Dear Ashmitha:

I read your reply on the other thread and I appreciate what you wrote there. This is some of what you shared here:

You’ve been seeing a man exclusively for a year and three months, with a break of seven months. The two of you meet once every week. In between meetings it can take him hours to reply to your text messages, even though he is online. Sometimes, you wrote, “he is actively online for hours and ignores my messages, and replies to me the next day”.

You told him that you would like more communication in between meetings and he told you that “he doesn’t like talking on the phone”. You know that “he texts his friends and family a lot”, and that when he is with you, during those once a week meetings, “he can be glued to his phone at times”.

You wrote: “He is still very much sexually attracted to me but I care more that he is attracted to my personality and that we are close friends… He brings up no concerns and says he considers us to have a stable relationship… makes me question whether he likes me that much… I know he is not cheating or anything like that.. I just want to feel closer to him. Dating my best friend is important to me. I consider myself a very relaxed girlfriend so do I need to be more strict?”-

– this is my understanding: in his mind and heart, a relationship with a girlfriend is in a different category from a relationship with a friend or with a family member:

* With a girlfriend he has sex and romance/ with friends and family members- he does not.

* With friends and family members he enjoys communicating about non-sexual, non-romantic topics/ with you- he does not.

He compartmentalized you: for him, you can not be his friend because you are his girlfriend. You do not compartmentalize him: you want him to be your boyfriend and your best friend.

You asked if you should be more strict, as in insisting that he texts you more often. My answer: no, because pressuring him to communicate with you via text and online in between meetings is not going to change his lack of motivation to do so.

He is probably not cheating on you, like you believe, and he may even want to marry you, but a life with him is likely to be limited, as it is now, to the sexual/ romantic context, and later perhaps, to the cohabitating and co-parenting contexts.

You read like a nice person, a reasonable, considerate woman. I wish you had that which you want and deserve: a boyfriend who is indeed your best friend.

anita

Dear Ashmitha:

You are welcome, and thank you for your kind words. I have some formal educational background, but the value you perceive in my replies to members is there because I am dedicated to my own healing which started in my first quality psychotherapy, 2011-2013, followed by having spent many hours each day, since May 2015, studying members’ developing life-stories, having communicated with individual members for months and years.

“We do have moments where he confides in me and we text for hours but it does not happen very often… he is online a lot…He does have responsibilities in his life as he is the eldest child and works full-time.. from home, due to the pandemic”-

– this is different from what I imagined the situation to be: I didn’t know that (1) he confides in you sometimes, like a friend, (2) sometimes he spends hours communicating with you via text, (3) he has lots of responsibilities and works full-time from home, which explains why he is online a lot, and why he doesn’t have the time to always or often answer your texts sooner than he does.

This means to me that his compartmentalizing you is not extreme (Some compartmentalizing takes place in every person relationships with others).

“Do you think I can do anything to encourage him to communicate with me more?”- to answer this, I ask: you wrote that he confides in you sometimes: what kinds of things did he share with you and how did you respond to him when he confided in you?

anita

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by .

Dear Ashmitha:

Thank you. Reads like the problem is not that he prefers other people (of the friends and family category) over you, but that he gives his time to people who demand his time and efforts, and being the people  pleaser that he is, he accommodates them. You, on the other hand, are not demanding of him, being the “relaxed girlfriend” that you are, so .. you get less of his time and efforts.

“Is it normal to have these talks about needs being met every few months in a relationship?”- you can have these talks any time you want, as long as the talks are reasonable and respectful.

If his people-pleasing tendencies are strong, then it is a big  problem as you move forward with him, because I don’t think you can or want to become demanding of him, but other people can .. and want to continue to demand his time and effort, which means- less for you. Is he interested in no longer being a people-pleaser?

anita

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by .

Dear Ashmitha:

I think that it is perfectly fine for a couple to have certain shared interests, or more importantly, shared values while having different personal interests and, therefore,  separate groups of friends based on the separate interests.

“He can stretch himself thin.. wants to be there for …people he is close to.. his sisters and cousins… He is very close with his family”-

– reads like he is placing the needs and wants of his sisters and cousins/ his family of origin’s needs above your needs. If you marry him and he continues to place the needs and wants of his family-of-origin above the needs and wants of his chosen- family (his wife and children), neglecting the latter for the former- that would be a significant problem.

If you consider marrying him sometime in the future, better bring up this topic of possible differing values in regard to family of origin’s vs chosen family’s needs and wants.

Regarding asking, or not asking him to text you more: you repeatedly asked him to text you already, and as the result: he texted you more for a while, but then returned to normal, which was inadequate for you. I don’t believe in repeating what did not work before. I don’t know what to suggest in this regard, at this point.

anita