[Anonymous]

[color=#800080]my boyfriend and i are from different countries. we met and live in yet another country. now my boyfriend is stuck, there are no jobs for him where we live. he doesnt necessarily want to move to his home country, but he cant go on without a job.
i love him so much and dont want to lose him. i cant continue to live here without him, he’s my best friend and we’ve been together for all the time we’ve been here, i feel like i dont exist here without him.
what do we do? i would go with him somewhere else, but how long would it take him to get a job he loves, and is it right for me to follow him blindly? if he moves home to look for a job how long will that take?
i dont want to do long distance, i dont want to lose him. any advice?

[April Masini, your AskApril]

Romance is wonderful, but you have to be realistic. You’re asking questions about “we”, when you should really be asking about “you”. [b]You[/b] need to allow him to be the man — and a man needs a job. Men derive a lot of self worth out of being successful at work, and if he’s not feeling worthy, he’s not going to be a good boyfriend for long. Sit back and allow him to deal with this problem. You’ll get to know a lot about him as he handles this adversity — and that’s a good thing. Men who can wrestle problems and win are great men to be with. So, give him the opportunity to win for himself — and you.

I can’t answer your question about how long it will take him to get a job, and he probably can’t either. But I do [i]not[/i] think you should follow him blindly. Let him go, and if he wants you, he’ll send for you or propose to you or come back to be with you. Chasing after a man is never a good idea because, again, it deprives him from being HIS best self. Men want to be the ones who chase women and if you don’t let him chase you and win you over, you’re taking away one of his most important sense of self worth in a relationship: getting the girl!

I know you don’t want to lose him, but if he’s really yours to have, he’s going to do what he has to do to make himself a good partner — and that means finding employment.

I hope that helps. Please let me know how things go — and join me on Facebook at this link: [url][/url]. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your reply. It made a lot of sense.
I realise now that I have to let him decide what his next step is, and if I am part of it.

There’s a deadline to the situation – his housing contract means by September he has to do something (get a job or if not he’ll probably leave the city we live in). If I am not part of his future, how do I prevent this situation from being a long miserable countdown to our break up in September?

He would never purposely hurt me, but even if he’s quite sure he’s leaving and not inviting me to go with him, he could in theory want us to stay together until the last moment.

Doesnt that make me a victim, being there for him emotionally and physically when he has subconciously decided it’s over? Can I ask him to make a decision about us sooner than that, to avoid this?

Thanks again.

[April Masini, your AskApril]

I’m glad I was able to help! 😀

In answer to your further questions, it’s a little hard to answer further because I don’t know how old you both are, how long you’ve been dating, or if he ever had a job when you first started dating. If he never had a job this whole time, then I think you set yourself up for a tough time in the relationship by choosing a man who had no job. 😳 Read my book, Think & Date Like A Man (seriously) [url]https://www.askapril.com/relationship-dating-advice/think-and-date-like-a-man.html[/url] so you can understand that when you choose Mr. Right, there are certain signs that he’s ready to be in a relationship — and being at a certain point in his career is one of them. Your guy may just not be ready to be in the relationship the way you are. 😳 Think & Date Like A Man will tell you the other hints that he’s ready to settle down — or not.

That said, it’s hard to believe [i]an entire country[/i] doesn’t have a job for him to do, so you have to understand that HE is choosing to leave the country for himself without you. It doesn’t matter whether he “wants” you to stay together until the last moment” or not — you get a vote! If you’re suddenly waking up and realizing that he’s not Mr. Right, you may not want to date him until he leaves in September. Or, you may feel sentimental and want to see this through. You’re not a victim. You have choices. This is only a miserable count down if you refuse to accept that men really do derive their self worth from their jobs – and he needs one in order to be a good boyfriend.

I always tell women never to give men ultimatums or have “the talk” about the relationship — it doesn’t make them feel great about themselves, and that’s THE LAST thing you want in your man, so I don’t think you should ask him to make a decision about you. He’s already aware of the situation and he’s either decided or deciding what to do next. You get to ask yourself if you want to stick around until September or not.

I hope that helps — and hey!! — I didn’t see you on Facebook. Please join me — I’d love to have you there, as well as here, at this link: [url][/url]. 😀

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