Hi Lost 🙂

When I got with my boyfriend at the age of 27, I’d never properly been in love before. I’d dated, and I’d come close to loving a couple of guys, but for various reasons, I’d never gone the whole way. Partly out of self-protection, partly out of fear… then when I got with my boyfriend, everything felt so different to previous relationships. Things just flowed. I never had space to doubt him. After a few months, I found myself whispering ‘I love you’ while he slept, just to get used to the feelings and the words. Finally, I plucked up the courage to tell him. I wasn’t sure at that point how he felt – I just knew that things were good between us, and if anything were to happen and I hadn’t told him, I would feel awful. So with several false starts, and feeling pretty sick, I finally told him.

So up to that point, I guess I was similar to your bf in the scenario. And my point is – just because I’d never been in love with someone before, didn’t mean it was impossible to fall in love with my bf. I think some people take longer to let themselves open up to the vulnerability that comes with those words and emotions. It doesn’t mean we don’t feel things, or that we’re automatons!

Now, here’s the fun part. Having finally got up the nerve to ‘expose’ my love for my boyfriend. I got the awful ‘Thanks – you’re great too’ – or something to that effect. My boyfriend wasn’t ready to say it back. And as a few months went by, it struck me that he was pretty damaged from his divorce. We ended up having a serious discussion about it when I built up the courage to realise that, much as I loved him, it was soul destroying being with someone who didn’t feel the same way back. I basically told him that I understood he had fears and had been hurt before, but that if he couldn’t allow himself to be vulnerable and open up to me, our relationship was doomed. We both got a bit tearful and he told me that he was having a great time with me, and really didn’t want things to end, but that he wasn’t ready or able to say ‘I love you’ yet – and wasn’t sure when/if he would be. I thought it over and decided that at that point in time, if I ended things there and then, I would be forever kicking myself over what could have been if I’d given him time. Our relationship was great in every other way, so I gave myself a time limit. I would wait a few more months and see if anything changed. At that point, if he was still afraid to open up and love again, I would honour myself by ending things and moving on to free myself up for someone who could love open-heartedly.

I focused on the positives in the relationship, made sure we enjoyed each other, had fun, talked about important things. And a few months later I finally got an ‘I love you’. When he did say it, it meant even more to me, because I knew how much he’d had to open himself up to get to that point. These days we can both say ‘I love you’ and our relationship continues to get stronger. FYI, his first ‘I love you’ came after over a year of us being together – I guess many people wouldn’t have stuck around so long, perhaps my own issues with saying it gave me a bit more empathy!

I guess the moral of this is: love can be a scary thing for some people – especially ones who, like your BF, have been through traumatic events and lots of disruption in their life. I think sometimes, the withholding of love can itself be a subconscious test of whether the person you’re with is really a constant in your life, or if they will be put off by you not being in the same place (a dangerous test and not one I’m endorsing but perhaps comes into play sometimes). If everything else about your relationship is good right now, and you and your bf can talk in depth about your hopes/dreams etc, you would probably feel awful walking away from that. And there is no reason to right now. But I think it’s important to give yourself a limit of when that might no longer be feasible. You cannot indefinitely put your love and dreams into someone who cannot meet you on the same page. I also think it is worth having a conversation with your BF about this. He needs to know that this is important to you. He needs to decide if it’s something he wants to work on or not. And you need to be brave enough to mean it when you tell yourself (and him if needed) that you will have to walk away if he can’t offer you what you want/need emotionally.

Good luck!