I'm losing my patience!!!

[ellamanopi]

For the first six months, I never felt crazy being with him. I trusted him completely, felt totally confident and good about myself for making the decision to be with such a perfect partner for me. I was proud.

 

My guy and I have been together for a year and a half. We met each other while both going through transitions and helped each other move through them. I was declaring myself completely financially independent for the first time, and he was losing his financial dependency... Though not by choice. When I met him I was amazed at his empathy and generosity toward other people, and his passionate creative and intellectual drive... Always making art, studying and connecting with people. He's always been so respectful to me, and such a friend, that he's taught me better how to respect myself. He'll be an ear to most and he's very present when he finds an opportunity to be helpful. I related to him in the way that I was, too, always pretty hesitant to bring new people close into my life. It's a trust issue, from various experiences, but partially an issue purely because all of the people I may care about or have been close to in the past are not necessarily suited to be as reciprocating, respectful and appreciative to my generosity as I should expect them to be... many disappointments there in the past.

 

I made the choice to move out of my safety net right before travelling North for work. We started our relationship a month before my travels. Two months after I left, summer 2012, I came back to a huge decrease in my hours at my previously stable job. I needed somewhere to live, so I stayed with him, temporarily to save up money.

 

I was only with him for about a month before he was kicked out of the communal artist's warehouse where he was living. The place he lived at was full of energy, creativity... it was a fun artistic community... but was full of people who paid next to nothing for rent, and of coarse there was a catch... That catch being the person who collected the rent. An ego-centric chauvinist who had the hots for me and kicked my boyfriend out of his home out of jealous lunacy. This was not the first episode like this among the people who lived there, and the folks who were lucky enough not to catch the heat put up with friends sometimes being booted because they got a steal on rent, and had the good fortune of sharing the wonderful space with their friends while using their resources for their own projects rather than rent.

 

My boyfriend lived there for 5 years. We are both 24 now. He left the place at 23. Previous to that, he lived with his mom until the end of high school. He paid rent initially when he moved in. After the first year, he started making art and doing marketing in exchange for free rent. He has not paid a day's rent since. When he was booted, he had no job. He still has no job. He's a high school graduate, with 2 years of college under his belt, not much job experience but still some... Mostly volunteer art stuff.

 

Now, a year and a half into the relationship we are moved into our second place together. We have pretty much switched typical gender roles, while I'm the money maker and he takes care of the house. He generally does a damn good job too, cleans each day while I'm gone.. Runs errands here and there while I'm busy at my job so that I can pay for rent, phone bills and countless little costs for the both of us... in an area that has infamously high cost of living. ..all with the promise that he will get a job, give me backpay rent(his insistence, I'm not sure I'll even accept if it ever comes- goal is to get BOTH of us on our feet) and give me the opportunity to finnallly start getting somewhere with saving money, not having to scrape by, and having more free time for all of the studying, reading and art that I have less time for now(amazingly, if he had a job I could do both!).

 

I am nearly losing it with anticipation to start my life. I'm young, I'm working hard here all the time and have a lot of goals to keep working toward. I have school to look forward to, travelling, and various goals artistically. When I'm not making progress I'm going stir crazy.

Both of my parents are in their 50s now, and have gone from the middle-class pretty comfortable lives I grew up in to being homeless. Literally both of them have become homeless. One is unemployed, isolated in mid-country with an alcoholic husband, no job, no means of escape... the other has been living in his van for 2 years. It's horrifying, and creates a lot of fear of the same misfortune for myself if I don't play my cards right... or a lack of resources to help them as they lose their abilities to be fully functional enough to help themselves, to dig themselves out of the holes they're both in. I don't know what'll happen to either of them. I have to be prepared to take it on if that time comes and they don't have support set out for themselves.

 

I've been waiting for a year for my boyfriend to get this job. The economy is awful right now, even for young people with some experience and college creds, but if I were in his position(like I have been in the past), I'd be treating job hunting like a full-time job. I don't see him doing that. He'll go in and out of being persistent about finding one. Often times I have to push him to do that, while he's trying to... what seems like compensate for his lack of job by doing other nice things for me that don't measure up to this BIG LACK of JOB situation that's looming over both of us.

About 2 weeks ago, I went on my day off with him to a copy shop and, after doing a lot of editing together on his resume, we made a good deal of prints of it. I felt great afterward. A step forward. A big step! I thought it could be the key to him getting a job. This physical resume that became the "reason" in the two weeks prior for not doing much in the way of job hunting. Since then, I've heard nothing of using them to apply for jobs.

I know that he is not a malicious person. I feel taken for granted. He's not aware of the destructive messages he sends me by neglecting the simple, respectful act of coming through on his end of our responsibilities.... by giving it his best shot, at least! I feel like I've been giving it my best shot for over a year now while choosing to survive with him, have had a lot of patience, and have throughout felt mostly supported... emotionally anyway... but lately I have been slowly drained of my motivation and optimism for the situation purely because I'm just sick of waiting and I'm becoming suspicious of his motivations.

Perhaps he doesn't want a job. I believe that HE believes he wants a job, although I'm not sure that he actually does. I see the awful guilt and depression that he carries, knowing that I'm wearing thin waiting for us to move forward. I know he deeply cares about me, I can see it in the way that his emotions match mine when I'm upset. I know he loves me, though perhaps more selfishly than I've thought.

I don't know what he's waiting for. Perhaps his issues go deeper than I understand, and he has crippling anxiety about having a job. That doesn't exactly fit the picture though, seeing as how he has been a fabulous student in the past, and has had jobs that were sorry to see him go. I find it hard to keep from finding the fault in myself sometimes, and thinking that if I give more to make things easier, that'll be the key to his success. I really don't want this to fail, and I've put so much into partnering up with him. I'm resentful toward him now, a little more each day. I find it hard not to feel this anxiety that I'm just getting suckered into being his mom.

But I'll tell you what he does in his free time. He spends most of it trying to keep up with issue after issue that seems to come up for him, such as dealing with parents, paying his own bills when I'm low on funds, helping out in temporary ways... While about half of his time seems to be spent relaxing from the stress of the rest of that. He rarely sees his friends anymore because of the stress of his situation, and the embarrassment of not having his crap together.

I'm trying to come to some kind of conclusion about this, about the extent that he takes me for granted, about what is reasonable to expect and so on... so that I don't catch myself in a trap of continuing to wait and taking on the responsibility of another person if it's not in my best interest. It's not doing great things for my ego to be promised the effort and not seeing sufficient results. It really teaches a person that they don't deserve better than a lack of following through. All the while, I have to be the hard ass, the rock, keeping things together so that our home doesn't fall apart and so that we both get to be safe enough to have the opportunities we need to be healthy, working people with normal resources for ourselves.

 

At this point, I'm just glad I took the time to type this all out. I haven't come to a main conclusion about what I plan to do, but I've gained some insight just by stepping back from my emotions enough to take a stab at telling the story. Hopefully I'll know better what to do soon, because as time passes without a solution it becomes too easy to slip into fantasies of "everything's okay" or "I'm tough, I'll just push on a little more" or "he has no where else to turn, all he needs is more of a boost and a safe, stable place to be" while my resentment builds up behind them.

[Kimi]

so, what is your question here? Are you just venting?

[ellamanopi]

so, what is your question here? Are you just venting?

Both.

I wanted to share my story and get some feedback. I know it's long but I like to read thorough stories like this about other people's experiences, and I wanted to get it all out for myself as well. While I realize that plenty of people will come to this thread and groan, maybe a few will find it interesting and have an opinion to share.

 

Near the end I explain that I'm trying to find some conclusion about how much I'm being taken for granted, if these are red flags I should be separating from. If this situation isn't right, I don't want to keep sacrificing for the greater good of our partnership instead of moving on on my own.

[Phantom888]

When you date an artist, you run the risk of being poor with him. Artists love themselves and their art more than people, so in general they will not stoop down to get a real job and make real money. But they are very creative, and often girls are drawn to them, which is fine. But as long as you are with an artist, and sharing resources, don't expect a stable and comfortable lifestyle. This is just reality. Men without a job tend to slack off, as nature never intended for them to stay home. Kinda like fish out of the water.