How low can you go in Dear John

I feel like I’m being punished for all the things that other people have done to john in the past. The people who bullied him in school for being fat, or having a stammer. The girls who cheated on him, who screamed and fought with him. It’s almost like he doesn’t know how to cope in a relationship where that’s not the norm, he says to me that he’s never felt more loved, as if he can’t believe it could be real.

I told him I feel like I’m being punished, like I’m having to prove all the time that I’m not going to do anything horrific to him.

We had the most horrendous night on Tuesday, I completely broke down and sobbed. He could barely bring himself to put his hand on my knee. He said he feels entirely emotionless about everything, like he can’t ‘feel’. I’m sure it’s the medication. I hope it’s just because it’s early days, and things will settle down. But it’s hard to hear that your boyfriend has no emotion, even for you.

He said obviously he wants to be with me. But honestly, nothing feels obvious. It’s that thing of each person in a relationship putting in 50/50, to make the 100. Relationships naturally ebb and flow, and one person gives a bit more or takes a bit more and the balance shifts. Right now, I’m putting the 100 in on my own. He’s practically catatonic.

I guess things are so bad, the lowest they’ve been, that I can’t see an end to it. I can’t see a day when things will be back to anything resembling normal and this will just be something we talk about, a storm that we’ve weathered together.

I don’t know what to do. It doesn’t feel like I have a relationship right now, I can’t imagine when that might change. I feel so alone, and when I tell him this, he just says sorry, with no expression at all. He’s not lying when he says he can’t feel anything, I can tell he feels absolutely nothing.

And I know I shouldn’t take it personally, it’s not that he can’t feel anything just for me, it’s a general state of mind. But my god it’s hard, it’s so incredibly difficult.

He was saying this thing again about not wanting to live together. I asked him if he just didn’t want to live with me and he said no, that he just has no inclination to move out of his mums even to live on his own. I think what he hasn’t realised is that this is going to be a lifelong issue if he doesn’t get over it, the fear that things will go wrong, this fear of failure, and it’ll stop him ever having a successful relationship.

Right now, I’m happy where I am. I’d love to live with him, don’t get me wrong, but I’m happy where I am, and I’d be happy to live on my own once I’ve saved enough to move out. But I’m not going to wait forever for him to get his shit together over this issue.

He knows I want kids and I can’t afford to wait forever. God knows I love john to death and I desperately want my future to be with him but I won’t be with someone who’s half assed about me, I’ve done it too many times. Right now I’m putting it down to the meds because before all this, I know how much he loved me. And that’s the only thing that’s keeping me going right now.

Xx