MusicalRose
Member
*WARNING HUGE POST*
Hey Everybody,
I've introduced myself so some of you may know a little bit about my situation at the moment. I (23) am a female in a V relationship with two males with me as the hinge. My fiance (R, 26) and I have been together for almost 4 years. My boyfriend (D, 23) and I have been involved for about a year and dating officially for about 9 months.
R and I started our relationship open, but closed it after a while when it became obvious to us that he wasn't really prepared for me to be involved with others while involved with him. We opened and closed a few times, before finally opening up for good about 2 1/2 years ago.
Neither of us really had many other connections outside our relationship for a while. R had some hookups that didn't really turn into anything emotional, and I didn't really do much besides kissing and dancing with people at clubs. When I met D, we fell pretty quickly into something more akin to a relationship and he was the first new person I had intercourse with outside my relationship with R. There was a lot of struggle on R's end to accept this, but ultimately he has accepted it and we recently have moved into an apartment big enough for the three of us to share at the beginning of last month.
Now D, before I met him, was struggling with a lot of personal responsibility issues. He had just graduated from college and was having trouble adjusting to his 8-5 work schedule. He would frequently pull all nighters playing video games or only get three or four hours of sleep most nights. Many times, he would oversleep his alarm and go in late to work or take PTO at the last minute because he just didn't want to go in. He had also had an OVI (new term for DUI I guess) before I met him. He was still struggling a bit with a relationship of his that had ended months before.
I didn't learn many of these things until I had already formed quite an emotional bond with him, but at some point I told him that I needed to be with someone who wasn't quite so self-destructive, and that if his behaviors continued I didn't think I had the emotional strength and energy to continue our relationship. Shortly after that, he found out his ex that he had been still struggling with had gotten engaged to someone else, and went out drinking that night, and came home with a second OVI.
After that night, he seemed to come around a little bit and losing his license with this second OVI (he didn't lose it the first time on some technicality) seemed to be a wake-up call for him. His family lives in another city a few hours away, and this made it impossible for him to go visit them like he was used to doing. He started going to bed on time and making it into work. He started biking to work instead of relying on other people to give him rides. He even decided to stop smoking cigarettes.
So I guess his work habits have improved, he has mostly successfully given up smoking (sometimes he still has some when drinking) and he has been getting appropriate amounts of sleep.
I guess lately I've just started to realize that the problems run deeper than that. On a very fundamental level, he has never learned to be personally responsible for himself. He suffers from some pretty severe mood swings, and when these happen, he shuts me and R out and just plays video games all the time. He was seeing a psychologist for a while, but our new apartment is too far away for him to bike there, and he now relies on me and R for rides to work as well because of the new apartment's location. So it is difficult to find a way to make rides work for him to have these appointments, especially since he already has a chiropractor he needs to see once a week as well.
I'm not really sure how to help him with his depressions and anxieties. He still has a number of really unhealthy lifestyle choices that I can tell contribute to his mood swings. He still has a caffeine addiction, and will frequently drink pop as late as 9 or 10 at night. He doesn't exercise. He just sits at his desk and plays video games all day. He tries to say that he will try to work on exercise or meditation to help calm himself, but he never remembers to do it and is now in the mode of wanting to do it himself, and if I try to remind him he gets irritable. He still doesn't remember. On Tuesday I talked to him about what he wanted to do to try to get himself feeling better, and he said he really wanted to start exercising on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and he wrote that down as something that he wanted to do for himself. Well, yesterday he came right home and sat down on the computer and completely forgot, the very first day he was supposed to start his new exercise habits.
The forgetfulness extends to things beyond just his own personal habits though. He will frequently spend more money than he has and me and R have to pick up the tab for him. He pays us back, but sometimes unexpected expenses like that can hit at really bad times. He forgets about appointments or events he has to be at, and won't tell us until the last minute that he needs us to take him there. I feel like he is just constantly on autopilot, and is NEVER present in his own life.
And between the two of us, now his mood swings are starting to impact our relationship pretty heavily. While in the midst of NRE, he and I would text each other pretty frequently and we had a pretty active sexual life. This was important to me because I have a very high sex drive and R and I just haven't been as active with each other (fairly mutual, we have different tastes and just don't have as high a drive for each other). D and I also started exploring some more BDSM concepts (which he actually initiated to begin with) that I found I REALLY liked. His mood swings have killed the mood for any of it entirely. His sex drive is even lower than R's at the moment and I have been left feeling rejected many times.
Lately, I feel like I just haven't been connecting to D at all. We don't talk much anymore in general. We don't connect physically. Much of our conversation is him talking about how he has just been "feeling out of it" or "not feeling like himself" or "feeling anxious" and me trying to get him to talk to me about the specifics of why he feels that way and him just clamming up. He doesn't even want to do the mental legwork to find out why he is upset. He doesn't want to do any of the actual legwork to make him feel better, like making better habits or trying to go to the doctor. He says he wants me to help him, but then he fights me tooth and nail and doesn't put any effort into fixing it or carrying any of his own weight. I have to be the one to get him to talk about it, to try to come up with all the possible solution ideas, to get him to choose one, and then to get him to remember it and actually do it.
I'm getting exhausted, and I'm starting to doubt our relationship. This is scary for me because we JUST moved in together, and he is truly dependent on us now until March, when he gets his license back.
I guess my problem is, I've seen him make a lot of improvements over the past few months. He really has drastically improved his work and sleep habits. He gave up smoking, and he went through a few periods where he was really positive and motivated (this is when he really tried doing breathing and meditation as well). I don't know if maybe I'm just not being patient enough and I just need to wait this phase out, but then again, if these phases keep happening I don't know if I can handle the toll they take. I don't mind supporting someone through rough times, but when he is in these times, he gets really unpleasant and recalcitrant and self-pitying and it is damn near impossible to get him to come out of it. He digs his heels in and refuses to do anything to get out of them.
Another thing I'm worried about is that if I try for us to take a break or give myself some space, that it will send him into a tailspin. He seems really emotionally fragile at the moment, and he is terrible at handling stressful situations without backsliding into his really ugly self-destructive behaviors (usually starts with drinking too much and then leads to him smoking more cigarettes and staying up later and lots of other shit in general).
I guess I'm just hoping someone can give me some perspective. I don't know if I'm overreacting to this latest mood swing, or if there is a serious problem here. I don't know if he really ever will take charge of his life and get it on track without the threat of something being taken away from him or something actually really bad happening to him (losing his license, the fear that our relationship might end, the fear of him losing his job). I'm starting to wonder if I got lost in NRE and that he and I really aren't all that compatible. When he hits his high points, I truly see his potential to be the person I thought I fell in love with, but I'm starting to wonder if he'll never stabilize and will just keep swinging in and out of these high and low points.
Sorry I know this is an insanely long post. I just wanted to give as much information as possible and hopefully someone can see something in here that I'm not seeing, or help me on the process to puzzling it out. How long is too long to wait him out?
Hey Everybody,
I've introduced myself so some of you may know a little bit about my situation at the moment. I (23) am a female in a V relationship with two males with me as the hinge. My fiance (R, 26) and I have been together for almost 4 years. My boyfriend (D, 23) and I have been involved for about a year and dating officially for about 9 months.
R and I started our relationship open, but closed it after a while when it became obvious to us that he wasn't really prepared for me to be involved with others while involved with him. We opened and closed a few times, before finally opening up for good about 2 1/2 years ago.
Neither of us really had many other connections outside our relationship for a while. R had some hookups that didn't really turn into anything emotional, and I didn't really do much besides kissing and dancing with people at clubs. When I met D, we fell pretty quickly into something more akin to a relationship and he was the first new person I had intercourse with outside my relationship with R. There was a lot of struggle on R's end to accept this, but ultimately he has accepted it and we recently have moved into an apartment big enough for the three of us to share at the beginning of last month.
Now D, before I met him, was struggling with a lot of personal responsibility issues. He had just graduated from college and was having trouble adjusting to his 8-5 work schedule. He would frequently pull all nighters playing video games or only get three or four hours of sleep most nights. Many times, he would oversleep his alarm and go in late to work or take PTO at the last minute because he just didn't want to go in. He had also had an OVI (new term for DUI I guess) before I met him. He was still struggling a bit with a relationship of his that had ended months before.
I didn't learn many of these things until I had already formed quite an emotional bond with him, but at some point I told him that I needed to be with someone who wasn't quite so self-destructive, and that if his behaviors continued I didn't think I had the emotional strength and energy to continue our relationship. Shortly after that, he found out his ex that he had been still struggling with had gotten engaged to someone else, and went out drinking that night, and came home with a second OVI.
After that night, he seemed to come around a little bit and losing his license with this second OVI (he didn't lose it the first time on some technicality) seemed to be a wake-up call for him. His family lives in another city a few hours away, and this made it impossible for him to go visit them like he was used to doing. He started going to bed on time and making it into work. He started biking to work instead of relying on other people to give him rides. He even decided to stop smoking cigarettes.
So I guess his work habits have improved, he has mostly successfully given up smoking (sometimes he still has some when drinking) and he has been getting appropriate amounts of sleep.
I guess lately I've just started to realize that the problems run deeper than that. On a very fundamental level, he has never learned to be personally responsible for himself. He suffers from some pretty severe mood swings, and when these happen, he shuts me and R out and just plays video games all the time. He was seeing a psychologist for a while, but our new apartment is too far away for him to bike there, and he now relies on me and R for rides to work as well because of the new apartment's location. So it is difficult to find a way to make rides work for him to have these appointments, especially since he already has a chiropractor he needs to see once a week as well.
I'm not really sure how to help him with his depressions and anxieties. He still has a number of really unhealthy lifestyle choices that I can tell contribute to his mood swings. He still has a caffeine addiction, and will frequently drink pop as late as 9 or 10 at night. He doesn't exercise. He just sits at his desk and plays video games all day. He tries to say that he will try to work on exercise or meditation to help calm himself, but he never remembers to do it and is now in the mode of wanting to do it himself, and if I try to remind him he gets irritable. He still doesn't remember. On Tuesday I talked to him about what he wanted to do to try to get himself feeling better, and he said he really wanted to start exercising on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and he wrote that down as something that he wanted to do for himself. Well, yesterday he came right home and sat down on the computer and completely forgot, the very first day he was supposed to start his new exercise habits.
The forgetfulness extends to things beyond just his own personal habits though. He will frequently spend more money than he has and me and R have to pick up the tab for him. He pays us back, but sometimes unexpected expenses like that can hit at really bad times. He forgets about appointments or events he has to be at, and won't tell us until the last minute that he needs us to take him there. I feel like he is just constantly on autopilot, and is NEVER present in his own life.
And between the two of us, now his mood swings are starting to impact our relationship pretty heavily. While in the midst of NRE, he and I would text each other pretty frequently and we had a pretty active sexual life. This was important to me because I have a very high sex drive and R and I just haven't been as active with each other (fairly mutual, we have different tastes and just don't have as high a drive for each other). D and I also started exploring some more BDSM concepts (which he actually initiated to begin with) that I found I REALLY liked. His mood swings have killed the mood for any of it entirely. His sex drive is even lower than R's at the moment and I have been left feeling rejected many times.
Lately, I feel like I just haven't been connecting to D at all. We don't talk much anymore in general. We don't connect physically. Much of our conversation is him talking about how he has just been "feeling out of it" or "not feeling like himself" or "feeling anxious" and me trying to get him to talk to me about the specifics of why he feels that way and him just clamming up. He doesn't even want to do the mental legwork to find out why he is upset. He doesn't want to do any of the actual legwork to make him feel better, like making better habits or trying to go to the doctor. He says he wants me to help him, but then he fights me tooth and nail and doesn't put any effort into fixing it or carrying any of his own weight. I have to be the one to get him to talk about it, to try to come up with all the possible solution ideas, to get him to choose one, and then to get him to remember it and actually do it.
I'm getting exhausted, and I'm starting to doubt our relationship. This is scary for me because we JUST moved in together, and he is truly dependent on us now until March, when he gets his license back.
I guess my problem is, I've seen him make a lot of improvements over the past few months. He really has drastically improved his work and sleep habits. He gave up smoking, and he went through a few periods where he was really positive and motivated (this is when he really tried doing breathing and meditation as well). I don't know if maybe I'm just not being patient enough and I just need to wait this phase out, but then again, if these phases keep happening I don't know if I can handle the toll they take. I don't mind supporting someone through rough times, but when he is in these times, he gets really unpleasant and recalcitrant and self-pitying and it is damn near impossible to get him to come out of it. He digs his heels in and refuses to do anything to get out of them.
Another thing I'm worried about is that if I try for us to take a break or give myself some space, that it will send him into a tailspin. He seems really emotionally fragile at the moment, and he is terrible at handling stressful situations without backsliding into his really ugly self-destructive behaviors (usually starts with drinking too much and then leads to him smoking more cigarettes and staying up later and lots of other shit in general).
I guess I'm just hoping someone can give me some perspective. I don't know if I'm overreacting to this latest mood swing, or if there is a serious problem here. I don't know if he really ever will take charge of his life and get it on track without the threat of something being taken away from him or something actually really bad happening to him (losing his license, the fear that our relationship might end, the fear of him losing his job). I'm starting to wonder if I got lost in NRE and that he and I really aren't all that compatible. When he hits his high points, I truly see his potential to be the person I thought I fell in love with, but I'm starting to wonder if he'll never stabilize and will just keep swinging in and out of these high and low points.
Sorry I know this is an insanely long post. I just wanted to give as much information as possible and hopefully someone can see something in here that I'm not seeing, or help me on the process to puzzling it out. How long is too long to wait him out?
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