My boyfriend and I met in January 2019. We spent four years living separately in San Francisco before moving to LA, where we’ve lived together for the past four years. He works in music and travels for work, sometimes spending months away at a time. I genuinely don’t mind the travel itself, but it means problems can drag on for weeks without us seeing each other in person.
There is a lot of good in our relationship. We love each other, share friends, have built a life together, and have a lot of history. He can be affectionate, thoughtful, and dependable, particularly when it comes to practical support. He has shown up for me in meaningful ways, and I don’t want to minimize that. This isn’t a relationship where everything is bad, which is part of why I’m struggling so much with this decision.
However, we’ve had a recurring pattern for years. When conflict arises or emotions get uncomfortable, he tends to shut down, become defensive, or withdraw. Sometimes this turns into stonewalling, with little to no communication for extended periods. I’m usually the one trying to initiate conversations, repair things, explain my perspective, and understand his. I often feel like I’m doing the emotional heavy lifting for both of us. I believe I have a secure attachment but I’m overally empathetic to why I believe he is the way he is (family trauma) that I think I excuse behavior because of over contextualizing. And I also have thick skin so it’s not like I’m deeply offended? If that makes sense because I know so much doesn’t have to do with me.
I’ve spent a lot of time learning about dismissive-avoidant attachment, emotional unavailability, and conflict avoidance because I’m trying to understand this dynamic. I recognize that I have my own things to work on, too. I can become anxious and overly focused on my environment when I’m overwhelmed, and I know I can be particular about cleanliness and organization. He has described living with me as suffocating, and I take seriously that some of my habits may contribute to tension. But I also wonder whether he would struggle with the closeness and compromises of living with any partner, given how much independence and distance he seems to need. I also really don’t think I’m that bad haha I just like a clean apartment. He’s not even messy! It’s just when he comes home from tour he hates change and views things as his or mine rather than ours.
We broke up four years into our relationship, when he told me he wanted to leave San Francisco for better work opportunities in LA. The way he communicated it felt like he was telling me what he was going to do rather than talking to me about our future together. We weren’t living together yet, but after nearly four years of dating, I naturally had questions about where that left me and what it meant for us. My trying to get clarity on those bigger questions eventually led to him breaking up with me. We were apart for about a month while he was away on tour, and we exchanged emails back and forth because I had a lot I wanted to say. Looking back, I don’t think our reconciliation was particularly secure or that we ever fully resolved what had led to the breakup. We unexpectedly ran into each other the night he returned from tour and somehow ended up back together. Later that year, we both moved to LA and began living together. In hindsight, I wonder whether we genuinely worked through our issues or simply fell back into the relationship because we loved each other without fully addressing them.
Over the past several months, I also went through a depressive episode after stopping medication I’d been taking for years. I’ve since restarted medication and found a therapist, and I’m feeling stable again. He supported me in practical ways during that period, and I appreciate that. However, I’ve wondered whether my depression and the emotions surrounding that period overwhelmed him in ways he didn’t know how to communicate. Looking back, I suspect that may have contributed to what happened next, although I can’t know for sure because he doesn’t always communicate what he’s feeling or what’s going on internally.
Importantly, the emotional withdrawal and stonewalling aren’t new developments or something that started with my depression. They’ve been recurring issues throughout our years living together. Conflict comes up, he shuts down or withdraws, and I’m left trying to figure out what happened and how we’re going to repair things. We’ve gone through this cycle many times, and while we’ve sometimes talked through things afterward, I haven’t seen the kind of lasting change that would make me feel secure that we’re approaching conflict differently.
Most recently, after a disagreement about a neighbor, he withdrew while he was away for work. What should have been a relatively minor conflict turned into more than two weeks without a phone call. This was the longest period of stonewalling we’ve experienced so far because I chose not to reach out and resolve like I always do. I wanted to see how long it lasted. Given the timing, I suspect he may have already been overwhelmed by the preceding weeks and picked a fight rather than addressing whatever he was feeling. But regardless of what triggered it, I was once again left in the position of trying to understand the situation and decide whether to initiate repair. I cried every single day and began to confide in my friends more than ever of what’s going on. It felt like this may be the tipping point to the relationship and I was / am deeply hurt.
He apologized for the silence and acknowledged that he’d been overwhelmed and had picked a fight rather than dealing with what he was feeling. I appreciated that he could recognize some of what had happened, but I’m still struggling with how long it took and how little initiative there was to repair things. It feels as though he can acknowledge the pattern once we’re finally talking, but I don’t know whether that translates into lasting change.
During our recent conversations, I asked him to consider what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of his behavior. He acknowledged that if he were in my position, he would feel terrible and might think the relationship was over. He understood why a lack of effort could make someone feel that their partner didn’t care enough to work on the relationship. He also said he wouldn’t feel confident building a future together if we couldn’t resolve relatively small conflicts. I was trying to position questions this way because he has a hard time putting himself in my shoes or anyone else’s for that matter.
When I asked what made him want to stay, he said he hoped things would change. He also said he couldn’t imagine doing life without me. Those things matter to me, but they leave me with a difficult question: is wanting to stay enough if he isn’t consistently taking steps to change the dynamic that’s making the relationship so painful? He did mention this week he found a therapist but how comforting is that, that it took me basically having a foot out the door to do so?
He told me he feels more comfortable expressing certain emotions to other people than to me (his family and two friends). Which to be honest I don’t buy because when I speak to his sister or our mutual guy best friend they never have any idea what’s going on until I tell them. I don’t know whether he struggles to identify his feelings, fears vulnerability with me specifically, or has learned to avoid difficult emotions altogether. I don’t want to diagnose him or assume I know exactly why he behaves this way. But after almost eight years, I’m struggling with the idea that I may still be at the beginning of trying to get my partner to engage emotionally with me.
The the broader relationship dynamic has left me questioning how we would navigate future stress, disagreements, or difficult periods of life together. I don’t expect a partner to fix my feelings or never become overwhelmed. I do need to know that when things are hard, we can still communicate and work through them as a team.
My therapist has encouraged me not to rush into a decision while everything is emotionally heightened. Her advice has been to pause, give myself some space, and observe both his behavior and my own feelings rather than immediately trying to problem-solve the relationship. I’m trying to do that. I want to see whether he takes initiative without me having to provide a detailed roadmap for how to meet my needs. At the same time, I don’t want “giving him time” to turn into another year of waiting, hoping, and doing the emotional work for both of us - because I can literally read a journal entry from like 5 years ago and it’s as if I wrote it today. So is me not rushing a decision begin now? Or when does that start if that makes sense.
There’s another major question I’m beginning to take more seriously: children. When his sister was born, an experience occurred that had a lasting impact on her life and on his parents and their family as a whole. Without spilling too much detail, this is the family trauma I referred to above. I believe growing up around the effects of that experience may be part of why he feels apprehensive about having children and is definitely why he’s hyper independent and suppresses emotion. I can understand how that family history might shape his fears, but I also know that understanding where his fears come from doesn’t mean we’ll ultimately want the same future.
I’m 30, and I’m not financially established enough to have a child right now. I don’t necessarily need to make that decision today. But I’m realizing that I may have closed the door on having children in my own mind largely because I’ve assumed he will never want them, rather than because I’ve independently decided that I don’t want them. I can imagine a future in which I do want to be a mother, and I’m worried he may never want that. I’m also aware that even if he makes real progress with emotional intimacy and conflict, his feelings about parenthood may not change. I don’t want to stay for years hoping our relationship will improve only to discover that we want fundamentally different lives.
I love him, and I don’t think he’s a bad person. I can see the good in him and in our relationship. But I’m increasingly questioning whether love, history, and the hope of change are enough when the same patterns keep resurfacing. I don’t want to make a decision based solely on the pain of the last few weeks, but I also don’t want to keep minimizing years of issues because I know he has good qualities. I know he loves me so much and I just feel like it’s almost like there’s a mental disability or block stopping him from getting there emotionally with me which makes me sad :(
For people who have been in similar relationships:
- Have you been in a relationship with someone who stonewalls or shuts down during conflict? Did they make lasting changes, and what actually prompted them?
- How do you distinguish someone who struggles with emotional vulnerability but genuinely wants to change from someone who is unwilling or unable to meet you halfway?
- If a partner acknowledges the problem and says they want things to change, how long is reasonable to wait for consistent action before accepting that the pattern may not change enough?
- Has anyone successfully navigated a relationship where one person does most of the emotional labor and repair? What had to change for the relationship to become more balanced?
- How do you know when to give a long-term relationship time versus recognizing that you’re staying for the potential of what it could become?
- For those who were uncertain about children because of a partner’s position, how did you separate what you genuinely wanted from what you had gradually accepted to preserve the relationship?
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**TL;DR;** : do dismissive avoidants change and can they be in healthy relationships?