Dear lpkR09,

I’ve been thinking some more about your situation. Your boyfriend did take you for a ride… I mean, from the onset, he was worried about what your sister will say and insisted that she approves of your relationship, even though you said let’s take things slowly and first get to know each other better. But before you were supposed to leave to another city to your PhD studies (in June 2019), he insisted you talk again with your sister, and if you don’t get her blessing, at least get her promise that she wouldn’t be meddling in your relationship. Because, as he said, “unnecessary stress from her would keep on causing us pain“.  And if she refuses to stop meddling, he said “its best that we walk away because no amount of happiness in a relationship can mitigate stress on the personal front.”

So if your sister refuses to approve of your relationship, he was willing to call it quits with you, because he believed that the stress would be just too big for you to be able to enjoy your relationship. Here he projected his own feelings of stress onto you – it was him who wouldn’t bear the stress of not being accepted by your sister and parents, not you. You would have been fine with that, if you needed to choose.

He called you dramatic, but in fact it was him who created this whole drama of asking for approval from your sister, totally unnecessarily, and then obsessing about what will happen if she doesn’t agree. And then anticipating that she wouldn’t agree, he felt your relationship was doomed, and so he already started withdrawing. Already in April 2019 he was getting cold and not interested in talking to you much, and confessed that he almost sexted another girl. He was “tired” and “exhausted” from all the drama that he himself created!

You told him you were willing to fight for your relationship and cut off contact with your sister if necessary, but he said “please don’t, not for me“. And he said “even if we break up now you will laugh about how stupid it all was in a year.  Life changes you know and this is not important. The world is so big and we have so many things to do and see.  Love is not everything.”

It seems he’s the kind of person who gives up even before he even tried. Moreover, he sabotages himself so that there’s no chance he would succeed. He sabotaged your relationship with the unnecessary drama before it even had a chance to develop. The only reason you stayed together was because you were very tolerant about it, you agreed to “take it slow”, you overlooked his decreasing interest in you, his doubts and fears, and later, his addictions. I believe his addictions are another way he’s sabotaging himself. He’s afraid of success, afraid of love and of being loved.

When the two of you just met, end of 2018, he wanted to wait for 6 months to start a proper relationship with you, to get his act together. I believe it was because he felt unworthy of you. You mentioned he did some things in his past that he wasn’t proud of – so probably that was a part of his problem. My take is that he felt a mess and unworthy all the time. But he didn’t openly show it, but rather behaved in a way that sabotaged your relationship, sabotaged his chance with you.

You were super supportive and understanding because you wanted to believe that he’d overcome his problems… and that’s why the relationship dragged for so long. But as you said it yourself, every day was a struggle for the entire 2.5 years. He was struggling with his demons and his insecurities and was pushing you away (indirectly, with his ambivalence), and you were struggling to keep him “afloat”, to convince him that things will be better some day. You didn’t want to let go of your dream of a perfect relationship with a man you love – and you persisted for 2.5 years. Eventually, he realized he can’t give you false hopes any more, i.e. that he won’t get rid of his demons any time soon, so he told you to go for an arranged marriage (as if you were desperate to marry just anyone – so this in itself was a little bit of an under belt hit, and it hurt you).

This is my view of the dynamic between you. In any case, he’s a troubled man, and if he’s unwilling to work on his traumas, he’ll only spiral further down. You can’t be his savior, when he doesn’t even want to save himself.