Are you overreacting if you find yourself feeling some kind of way about your boyfriend making a lackluster effort to see you due to his schedule? Or is it a sign that he’s not really that into you?
That’s what a colleague of mine is trying to figure out about her love life.
She’s been dating a guy for a little over a year now, and despite the pair having a pretty good connection, she does have one major gripe that causes her to feel like she’s been wasting her time: He won’t come to see her at her place.
They do meet up and hang out, but when it comes to spending quality time together, alone, she’s the one doing all the work. In fact, she says that she can count the number of times he’s actually been to her apartment on two hands in the 365+ days they’ve been together. She’s always at his at place, and she’s tired of it. So tired that she told him how she has been feeling and asked why he won’t make an effort. His response?
It’s not that he doesn’t want to see her, but he finds himself exhausted with work and studying for his board exams (he’s a physician).
And when he hits her with such explanations, she feels guilty for sounding selfish–so, as always, she puts her concerns on the backburner. But my colleague is over doing all the work in her relationship and is starting wonder if he’s really that interested in her.
“When you really care about someone, it should be nothing to go out of your way for them,” she told me. “I’m just not feeling like he is willing to do that, or much of anything for me.”
This is a boat quite a few women find themselves in. Like the woman I found on LoveShack who after three years of trying to be understanding, was getting fed up with her boyfriend’s lack of initiative. Her boyfriend’s excuses sounded a lot like the excuses of my friend’s companion:
He does work quite a bit, Monday through Friday, and his excuse is that he doesn’t have enough time. But this weekend, he had most of Saturday off, all of today (Sunday) and tomorrow off, so that’s not true. There has been many times where I’ve had to be at work at 6 AM an hour from his house, I’d stay up late hanging out with him and I’d get up extra early and go to work from his house. I know he’d never do that for me and I guess that’s where my resentment lies. Whenever I ask him to drive out to me and take me out on my own turf, he always has an excuse, whether he has to do errands for his parents or do something work-related. I know that if I didn’t make the drive to see him, we’d never see each other. I’m a lady, and I’d like to be actually picked up at my house and taken on a date once in a while.
Am I being unreasonable here? I don’t think I am, and I’m about ready to call it quits between us. I feel kind of low on his list of priorities. I know he has a lot going on in his life, but I feel like he could MAKE time if he REALLY desired to see me.
So what is a girl to do?
I don’t automatically take away from these situations that these men aren’t really into their girlfriends. But I do think a precedent has been set that is hard to move away from. Trust me. I know this from experience.
When you go all out for a man early on, it’s no surprise when he gets comfortable, and in some cases, way too comfortable. It’s like spoiling a child. You can’t give them everything they want one minute and then be surprised when they act like a brat the next. But to move out of that stage and really figure out if you are the only one keeping your relationship above water, both women should opt to be a lot less available for their partners. That doesn’t mean they can’t answer a phone call or respond to a text message, but they don’t need to be the only one jumping in the car, spending their gas money all the time.
If my colleague’s boyfriend truly wants to be with her, it’s best to give him the opportunity to prove that by giving him the space to step up and make an effort. If he doesn’t, then maybe, he doesn’t have time to be in a relationship right now, and he needs to be realistic about that. And if he doesn’t, well, she has the confirmation she needed to stop wasting her time–and all that gas money…
But as always, that’s my opinion. How about you? Is a boyfriend failing to make a strong effort to see a woman due to work and life demands a petty problem? How would you deal with this situation?
