[Anonymous]

So I’ve been with my boyfriend for about 4 months officially. Everything is absolutely perfect we love each other and tell each other all the time. I love spending every minute with him. We talk about being together forever. A few months ago I had mentioned to him a question like ‘if we spend too much time together, will we get sick of each other?’. He got all worried that I thought I didn’t want to spend a lot of time with him and that I had doubts, the reality is that I just thought he might get sick of me which is why I posed the question. I reassured him that I don’t think we’ll get sick of each other at all and apolgized profusely for saying that because it hurt him a lot. Things have been wonderful since then and I have absolutely no worries about the relationship. He doesn’t worry as much about it anymore. But recently his best friends girlfriend broke up with him and their break up has been affecting us. He keeps asking me how I know I’m going to love him in 5 years or why I think he is the ‘one’. I do think I love him in 5 years and I do think he is the one. The problem is that I am constantly having to reassure him. It seems like everytime he talks to his heartbroken friend he talks to me and he just worries so much that I’m going to break up with him because his friends girl broke up with his friend. I am getting sick of constantly coming up with reasons as to why he’s the one. I tell him he’s the one all the time and that I love him and want to be together with him forever but he won’t stop worrying and it’s not fair because I never question him as to why he thinks I’m the one or how he knows he wants to be with me forever. I just know. I feel like he doesn’t believe me at all or something and for no reason at all and it makes me so frustrated. How do I get him to just believe me that I want to be with him forever without having to tell him everyday?

[Ask April Masini]

You asked a good question. 🙂

The reality is that other peoples’ break ups, divorces, deaths, marriages and good or bad fortune DO affect all of us. When you see other friends getting married, it’s natural to wonder about getting married yourself. When you see a friend’s parent die, it’s natural to think about your own parent dying. Divorces and break ups also affect the people around you. So it’s natural for your boyfriend to wonder about the two of you when he sees his friend suffering a break up.

What isn’t normal is for him to make you responsible for taking care of his neuroses. 😕 And you’re playing into this problem by reassuring him that you will be there in five years. What would be better is if you were more truthful with him, and risk his getting more upset. If you can tell him, “I know you’re upset about your friend’s break up, and I hope to be with you in 5 years, but I just don’t know right now. I’m really happy in our relationship, but I know that things change in peoples’ relationships, and I hope we’re always happy together, but I’d be lying if I told you I knew for sure we’d be together in 5 years.”

Your boyfriend has to understand how the world works — that people change sometimes, although not always. Relationships can last until death do you both part, or else, they can end in divorce. That’s just the nature of love! We all hope and work for the best, and that’s why I’m here!! 😀 To help guide my readers into relationships that will endure the long run, and get out of those that are festering or are bound to fail.

It’s not your job to treat him like your child, and promise him a happy ending. It is your job as his girlfriend, to tell him how you feel right now, and what you hope for in the future, as well as what you are and aren’t willing to do in a relationship — but you can’t promise him a future you don’t know about. Especially since you haven’t really been dating that long.

If the two of you do decide to get married one day, then it will (hopefully) be because you believe, after having dated wisely, that he is the man you want to invest and make a future with, and you’re going to promise each other a life together. That’s the best promise people can make to each other in love, but the reality is that the divorce rate exists, and it’s high. So the best thing you can help your boyfriend do is to understand reality, and if he’s too neurotic thinking about what could happen, instead of what is happening, then he’ll never be able to be with someone long term.

However, I really think from what you’ve written, that he’s just shaken up by his friend’s break up, and has a little baggage about being abandoned, but that none of this is fatal 😆 and that with some honesty and love on your part, the two of you can work through this.

Remember, it’s not your job to reassure him of a rosy future the way a mother assures a 5 year old that nothing bad will ever happen. It is your job to be honest with him. You’ll deepen your intimacy together that way, and have a closer relationship.

Good luck!

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