A
female
age
41-50,
*eidi328
writes:Alright, I am back everyone! :) I have a question. What are the signs that your boyfriend is not as interested or in love with you anymore? In the beginning my boyfriend was sooo happy with me, always holding me close, telling me he loved me, couldnt wait to marry me, etc. I loved the affection. Now were living together going on 3 months. It seems he has changed. He tells me he loves me when saying goodbye over the phone but never on his own unless I say it first. He no longer grabs for my hand when were ealing together, I have to initiate cuddling, and he isnt as affectionate. I asked him why and he acted like nothing had changed. He said thats who he was so take it or leave it. I think something is wrong, i told him to tell me if he didnt love me anymore if that was the case and asked if he loved me the same. he says yes. I'm confused. Reply to this Question
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reader, anonymous, writes (19 June 2008): Heidi, you are a very attractive young lady. You could probably have dozens of guys after you, but you know what? None of them will be perfect. No one is. You have a guy who you love and he loves you. All relationships are about accepting some things about a person that you do not like. They are also about them changing some of the things that you don’t like. The only way to make a relationship work is to have sincere discussions and compromise. Maybe the compromise will be to find a middle ground about some problem. Maybe it will be to fully accept some dislikes and for the other person to fully stop other dislikes. That is the only way that any relationship can work.
Throughout a long relationship each of the people will occasionally be sad or depressed about something. That person will need the others support. You are sad about his porn and he is sad about not being back with family and friends. You are both sad and it makes it very difficult when it happens to both parties at the same time. However, this will happen occasionally in a long relationship and the 2 people must learn to deal with it for the relationship to succeed.
You and he are going to have to learn to work out problems like this. We are not born with that ability. It is a difficult ability to learn. This ability will be necessary with any partner. You are in the process of discovering this and learning how to deal with it. You may succeed with this relationship or you may not. However, if you do not, you will have to deal with problems with a future relationship. It may not be porn, but it will be something. Some people learn the ability of discussion and compromise at an early age and some never learn it. Work to learn it now, so that you will have a life of relationship success.
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reader, anonymous, writes (19 June 2008): Thanks for the update Hedi. He loves you and you love him. But what about the problems in your relationship. His porn use, his missing his friends and family. Is your love for each other strong enough to deal with this. Do you think you could learn to support and compromise with each other and become closer? What do you want? Do you want to be with him or not? What could you both do to improve your relationship and make it stronger, or is it still early days and you'll wait and see how it goes?
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reader, Heidi328 +, writes (19 June 2008):
Heidi328 is verified as being by the original poster of the question So I went to talk to him last night. i totally broek down crying. he held me for what seemed like forever. He said he is leaning towards me but needs to be 100% sure. He says he loves me, I'm not the problem. infact I was good to him, too good. He said no one ver loved him as much as I do and that scared him a little. He started calling me babe again by the end of the night. I'm kind of confused, He loves me, I love him, but he's not sure if he wants it to be serious or not yet. I offered my frienship and will give him all the time he needs if thats what he needs. He said everything will be okay, that he never mean to just shut me out of his life. He just needed to be alone a little bit. I feel so dumb for crying. he called me after I left and before he went to bed told me he misses me. He's not playing games, he's not that sort of guy. I just am all emotional right now and am confused. I love him a lot and it's hard. We started kissing but I stopped before it went any further. he felt bad and stopped too. I dont know what to feel.
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reader, anonymous, writes (19 June 2008): Wow... couldn't nobody of told me this is where the rest of the story went. Thanks everybody.... GRRRR
Very interesting Hedi, thank you for the honesty and the update. As I said earlier in your other post... I don't think this was the guy for you. Good luck.
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reader, Heidi328 +, writes (18 June 2008):
Heidi328 is verified as being by the original poster of the questionHello, i just wanted to re-cap and update. So i did some research and found some articles on how porn is harmful to relationships. I left these articles for my bf to read. Well, he read them and blew up. He askes me to leave and I did the next day. WE talked that evening and he told me that he wasn't happy here. He misses his friends and family form Ohio, he has nothing here and he's sad. He said he doesn't know what to do to be happy, but it has nothing to do with me. He said he needed time for himself to figure things out and just be by himself. He loves me but he wasn't ready for a relationship like he thought he was. So update to today, about a week later, he says he's ready to talk about it all, he feels like he should go back to what made him happy before, which was going out with friends, hanging with family, etc. But he still feels like something is missing. he says he knows he should grow up since he's 27 but he's still confused and sad. He said he feels he misled me but not intentionally about our relationship being serious. I'm going over to talk to him tonight. I feel sorry for him. All I can do is encourage him I thik. I know no one feels complete all of the time, I thikn only God can fill the empty void he feels.
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reader, anonymous, writes (9 June 2008): Heidi, I don’t normally look at time in relationships because everyone is different, but Tisha makes a very good point. I got married to my first wife at the age of 22. We had not been dating that long, somewhere between 1 and 2 years. Neither of us was really ready for marriage and it eventually failed after 11 years. Actually, it failed sooner, but we hung on. There were other problems involved, so maybe it was doomed to failure anyway. However, if we had taken more time to know both each other and ourselves better, perhaps we would have either not gotten married or would have waited until we corrected our faults.
After both my current wife and I got divorced, we both took the time to understand both ourselves and to date others. My wife dated several men before she met me and I dated several women after I met her. This was because she was my first girlfriend after my divorce and we both knew that I needed time to get to know other women and to get to understand myself and to reflect on my failed first marriage. We both thought that our relationship had possibilities, so we didn’t want to break up. We both still believe that I didn’t do enough of that and she wanted me to do more back then. She had no idea what she wanted after she left her first husband and I had no idea what I wanted after my first wife left me. We didn’t start living together for 4 and 1/2 years after we started dating and 2 years after I dated the last woman besides her. We waited another 2 years before we got married. We didn’t decide to live together until we were comfortable talking about most anything together and then it may have even been a bit too soon. We talk about feelings, both good and bad, that many couples couldn’t discuss. Like the affair desire thing that I wrote about in one of my answers to your porn question. It actually took us some years after marriage before we were completely comfortable talking about anything that was on either one of our minds. We both had some confidence problems and it took us many years to completely feel good about ourselves.
I read a lot of stories on this and other boards of people who have decided to live together or get married after just a few months. These are both young, like yourself, and older people even in their 50s. They have problems, and it is mostly because of inability to communicate. Sometimes lack of confidence is also involved. It seems like many people don’t want to give themselves the time to both know themselves and the other person in the relationship. I’m sure that there are many instances of people being to achieve this in just a few months, but I’ll bet that both of the people in that relationship have little or no problem with confidence. I know that I went into marriage way before I was ready many years ago. My wife was 24 when she got married and they had dated for 2 years and she feels that she was not ready for that commitment and did not really know her boyfriend well enough to get married. She also lacked confidence in herself back then and didn’t really feel confident until sometime after we got married at the ages of 40.
Now, I’m not saying that you wait until you are 40 to get married or live with someone, but you probably do have to wait until you feel confident and good about yourself and can communicate about most any subject that comes up in a relationship before moving in or getting married.
My brain has been going on one track while answering both of your questions. I was just trying to save your current relationship. It is good that Tisha took the time to step back and look at the whole situation. Reading her answer made me reflect on my life and the relationships involved. It appears that Tisha and her husband did it right the first time instead of going through the heartbreak of moving too fast and failing as my wife and I did our first times. We may have even moved a bit too fast the second time with each other, but we have worked hard to correct that what we didn’t before living together. However, no relationship will be perfect, so one cannot wait until it is before making the commitment of marriage.
Think about what Tisha has said and the story of my and my wife’s first marriages. I know that it is difficult to think about what us old folks have to say (me, not you Tisha). I doubt that I would have been able to do that when I was 22 and getting married. However, take the time to reflect and understand where you are today, both within yourself and with your relationship abilities, which include the most important communication ability.
It is difficult for me to say these things, as I really do wish that your current relationship could succeed. Perhaps it will, but you both seem like you need a lot of time to reflect on what you really want and you need time to gain confidence and be comfortable with the beautiful person who you are.
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reader, Tisha-1 +, writes (9 June 2008):
 Hi, Heidi, I've read your previous post and all the answers you had there too. In fact I did answer your first one too...
http://www.dearcupid.org/question/does-it-mean-he-doesnt-love-me-if.html
I think it boils down to this question.
You're not sure if he really loves you.
Here's my take on it. Sorry if it is not what you want to hear, but I think you need to do some soul-searching on this one.
Your relationship is still really new and maybe you've moved in together before you both were ready for it. You don't really know each other that well, in my opinion. I was friends with my boyfriend, now husband, for about two years before we even started dating. I know that this might not be the norm, but I have to say that it helps to really know someone, to really be able to trust him/her, before the idea of a longterm commitment even begins to form itself in one's mind.
I can talk about things with my husband, even awful, hate-to-have-to-admit-I-even-have-these-feelings kinds of things. If you don't have the basics of communication and understanding and the willingness on both parts to work on it, then you have a very lopsided relationship.
Because you're here asking this question, you don't know. And you don't know how to talk with him about this.
So I think you have to go back to square one. Why did you move in together? What did you have in common? Why do you two love each other? What are your common goals? How do you see your future together?
Answer these basic questions, and you're getting somewhere. If you don't even know where to start, maybe you need to rethink the entire living together thing until you're both on the same page and working together as a team.
Sorry again that you're so confused and worried, but maybe you need to think about what YOU want in life, and not expect HIM to be the answer.
All the best.
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reader, eyeswideopen +, writes (9 June 2008):
 Heidi, you are wearing me out with all your insecurities, I certainly understand how your boyfriend must feel. You need to relax or he'll definitely walk.
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reader, Heidi328 +, writes (9 June 2008):
Heidi328 is verified as being by the original poster of the questioni dont think sex is a problem last night we did it, he was drunk, he came inside me, usually he doesnt. Im on birth controlpills, but he staretd freaking out saying he hopes im not oregnant and saying how mad he would be if i was. he kept questioning if i took the pills over and over again. i said yes and he said something like he thought i would not take them on purpose to be manipulative. i said what? you really think i would do that? he said yeah cuz i was nutty. then he started talking about something else. I was so hurt! but i didnt say anything cuz he was drunk and falling asleep. Is this how he really feels? he was freaking out but drunk so I dont know what to think about that comment.
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reader, anonymous, writes (9 June 2008): People tend to open up and tell the truth when they are drunk, so I don’t think that he is bored with you. I think he is just very unhappy with his situation at work and being away from his friends. I don’t think that it has anything to do with you. The problem is that his unhappiness results in his troubling behavior to you. It is like when a man has low testosterone. He is just depressed and has no desire to kiss or hug his wife or girlfriend or even to have sex. It is just a feeling of being miserable. I’m not suggesting that he has low testosterone at his age, but the feelings of low T and being depressed for some other reason are the same. Depression results in little feeling of affection or love. When the depression goes away, the affection and love return. The problem is how to get the depression to go away. There are anti-depressants to treat depression, but then they normally kill sex drive. What a solution, huh. Whoopee!
So what do you do? Well, you have to try to be understanding. He could go to a doctor if he realizes that he has a problem, but the doc will most likely just write a prescription for anti-depressants. Some may check his hormones to see if they are in balance. My wife and I went through these feelings resulting from stress for many years, but it also took many years to get to that point. Maybe I had somewhat low T all of those years and just discovered it recently. I’ll never know.
I also hope that he doesn’t get drunk too often to solve his depression. That won’t solve anything in the long run and will eventually cause other problems. See how he acts over the next few days and keep us informed. Good luck.
To understand how these things sometimes work, read this story on healthboards:
http://www.healthboards.com/boards/showthread.php?t=600394
This woman’s husband is much older than your boyfriend and has low T, but you can see how depression can make a partner feel from her comments and sadness in the things that she says in her various posts.
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reader, Heidi328 +, writes (9 June 2008):
Heidi328 is verified as being by the original poster of the questionSo i dont know if I should be concerned or not. I just miss the feelings that were there a few months ago. I told him look, dont be afraid to hurt me, if youre not happy with me then let me know. He laughed when I said that, and said evrything was fine. so I think he still wants me and loves me. I just dont know how to act. I didnt mean to snoop on his things, i just want to keep my man. When he was drunk, he was teasing me about being observant of his new friends on his myspace and he thought it was funny that i feel threatened by them. I didnt say anything back cuz he was drunk and i didnt want him to turn angry. he went on about it for like 5 more minutes. His mood about it was light he was laughing, and he just kept saying :"that's cool, that's cool." i dont know, i feel like weird now.
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reader, Heidi328 +, writes (9 June 2008):
Heidi328 is verified as being by the original poster of the questionWell, he had told me he's always looked at porn, way before he met me. he said he never met anyone who thought it was bad or a big deal. I had a talk with him yesterday. He came home, looking bored, really quiet, went on the comp for a while and didnt start any conversations. I asked what was wrong and he said nothing. Later, I told him i wanted to talk, told him he acted different than in the beginning , as far as affection and happiness. He said it's always like that in the beginning and that he still loves me the same that he did before. He said nothing was wrong, I told him he better let me know if he wasnt happy with me or if he was looking for someone else. I thought maybe he was talking on someone on his myspace. He said no he was not cheating and he talks to his friends. I had gotten his password one time and wanted to see what he and his friends were talking about, and his ex. I didnt find anything in the least to be concerned about but he got mad and changed his password again. Now he says he knows I keep tabs on him on his myspace and he said he should just delete it. I honestly dont think hes hidiing anything, i just thought the lacjk of affection was a sign of somthing. Everyoe is telling me to chill out and be easy going, that affection will wane after a little bit. I just thought he would stay affectionate a little longer.He said it was just a long day he had yesterday. Then he got drunk and we had a good time the rest of the night.
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reader, anonymous, writes (8 June 2008): I got that way too, but it was after 8 or 10 years. Now I'm into kissing, hugging, cuddling and all of that again. My wife and I think that it was because I was continually stressed at my job and she was also tired from her job and frustrated for a few years that she couldn't find a job that really made use of her college education that she got after we got married at the age of 40. I got back to the way I had been during the first 8 or 10 years after I retired and the stress went away.
I don't think it is you. I think it is his unhappiness with his job and his loss of friends that is causing this. Work stress can really ruin a relationship, especially the loving and sexual part of it. He's not bored with you. He's probably bored with lofe in general because of his unhappiness with where he is and his job.
Heidi, is his loss of affection by any chance why you are so bothered by his porn viewing? I mean, I can see why you would be so worried about the porn if he also is not affectionate with you. That would really worry most any woman. The 2 have got to be tied together. I don't think you told us this in your porn question. People need the whole story to help you. I still think that you need to work on your own self-esteem, but if you are experiencing both of these things at the same time, then I can see why you are worried.
Why don't you lay the whole story out at once, so that anyone who wants to help you can better understand what you are feeling. Bits and pieces make it difficult to understand your situation. You made us think for a week that it was all about porn and nothing else. Give us the whole story so that we just don't think that you have one hangup over something that most of us found relatively insignificant. Lots of info hun, like did the porn start when he stopped being affectionate or were the 2 separate. Things like that.
Is there anything else going in that you haven't revealed yet. Remember, the whole story all at once. All of the pieces together make a difference.
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reader, Heidi328 +, writes (8 June 2008):
Heidi328 is verified as being by the original poster of the questionno, he doesnt go out a lot. He recently got drunk and spilled out his frustration about having no friends here and how much he misses his friends. See, He moved here from Ohio last July for a goverment job with the airforce. At first, he told me he was going no where and he was so happy with me. Now, he says He's happy with me but he hates it here he says and wants to go back. He cant for another year, but maybe he just needs more friends. We hang out a lot, are together every weekend. Maybe he's bored with me.
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reader, anonymous, writes (8 June 2008): I think here you just need to talk to him, really open up to him. Maybe have a lie down and a cuddle and just talk to him!
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reader, anonymous, writes (8 June 2008): I suggest you talk to your boyfriend, tell him how you feel, how much you need and lack his affection. Do make appoint of be affectionate towards him to.If this does not help and you do not get the love, affection you want, I think you should take stock of the situation. Could you be happy for the rest of you rlife living like this?If not, you know the answer!You deserve to be happy!
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reader, DearKiki  +, writes (8 June 2008):
 I have found alot of men do get like that after a while. They are very affectioate at first and it's almost like, onces they have you hook line and sinker, they stop trying.I don't believe his feeling has changed for you but you need to ask yourself can you spend your life with a man who doesnt think you're worth the effort?And is he really still making you happy?If he isnt, you need to leave and move on and find that man who will always fight for your affection or fight to stay with you. Because love is always meant to be about that spark and that "oh my god" feeling and if you dont get that anymore, you need to tell him.Just woundering, is he going out quite alot??But honestly, i think, you need to tell him, if he doesnt chnage, he will end up losing you...
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