A
female
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:I am really struggling with my relationship. I feel whenever I do something nice for my boyfriend he doesn't really respond or appreciate it at all. For example if I make a post on facebook where I let known of my care and appreciation for him in front of all my friends, or appraise something nice he did for me, I am lucky if he bothers to even click like. There is ever no reply nor any kind of acknowledgement of my kind words. It bugs me a lot and I've told him that. If I bring it up and say it upsets me and makes me feel he doesn't care he will state bluntly "I care" - and that's it. Nothing is actually done to prove the statement correct, no actual caring is shown and expressed. He doesn't say sorry he upset me or make sure next time he doesn't act ignorant. It has been going on like this our whole relationship.This summer he got a lot of work and is most weeks traveling out of the city. Last we spoke he said he missed me a lot and wished he could be with me. To make him feel better and have something to remember me by I did something I have never ever done for anyone; I took a quite sexy and slightly naughty photo of myself and sent it to him, with a wink on my eyes. It took him a whole day to even check the message, and only cause I called next day and asked why hasn't he read it. After that he replied to it: "yup". Yup?? Nothing else. Not even a period on the end of the line. Like I just stated I would wash the dishes today and that was the most disinteresting thing he'd heard in a while.I feel embarrassed, frustrated and mad that I actually bothered to do something like that - and he didn't even give a rats ass. I really expected him to be happy and positively surprised, everything but ..."yup". If I could destroy that photo from his phone I would. I was supposed to travel to see him next week but I got so upset of his reaction (or rather lack of) that I told him sorry for the stupid picture wont happen again, and maybe better if I just stay home. He replied he didn't say the photo was stupid, and was apparently disintersted of the fact that I said I was about to cancel my trip.I am starting to think maybe I should just end the relationship now for good. He doesn't care his unresponsiveness is upsetting me and I'm feeling worse and worse over time. Occasionally he does do something loving for me too and I always lavish him with appreciation and attention for it. I think he actually might even love me (atleast he says he does), but that doesn't change the fact that he constantly makes me feel crappy like he doesn't care. When he doesn't reply anything to me I feel so at lost and confused. How can I stay in a relationship where my feelings are bluntly ignored like that, even if there is love present? We have been living together over a year, but is there any hope for a relationship if he will not ever bother even with a decent response? The least it would be polite, not to mention he knows I will otherways feel bad and ignored.This is not our only problem, but I suspect all of them stem from this same core insensitiveness. I would greatly appreciate some advice on how to work on things and get through to him, or does it seem like a lost cause and better just to move on? Thanks for reading my troubles
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (14 July 2015): Thankyou Janniepeg :)
Yes I really was afraid of that the first half year of our relationship! But since we've been together for a year and a half now and he stopped contacting her few months later my fears calmed down. His ex really did do something horrible to him, so I kinda understand his behavior since knowing him better now; he was being spiteful and wanted her to be reminded of him often and feel guilty of what she had done. He can get extremely unforgiving towards people who hurt him. Maybe not a very healthy way to deal with things, but atleast he didn't go do some nasty fullsize revenge or something.
These talks have helped me tremendously. After thinking and pondering over these things with your responses I suddenly realized that he is not like that just with me. He is unresponsive and ignoring periodically with everyone. I've seen it happen with his mom, and I've seen it happen with his friends. I just didn't connect the dots before. Knowing that makes it easier to deal with; it is not just me, and it is not his expression of what he feels about me. And since it's not really hitting into my own self insecurities zone anymore I can deal with it more rationally and from a different angle, maybe trying to help him to learn better ways to communicate for example.
I am so very grateful for all of you taking your time to delve into a complete strangers problems to help out, and without blame and judgement. You are some very nice people! Thankyou and have abundance of love in your life.
A
female
reader, janniepeg  +, writes (12 July 2015):
 Sounds like he is not over his ex and you were his rebound. If a guy is only attentive in the dating stages and the nice efforts die off once you become comfortable, it means he's after something else but not you. In this case his relationship with you is to get back with his ex. Once his ex couldn't care less about what he does in life, your purpose was gone. That explains why he doesn't seem to care about your feelings.
On the surface it sounds a petty issue over FB, or you have different expressions of love but when people get more information from your relationship it sounds like he's ignoring you in real life not just online.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (12 July 2015): OP here. Thankyou so much guys for your kind words and different perspectives. I was actually feeling even worse since I posted my dilemma onto another forum as well - and got instantly judged and scrutinized really harshly, blaming me with lot of bad things and completely out of line. But this made me feel better now. Hearing someone's been through similar and what they did to resolve it is way more helpful than the guilt trip - "it's all your fault!" - those people tried to threw me on. I try to put our conflict more coherently here, as I tend to like to elaborate with single examples instead of painting the whole picture. I know I gotta work on that.It is most definitely not just facebook posts where the problem rises nor do I think our relationship really evolves around facebook, it's quite rare I make a post like that in general. Fb is just one more media to contact people. He is persistently being unresponsive to my communications over txt, over private chats and even face to face. When we started dating for months he would in fact make a lot of effort to comment on stuff his ex was posting. In time it started to bug me a bit since it kept coming up on my feed, and I already experienced how unresponsive he would be with me, so I asked him once why was that and he replied "cause I wanted to bug her and make her feel bad"...So, yeah. He is.. really, really bad at communication overall, probably also why all his long term ex's actually broke up with him. I guess I could use a way to make him see how that is hurting both people around him and himself with that, and then it is up to him does he want to learn new ways to handle things differently. Which I guess will ultimately decide can I make it to work with him or not.
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A
female
reader, jls022 +, writes (12 July 2015):
Being honest, I don't think you are compatible. You are obviously the type of person who likes to demonstrate how much you love the other person and you like to hear that in return, whereas he sounds much more reserved. It's not really that either of you is wrong, just that you have different needs.
Things were exactly like this with my ex. He had pestered me to send him a sexy photo for years, and eventually when he was away for a long time I decided to surprise him. It wasn't anything too risky, just a bit of cleavage and me winking like you were, but I don't usually think of myself as sexy so it took a lot for me to send it. And I got no reply at all. I eventually phoned him the following day and he just said 'yeah I got it'. When I pressed him he said 'yeah you look sexy' but he just sounded so disinterested that I was left feeling hurt and embarrassed. Like you, I wish I hadn't bothered.
Although we had other problems too, one of the reasons I eventually ended it was due to the fact I realised we just weren't a good match emotionally. I need a boyfriend who can show some sort of emotion and verbalise his feelings for me, even just now and again, whereas he was more of an 'assume things are good for me until I tell you otherwise' sort of guy.
In the end, I got tired of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It's of course up to you whether you feel it's serious enough for that, but in my experience you'll always have that need and he's not the type of guy to meet it.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (12 July 2015): Don't get caught up with FB . I think social media is not a great place for relationships. It's a double edged sword. Things can be misconstrued yet I also hate to admit that for some guys, it brings out their true colors. If he's not "liking" your posts but at the same time doesn't lend much attention to other posts, then there's little to worry about. He may be a little more private and reserved than you. It could be a matter of personality. As for the picture, it's hard to say but you may want to either ask him in person what he thought or just observe his reactions to figure him out. You may be making too much out of this. The other side would be if he has other women friends on FB that he frequently acknowledges. Then watch out BUT you don't indicate this at all. So, give it a chance and don't read too much into what happens on FB. My advise is not to let FB be part of your relationship at all. Use e-mail, phone and texts for communication.
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