Feeling absolutely dire - need to get this off my chest

garylarson

I'm 29 and have been seeing a bloke who's almost 8 years older, I'll call him trev, we met and fell in admiration very quickly, he was still with an old girlfriend but they were in the death throes, I never encouraged him to talk about her as I realised that I was starting to have deeper feelings for him but inevitably I did hear about some of their problems, they split up in the course of time and I helped him to find a new place, a few places fell through and time was running out so he moved into my room in a house then we quickly found our own apt. Things were great for a month or so until my cousin died suddenly, he was 35 and it hit me and my whole family very hard, I became depressed and detached but slowly things came back to normal, his mother even came to stay with us for a week which was testing but ok - until I found out that trev had been abused by his adopted dad and that his mum knew about it and still lived with him, trev's sister had also been abused yet she allowed her children to have unsupervised contact with him, even allowing them to be taken on overseas holidays, this led to a lot of arguments between us, I just couldn't get my head around it, I'm not sure what would have happened next because suddenly I was thrown into another family crisis, my very beloved godfather was diagnosed and died from throat cancer within six months, even now those six months are a blur to me but trev was supportive, understanding my family nightmare even though his family are the polar opposite of mine. We moved to be near my family and I realised that trev was unnaturally dependant on me for nearly everything, friends, transport etc, I started to feel very under pressure, and told him that I couldn't be the centre of his universe and that I was sick of nagging him to actually do the things that he said he'd do, I feel I'd better mention that I'm under some severe financial strain at the moment, which trev is aware of. Finally I told him that he'd have to stand on his own two feet, get a place of his own and get cracking on some of his plans, I really don't want him to get dragged into my money mess and I'm hoping to get accepted onto a foundation course in Sept which means that life is going to be busy and broke for the forseeable future,

I feel like a total bit(h though, we're having problems that are very similar to those he had with his ex and I feel like I'm going to crack up, Surely if we were meant to be together I wouldn't be asking him to move out, I'd be willing to weather any storm etc, am I really slowly breaking up with him or could this be the best thing we've ever done? Sorry for the length and the rambling guys, am in a very bad place right now

BroomBurner

It doesn't sound like you're breaking up with him, it sounds like you are helping him to be a bit more independent. If the same thing happened with his ex, then surely it is his problem and not yours. Maybe he likes to have a mammy instead of a gilfriend, when his previous girlf got sick of that, it ended. Does he work? If not, why not?

I'm sorry to hear about the family issues you've been living through

garylarson

yes he does work, he was on the dole for a while when we first got together then did a fás course and got a job, unfortunately the job is 35 miles away and he needs my car to get there, which leaves me stranded in a rural ish area, lots of resentment over that, after much pushing he applied for a car loan and was turned down, ditto with finance as he has no credit history, after he was turned down he just stopped trying and continued to take my car every day, if I had put my foot down he'd prob have quit his job and stayed at home, thimk it's good that he's moving but that's only happening cos he's leaving it to me to motivate him

BroomBurner

Yeah, some people really need a push. Could he not afford a cheap little car, without needing a loan?
The space might do you both the world of good also - absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. If you're worried about the distance, just make sure you keep in regular contact and see each other when possible. If it doesn't work out, then it doesn't, but at least you were proactive in changing your circumstances.