things with someone you’re emotional invested in and feel an intense, even fated, connection with can be incredibly difficult.  But remaining in a relationship where there is inequality and imbalance—where those involved have two different levels of commitment, two different sets of expectations surrounding the relationship and two very different communication styles—is much more difficult in the long-run.

I know there’s always a temptation to adopt the wait and see approach and allow things to “unfold naturally”—sometimes it feels like we’re expecting too much too soon and that we just have to take things day by day.  But I’ve noticed, with myself and friends who have been in similar romantic situations, that we often tell ourselves that when we’re holding out hope that the situation is going to change, that the other person is going to change and they will suddenly, one day, be in a position to [insert here…fulfill our needs/address their psychological wounds/say I love you/figure out what they want/etc]. We’re attached to a specific outcome, whether we realize it or not, and in the meantime that attachment has become detrimental to our current emotional and mental well-being and has prevented us from considering and being open to the wide range of other potential outcomes.  I think truly living in the moment is accepting the current realities of a relationship—the other person does not reciprocate the way I’d like them to.  They have issues that prevent them for being open in the romantic context, and that causes them to doubt and question things all the time, and this is taking a toll on my emotional (and perhaps spiritual) wellbeing.

You’ve been open and vulnerable with him, found the courage to express what you need, and that has been met with words that suggest that nothing has really changed.  Perhaps he’s made some outward progress—probably because he sensed he needed to take some actions in order to preserve the status quo and maintain a relationship that clearly has benefits for him—but inwardly, it seems he is very much the same person who you began seeing many months ago.  Change and personal growth sometimes unfolds quickly, but when one doesn’t have the drive and initiative to drive the growth oneself, change tends to unfold very slowly, if at all. And I don’t think he’s simply going to become the person who can fulfill your relationship desires  (at least as you’ve relayed them to be) anytime soon.

When you open yourself up to the present moment, you realize that the universe has given you all the information you need to make an informed decision, based on something much less heavy-feeling and limiting than fear.  When you truly rely on your intuition, and look deep within yourself in a more neutral manner that feels affirming and expansive rather than constrictive, that allows trust and faith and stillness to be the main guide instead of anxiety and constant racing thoughts,  we’re more likely find the answer.  You said you meditate, which is great…I believe it can help cut through all the fuzzy layers of thought and fear and the egoic mind that is constantly working overtime and struggling to find an answer.

You say that his actions contradict his words, but actually it seems they are very much in tune with his words.  He says he doesn’t know what he wants, that he’s ambivalent—and his actions seem to support that.  He spends time with you and takes you on dates, but doesn’t see you moving in together or having something long-term.  He doesn’t think there’s someone else out there that he’ll meet and fall in love with, but he doesn’t think you’re the one either and was on dating apps until not too long ago.  He acknowledges he has a lot of emotional wounds and mental health issues, including OCD, but hasn’t taken any concrete steps towards addressing those issues.  In a lot of ways, he’s exactly what he represents himself to be—a very confused and ambivalent person.  Do you want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t know what they want?

I agree that he probably is and will continue to be an important person for you—just probably not in the way you expected him to be. Sometimes we just have to trust that life has its own plan that we can’t quite discern in the moment because we’re just seeing one wave of the larger ocean.  The second that you stop fighting what is, and be open to what could be—which eventually reveals itself once we give it a chance to—the second I think you’ll start to make positive changes that will end this cycle of pain and hurt you seem to be in with him.