My bf of 5 years is confused

I’m not sure why you reposted this again? Angiebaby gave a good response. You can’t let him realize anything because they are his feelings. You cannot control another person. How would you respond if he started asking for advice to convince you he knows how you feel better than you do and you don’t actually love him, how can he convince you to see that? Pretty violating, right?

Just because you define love a certain way doesn’t mean he defines it the same way. It sounds like you are looking for the peaceful, long-term, comfortable type love. Which is very healthy! It sounds like he may be looking for something different, and you two don’t want the same things long-term. Personally, I believe chasing chemistry and always needing to feel honeymoon-in-love is very immature. But, lots of people believe in love needing to be a constant and intense feeling totally out of their own control, “falling in (and out) of love just happens to them,” rather than a decision to keep building a relationship together in good times and bad. If he’s seeking constant honeymoon chemistry, there’s not really anything you can do, and that’s kind of his problem not yours since it’s not constantly sustainable forever. It ebbs and flows for most people.

This is likely far less about the job issues and more about you two got together very young and have been changing over time as you grow up more and he’s growing apart because you don’t want the same things. Especially after all the stress of the pandemic, which made people reexamine their priorities and values and what they want. If this is the first time you’re hearing about anything wrong on his side, it also means he’s bad at communicating his true feelings, which is not great in a serious partner. If he’s gotten to this point that he lost attraction without discussing it before, he’s been feeling this way a while, and him NOT discussing it and allowing it to fester made it worse. That’s on him and nothing you did, you can’t read another person’s mind. He’s an adult who should talk to you about issues.

You should honor your word and give him the time he asked for. If he realizes he misses you and is being an idiot, he will come back. Short of that, there’s nothing to do but live your life, introspect about what makes you happy, build your confidence back as an individual person who can make themselves happy if this is the end of the relationship. Focusing on him and what you can do about him right now won’t help anything, but you may feel a little better if you focus on yourself and how to make yourself happy.

Good luck. If he doesn’t come back and you break up, it’ll hurt and be hard. But after you mourn the break up, you’ll know more about finding the guy who wants and appreciates the same type of relationship you do and will still have time to find that!

Jane, have you ever heard of attachment theory? If you are noticing a pattern, you may be choosing men with insecure or avoidant tendencies who aren’t fully emotionally available or who are not ready or are even afraid of full commitment. Since you’ve met them while still young, they may have let things progress for years because there was no real pressure to get married yet. Two is not a lot of examples to be sure, and it’s hard to say when a lot of guys in their 20s just aren’t ready for forever relationships yet, but I’ve had this same thing happen with men before. It kept happening until I realized I had a type I kept choosing. And that type always ended up vaguely telling me they didn’t think they felt like they should or inexplicably lost feelings or some other similar variation. Sometimes it would happen after 2 months, sometimes after 2 years. Sometimes you do just grow apart as people, especially as I said at your age in these circumstances. But when people were vague and seemed to bring up issues like this out of no where after dating a long time, I eventually learned it was them not me, and I had to work through my attraction to emotionally distant and unavailable men if I wanted to find something different.