Ever Wish Your Partner Would Change?
I love my boyfriend. I can honestly say that I am in love with him. I just sometimes wish he was different.
I’m a super ambitious goal-oriented person who is always working on achieving something. If I want a better higher paying job? I’ll work to get it. If I want to do more traveling? I’ll figure out my expenses in the future so I can plan a trip. I’m always excited about learning and doing new things and I love to share my excitements with people.
Unfortunately, my boyfriend is nothing like me. He has low confidence and is insecure. He has worked in retail his whole life (minimum wage) and when I try and suggest that he has a lot of talents and that he can apply for better jobs, he makes insecure comments about himself and doesn’t believe he can do it. He never gets excited about anything and never opens up and shares his passions with me. He’s extremely closed off and I never know what’s going on inside of his head. For example, he may be acting strange or in a mood and I have to pry it out of him by asking him “what’s wrong?” a million times before he finally tells me why (which is almost always an insecurity reason).
I recently met his friend and immediately had a crush on him. He was sharing his excitements over this new awesome job he got. He was also extremely smart, had a lot of interests that he shared, and was so charming and nice. He honestly made me realize what I want in a partner.
But…I love my boyfriend. I just want him to gain confidence and to open up and share more of himself. Whenever I bring this up to him he agrees and says that he wants to open up more, but it’s been 2 years and I’m exhausted on working on this with him. I’m not a therapist or a life coach and I’m not looking for someone who is going to slowly work on themselves. I’m looking for an ambitious self-starter who gets things done.
I’m 29 and he’s 31. Honestly, I don’t want to start all over again. I’ve already met all of his family and he mine. I don’t know if I want to get back in the dating scene. I WANT to be with him, but how the hell can I get him to be more confident, to be more ambitious, and to open up?
I have absolutely been where you are and it's not an easy place to be. I spent seven years with a partner who had a similar lack of drive and confidence. I'll be honest and say that last year we separated and it was something I wish I had done sooner....I was really unhappy in the relationship and stayed becuase I wanted to help and in doing so accepted the pain and sadness for myself. We weren't close emotionally because all of the emotional workload involved was travelling in on directions, and as a result our physical intimacy suffered.
Partners are called so becuase there is an expectation of equality. Ask yourself if your needs are being met by the relationship to the same degree that his are, and then make a decision to put your needs first and base your choice on yourself and what you need from a partner in order to thrive.