I’ve been dating my boyfriend for two years and we’re a few months away from starting a long distance relationship. We’ve talked about getting engaged and while I love him a lot, I’m having a bunch of mixed feelings.

My boyfriend is great in a lot of ways. He’s very helpful, he’s very supportive, he treats me well, and I feel like I can be myself around him. I really worry that if I let him go, I won’t be able to find anyone else who will treat me as well as he does.

That being said, I’m beginning to feel bored with the relationship. My boyfriend just isn’t a very deep person and it’s really hard to have any kind of a meaningful conversation with him. When we talk or text, we tend just to talk about what we did that day. If I text him and ask him how he’s doing, he always just says he’s fine. If I ask him about his day, he usually just says that he did some homework and then tells me what he had for lunch and dinner. I am a very emotional person and I have a hard time understanding how someone could honestly feel fine all the time. I try to talk to him about my emotions but he doesn’t usually take me seriously unless I act really upset. And then he accuses me of being overemotional. I try to move our conversations beyond the simple, what did you do today, by talking to him about some of the hopes, dreams, and questions I have about the future. Whenever I try to talk about some of the deeper questions, he doesn’t really engage me. If I talk about my problems, he tries to tell me how to fix them, and if there isn’t an immediate solution, he tells me I’m being too hard to cheer up. He really seems to think people should be happy all of the time and that all problems can be solved immediately or will go away on their own. I try to confront him about concerns I have about doing long distance but he just assumes everything will be fine. I try to engage him by talking to him about science (what he studies), politics, anything, and all I’ll get is single word replies. Or he’ll try to challenge me by questioning if I really know what I’m talking about. Even if I’m repeating something my professor said in class or saying something about my career path (which is not his career path), sometimes he’ll just assume I don’t know what I’m talking about. He rarely starts up any conversations himself.

I worry that I’m taking him for granted or that I’m unintentionally trying to find things wrong in our relationship because I’ve done long distance before and it didn’t work out and maybe I’m trying to save myself from future hurt. I really want this relationship to work with him but I really do feel like it’s impossible to have a meaningful conversation with him. I don’t know how to get him to listen to me or to take me seriously. I want him to be happy but his inability to express any emotion other than being fine makes me feel like I’m dating a robot. And his inability to relate to my own emotions is downright frustrating. I want to be with someone I can enjoy talking to that can emotionally support me and that I can emotionally support. I want to date someone who would try to be interested in what I have to say most of the time . That’s what I try to do for my boyfriend anyway. But I also don’t want to throw away a good thing. I really am confused about what to do.