Help! My partner isn't doing anything...
I've been struggling a long time, because I'm a planner. I was raised in a household where everyone had anxiety, two people had OCD, therapists suspect I have BPD, and at least three of us were perfectionists. I've always been very go-go-go and having a future that I'm working towards is incredibly calming to me. This need was worsened due to trauma from my first/last relationship (he cheated on me two months after taking my virginity, was emotionally/sexually abusive, was ableist to me, and ended our three year relationship over text).
With my current partner, I wanted love and stability. I fell in love with my bestfriend of six years, who I had known for close to a decade, and who had always been there for me. It took me a while to be open to a relationship, because I always wanted to be with someone of the same religion (which we are not), but I eventually decided that my heart wanted what it wanted and that we were a perfect match.
We started dating in 2019. He had big goals of working in the political sphere - had a university picked out that he wanted to attend and everything - and was finishing up a gap year for his health (we both have chronic illnesses). I was in my freshman year of college, in honors college and an honors society. We both wanted academia and arts and to eventually perhaps create a family one day.
It's now 2021 and he still hasn't even applied to a school, nor has he been working or doing any other sort of training. In December of 2020, we almost broke up because I told him that I needed to be with someone who I could have a future with. He promised me he'd have a therapist and be enrolled by the end of summer...but it's September and he's done neither.
He has a lot that he deals with. He was sexually abused when he was a child by someone close to his family, who he still has to see regularly (he lives with his parents who don't know that it happened). He had suicidal thoughts in early highschool. He has AHDH and the chronic pain. The somewhat-selfish part of my mind reminds me that I also have sexual trauma, a history of self harm, various chronic illnesses, etc. though.
I'm not sure what to do. I want to go like "oh love's enough", but I want a family one day. It's also hard for me to feel fully loved by him when it feels like he's not putting in the effort required to be able to have a life together one day.
@turquoiseHemlock900
Hi--just going to summarize my understanding of what you've shared. 💜
Your current partner is someone who has felt like a perfect match, and you both have a lot of different experiences in common (e.g. sexual trauma, self-harm, chronic illness). Initially, he had a lot of school/career goals that he was working toward. But fast-forwarding a couple years later, he hasn't made any progress toward those goals. He doesn't have any kind of backup plan that feels like it is viable or realistic in the long-term. He also hasn't sought out therapy or taken any other steps that realistically have a chance of getting him closer to making progress toward that long-term future.
It's really important to you to feel like you have a stable future. It brings you a feeling of calm, peace, safety, and security. You take this current relationship seriously and are thinking about long-term future things like having a family together. If your partner were working toward that future and caring about the long-term as much as you do, it would make you feel loved and supported and like they care about you enough to help nurture that stability you want. When they aren't doing that, you feel the opposite--like they aren't fully loving or supporting you or looking out for your needs.
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My reaction is that all of that sounds pretty reasonable and understandable. Maybe he doesn't necessarily need to have the same exact goals as he did two years ago (i.e. go to school and do something in the political sphere). But in order to feel like you're both working as equals toward a future together, you feel like he needs to be doing *something*.
Or if he is in a really bad state right now that prevents him from being able to do that, maybe the step that would show that he is working toward that future is if he were going to therapy--and that would be the preliminary step that would allow him to eventually get to a point where he is stable enough to start creating and working toward a set of long-term goals.
I wonder if a way of framing it would be that you want reciprocity? You don't want a situation in which you're the only one working toward a solid, stable, long-term life plan -- and you end up supporting him while he isn't doing anything to support you or give back in return.