Is he pushing me away? What do you think I should do?

Hi Emma
I can understand your frustration but when you have committed to be together forever, especially under the current circumstances, it really removes any incentive for him to change anything about this ‘relationship.’ You have a huge role in this being the way it currently is by making that commitment without any real commitment from him. My guess is that his situation will not change once he gets a job. That is a whole lot of kids to juggle and pay for. You will continually feel slighted. I would seriously consider moving on.

This is a sudden change which is why it isnt easy to just move on. What do you think of this:

“Hey. I wanted to followup on what we discussed. I dont feel valued.ivwould like for us to come up with a plan and decide what our future will look like. If that is what v you want as well”

EMMA! You’ve just been totally blown off. He didn’t call and didn’t show, and left you a message like that? Complete cop-out. He doesn’t want to man up and make future plans. “I”m going through something” and that’s all the explanation you get, and you’re OK with that… you’ve just gotten your answer. He’s not in this. Amazingly, then you respond with “thanks for telling me, I”m here for you.”

Girlfriend: you are a doormat. Sorry to be so blunt. You won’t leave and he knows it.

Yes, I took him for his word that he is going through problems. Yes, I thanked him for telling me as opposed to me thinking it was me. Yes, I offered to be a shoulder there for him if he needed it. That was it.

I’m only human and the reason I am here is to receive help and advice. At the time, I am holding my head high, remembering that I am a great person and living life.

Well, I can’t take back my response to him. I believed what he said. I was just trying to be patient and understanding. The last thing I wanted was to believe that our situation was over. I’m not sure if I’m waiting around on him now. At this time, I’m trying to keep a positive head and not sleep into depression.

I would suggest putting a time limit in your mind as to when you think that he would make you more a part of his life and start treating you as a priority. Do not communicate this to him. As you cannot really wait indefinitely. If by that time he has not gotten back to you, I would just send him a break up text and be done. If he cannot spare time to have a talk with you or offer you an alternate time, then do you really want to be with such a man??

Yams, the reason they do this is because they hate having THE RELATIONSHIP TALK. They dread it because in their eyes nothing good is going to come out of it. They are going to get taken to task for something, they know it. That is why they both did the same thing to you and Emma.

Emma of course you are trying to be decent and human. No one is suggesting that you not do that. But he stood you up for an important discussion and has now put up the “talk to the hand because I”m not listening” sign. If you want to carry on and get more of the same, then fine. But it would appear to be time to start considering what you will do how you will deal if he goes on and on like this. To be fair, he’s stressed right now because of the job situation so maybe you want to cut him some slack for a while. So I”m not going to tell you walk this very minute. What I am telling you that others are echoing is that if he knows you aren’t going anywhere no matter what S.H.I.T. he dishes out, you’re not going to get treated any better than you are today.

Needing to be in a relationship is a weak position.

Yams – I would have replied to him on Tuesday saying, “I guess you don’t want to deal with what I was wanting to discuss. So all the best in your search because I think I deserve to be treated better.” That way he either steps up or steps out and he knows why you stopped responding. Sometimes men can be quite dense. If he replied back in any other way than setting up a time to Facetime to talk about the issue, I would have ignored.

That makes the most sense to me Yams. If you send a text sometimes they can interpret it as passive aggressive drama. unfortunately that doesnt help you in the long run and it jst means your sitting there waiting for a response and fretting more and more over the whole thing.

at least silence gives you some time to cool off yourself and maybe come at it from a different angle later. the balls in his court this way.

Emma… can I just say your guy sounds like he’s got genuinely worrying things on his mind. If he feels like he wasn’t able to feed his children when they needed it, he’s probably really really feeling like crap. (Mine has no such excuses. He’s 24 and single and carefree besides work).

If I were you, I would just go quiet. Give him the space to miss you. Give him the space to sort his issues out. And give yourself space to breathe and untangle yourself emotionally. I haven’t spoken to my guy in like 8 days now and it’s rly helped me feel better.

Yams, Emma, my advice is to get centered so you can feel more connected to him. It’s not a battle and you aren’t adversaries.

I highly recommend the book Difficult Conversations – it helped me tremendously. It is practical advice on how to talk all kinds of things through with someone in various situations.

Based on what you’re saying, your guys are on emotional overload. They are redlined. So it’s not like they are deliberately stonewalling. They don’t sound like bad guys.

Emma, if there are issues with such basic needs as food for children, then you know what – table this discussion for a little while until he stabilizes. You’ve been together 4 years so you can ride with this a little longer. Just make sure you take care of yourself. One word of caution – just think a little about how long you could be OK in this mode. You won’t want this to go on forever. I dated a guy with a lot of problems for almost 3 years… “it’s going to get better” was always just around the corner. Never came.

Yams, I’m not chastising you but the language you used would have come across as inflammatory. Stop with the text for a while. Important and/or emotional subjects should be handled verbally or personally. Men don’t always go silent because they are trying to punish you. They don’t always have the skills to feel their feelings and handle them and translate into words – in Guyland, there’s not a lot of need for that. Stay calm – they don’t handle a lot of emotional outburst from a female well. It feels like attack to them. The taste of his own medicine thing – doing tit for tat stuff just makes you adversaries. Exercise to try: put yourself in his shoes and look at this situation.

I hope this is constructive help for each of you.

I will check the library for that book. It gives me something to do with my idle mind :D

Can you go see him? I don’t think this convo is going to happen on the phone. And I think it would be potentially destructive.

When I need to have a chat with a fellow, I go for a walk in the park with him and either sit side by side or walk with him while we chat. It keeps him from having to look you in the eye constantly. Heavy eye contact is hard for men when there’s a heavy convo doing down.