Carolyn Hax: He’s a great boyfriend the one night he’s free
Q: My boyfriend is an exceptionally good person. He’s 49, I’m 43. He volunteers with disabled veterans to do adventure sports, he comes running any time a friend is in need, he’s reliable for all manner of household help for anyone who asks. Currently, in addition to volunteering and training for triathlons, he’s caring for his elderly parents and two adult children who live with him and have a slight case of failure to thrive.
We’ve been together over a year and a half. He’s considerate and thoughtful, and I genuinely feel safe with him.
However, because of his many other responsibilities, we rarely see each other. He spends the night once a week, generally. I can’t go to his house because of his children, and I haven’t been invited to his parents’ house or to any of his activities. I don’t want to marry or move in with him, but the bare minimum I expect from a relationship is time.
I don’t feel like I can raise this issue with him because I am — and should be — secondary to caring for his parents and kids, and I know how important volunteering and other hobbies are to him.
Am I justified in ending an otherwise great relationship with a very good man over this? I feel very selfish for even considering it.
— Girlfriend
A: Yes, how dare you want what you want when there are others who want what they want?
You do see the self-erasure, I hope. It started the moment you decided his wants were more virtuous than yours.
Objectively, his time with veterans and his parents is exemplary and sacrosanct. No argument there. I’ll even file the adult-kids thing under “parent takes responsibility” without reading the fine print.
But what’s with the rest of it? The you-can’t-go, haven’t-been-invited-or-included stuff. Are we really going to blow right by that because we’ve already stipulated his generosity so we’re done here? Since when are adults with “a slight case of failure to thrive” a quarantine event?
Whew. Let’s back up for a second.
This is your life. You get to decide what matters.
That part is absolute, which means you can decide, without apology, that you don’t want him because he spends too much time brokering international peace and refreezing polar ice caps. You get to want what you want.
But you’re free to read and react to nuance, too. You can see something more complicated in his motives. You can see pure motives but some weird choices when it comes to execution. You can see pure motives and fine execution and wonder why he bothered to date someone when he barely has one night a week. And so on.
What you conclude is less important than freeing yourself to think, challenge, feel. What parts of this situation have you accepted without questioning?
You can also stop being blinded by virtue, start seeing him as a fellow human being — and just talk to him the way you’d talk to any other boyfriend. If you’d rather break up with him than share honestly how you feel, then that’s telling you something else.
This whole romance seems like a series of concessions: yours to his greater virtue, higher priorities and better uses for his time; his to whatever need whistles for him the loudest. (But you won’t try, assuming you aren’t worthy.)
What keeps a love story from becoming a dysfunction story is for you not only to love each other, but also to have a healthy, stabilizing love for yourselves.
• E-mail Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, or chat with her online at noon Eastern time each Friday at washingtonpost.com.
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