He's too serious

How long has it been since his divorce? What was the reason for it and who filed it? I feel like he might still be grieving that divorce.

It is good to have a partner that listens to understand but as you stated if your whole time together are being used as talking about the past it is not a good sign. He is also feeling insecure about getting hurt again. All indication that he isn’t ready to move forward.

Have you tried being blunt?
‘I don’t want to talk/hear about your ex-wife.’
‘You talk about (name) a lot!’

I don’t think this is your guy, sorry. Two months in is the honeymoon period. You should be head over heels. It’s too soon for all this baggage to be on display. Normally people’s baggage doesn’t really start to surface until maybe 6+ months in.

If my guy had subjected me to a 3 hour conversation about how his ex never valued him, at 2 months in, I would have ended it then and there. It shows he’s not over his ex.

You’re completely right that at this point it should be fun and enjoyable and getting to know each other in an organic fashion….instead you feel like you’re giving him therapy. You say he’s not fun, he’s boring and you refer to him as a “Debbie downer”. At two months! I’d let him go. He may be a nice enough guy, but its not working. I don’t think he’s ready. It doesn’t matter that you’re not the first person he’s dated since his divorce, he still hasn’t worked through it.

Raven, yes I’ve been blunt, even explaining that while I’m all for sharing the details of my past relationships, none of them take up much of my brain space, so I don’t have a lot to say! Just the basic facts, at this point, should be enough sharing imo. Or some well-timed anecdotes are fine. But this constant, hours-long deep bs … it’s exhausting. And I think I may even roll my eyes at times, despite trying to stay engaged.

Liz, he claims to be emotionally available and ready for a relationship, and I think he sees this simply as me getting to know him, and not TMI, which clearly it is. But, he always has “the floor” and even when I interject he seems to go right back to himself and his past. Strange behavior from a grown professional man (he’s a psychologist to boot … so maybe it’s in his makeup?) I’ve always heard accountants were boring … not mental health professionals. I feel like giving him a chance to redeem himself and see if he can lighten up a little. He’s a very good guy, just a tad lost it seems. Maybe I should voice my concerns about our future if things keep up this way.

If things are already not working for you after only 2 months, you’re incompatible. I see two things going on here, one his side and one yours:

He can say he’s emotionally available and wants a relationship all he wants. That doesn’t mean it’s actually true, even if he wants it to be and believes it to be true. It’s on you to observe if his words and actions match. Anyone emotionally dumping on you so that you can emotionally regulate their feelings for them isn’t as available as they’d like to believe. While I’m sure his divorce happened for a bunch of reasons and was not actually all one-sided, he sounds like he may have an anxious insecure attachment style (which would have been present prior to his marriage as well and not a result of the divorce) that he hasn’t worked through yet. Therapy is a great step, but it takes quite a long time to work through attachment issues, and I doubt you’re on the same timetable. Him working in psychology himself doesn’t mean anything about how he handles his own relationships or how he responds to or bounces back from stress and problems. He may have a very different specialty from his own issues or he may turn a blind eye when assessing himself, as many people do.

On your side of things, you’re making a lot of assumptions about how people are supposed to be and heal. It’s totally okay for this to simply not be the right guy for you and not be the relationship that meets your needs. That’s the big picture important part. You sound like you know what you want, and it’s a different kind of personality than he’s got. Which, again, is totally okay.

Opposites in dating may present some interesting personal growth opportunities, but it does not necessarily mean you balance each other out in a good way or are compatible or can have a good romantic relationship together. You may both be good people, but that doesn’t mean your lifestyles and personalities ultimately are a good fit together. Also, if someone doesn’t have a grasp on their issues and are still going in circles and haven’t healed yet, them dating others doesn’t mean anything in regards to they’ve already worked their issues out with someone else. No. Some people do, some don’t, and often when the issues are deeper than one marriage not working out (existing issues present that contributed to it not working out), you cannot predict a person’s healing schedule based on how long it has been or how many people they’ve dated since. It’s truly a good rule of thumb not to date people with recent breakups and divorces who haven’t seriously dated since, but even that rule doesn’t cover everyone. Some people just aren’t there yet even after time and dating others, aren’t over the failure of the relationship even if they’re over the ex, or are stuck on ruminating over the relationship in order to avoid dealing with their other underlying issues.

So let go of expectations that, on paper, he should be over it and should become more fun soon and this should work. It’s just not working, he’s not the right person, it’s not the right time. If you know what you’re looking for and it’s not this, don’t feel bad about moving on. Give it some more time if you really want to to see if anything does change, but also give yourself a deadline to leave if/when it doesn’t. Dating someone’s potential (everything would be great if X, Y, and Z could be different!) instead of who they are is a recipe for frustration and mutually unmet needs.

You don’t need to second-guess yourself so much or give him endless chances if you’re not feeling what’s still a new relationship, and telling him directly what’s bothering you hasn’t changed anything.

And he’s not in love with you after two months, especially with him talking about his ex all the time and being in therapy for it. He thinks he’s ready to move on and he just is not, no matter what he says. Everyone’s given great advice here. I hope you will listen. You could try having one more conversation with him but I just don’t think he’s done processing and he needs to do that on his own timeline and that could be a long long time. You two are in different places in life.