For Reddit

Hello y’all,

My partner and I have been together for over a year now, we were initially doing long distance but now we’re back in the same city together. Prior to him returning, a lot of expectations were set (by him) that he ended up not being able to follow through on, partially due to extenuating circumstances but also due to what I view as a lack of consideration on his end.

At the start, he was going on and on about how when he’d be back, we’d spend SO much time together, that he’d practically be living at my place, that he was going to prioritize me for the first month or so before he started dating again, etc. We had even had discussions of possibly living together eventually, and I had told him that I wanted that to be something we did together first. However, when it came time for him to return, one of his partners moved here with him. At first we were considering all moving in together, which was a big ask on their part and took me a little while to become comfortable with, but then due to financial reasons that was a no-go. So… she moved in with him at his mom’s. While I was definitely unhappy with this, he reassured me it would be temporary and that it was mainly due to convenience/not needing to pay rent. Neither of them had jobs at that point so they got to spend most of their time together, which is only natural given the circumstances, but nonetheless brought out some feelings for me and led to me not being my best self for a while.

When he first got back, we did spend weekends together for about a month, though often this included his other partner being there at times due to her being uncomfortable staying at his mums alone. For some more context, his mother is a lot, and she has been/continues to be emotionally abusive and volatile. She’s very loud when she yells ( she yells a lot), and my metamour has some medical issues that are triggered when stressed, so being around his mom was too much of a health risk at times. As much as I tried to be understanding, I began to get annoyed when it started happening too frequently, and progressively got more angry over the fact that he even allowed my meta to move into his mom’s place with him. I felt it had been irresponsible of them to decide to move her out here prior to her finding herself a place, and that it would have been wiser to have him move first before she joined later on once she found accommodations. Not to mention, my partner is very aware of the way his mom is, and still willingly put my meta in an unsafe environment even though there was no rush for her to move there. It would have given us some more time to reconnect as well, given that we’d been doing long distance for 9 months I feel it would have greatly benefited us to have a month or so focused on our connection. Over time, he would just get stressed out leaving her there, so even when we would have alone time he wasn’t really present. This ended up having a pretty significant impact on our sex life, which started to grow increasingly dissatisfying. I just kept getting more and more frustrated, and it reflected poorly on my behaviour which I do feel bad about. I acted out a bit (not really towards him though, moreso just crying a lot and having a hard time expressing my disappointment in a balanced way because of that), though I feel that anyone in position would have been feeling less than happy in light of all the unexpected shifts and probably would not have had the capacity to be show up as the best version of themselves. They still got to spend so much more time together, and once my partner got a job our schedules became even more mismatched, all while theirs remained very similar. Even after they ended up moving into his dads place when the situation at his moms got worse, it didn’t change anything about the frequency at which I’d see him, if anything it reduced further.

I work morning shifts Tuesday to Friday, I need to be up between 5-6am depending on the day and I’m in bed before 10-11pm. My partner was well aware of this factor, and yet he still decided to get a bartending job where he works evenings Friday and Saturday, from 2-4am. He needed work urgently though, so this was more of take what he could get situation, which I was sympathetic towards as he assured me we’d make it work. We first tried having him come over during the week, which ended up not being feasible due to our drastically different sleep schedules. We then tried reserving sleepovers for after his shifts, but that was hard at first because sometimes he would come back at 7am cause he had gone out after work and I would get really upset. At the time I didn’t understand why he was so keen on always going out AFTER his shifts when he knew it was cutting into the limited time we had available. Then he started saying that sometimes he might not be able to come back after work at all, as he expressed wanting to spend the night closer to his work when the opportunity presented itself through a coworker or friend that lived nearby. This was even harder for me to accept, already our overnights were limited to weekends and now he wanted to cut back even more? I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I behaved in ways I was not proud of at that point in time, which ultimately pushed him away further, but I felt so hurt that he didn’t even seem bothered by how dramatically all of the plans and expectations we’d set had shifted. How he didn’t seem to care about cutting down on our time together even more than we already had to. This is all my perspective on things and he might disagree with how I’m portraying him, but this is just the impression I got from his behaviour. His other partner ended up getting a job at the same place as him, and in turn continued to have a very similar schedule so they were always at an advantage time-wise they got to see each other at work! I couldn’t handle it, and he could tell I was struggling, yet made no effort to increase our overnight’s. We eventually had a meeting with his therapist, where he committed to one sleepover a week on Sundays and a weekly dinner date, with the possibility of spending more weekend nights together after his shifts at his discretion. Although he acknowledged the impact of the changes on me, he felt this was the best he could offer given the circumstances. I was unhappy with this one night a week arrangement, but I reluctantly agreed because I wanted to be able to see him in some capacity.

After that meeting, he pretty consistently only stayed over one night a week after his shifts. Except most of the time it wasn’t because he was staying somewhere nearby, and instead would go all the way back to his dads (which is significantly further away from his job than my place is). I had gotten an extra set of keys to my place made for the explicit purpose of him being able to come here if he was able to, and quite frankly I feel that he would have been able to in those instances as it was also just a matter of convenience. Even though I know that him and my meta aren’t spending every second together during the week due to her work schedule and him having his own plans, they still have a lot of shared time and spend a minimum of four nights together regardless. Her shifts often end earlier than his when she works weekends, and still she often chooses to stay out later until his shift is over and they’ll go out together and then head back in a shared Uber (which I get saves money for both of them but come on, i want to spend time with him too 😞). Recently he has stayed over more nights, which was nice, though it felt like the only reason he did it was because he was making up for not being consistent about weeknight dates a few times/because it was convenient, or at least that’s the impression I got based off how it was worded when he offered. This really hurts my feelings, I know it’s not a zero sum game and I know quality is more important than quantity, but I do feel quantity is still a factor and I’d appreciate being prioritized more. It’s hard to appreciate the quality of time when there’s all these underlying feelings of resentment and anger still at play, and I really think the only thing that would help with that is if he did try to stay over more often.

Recently, he also told me that they are considering actually moving in together, which really threw me in a loop. It’s mainly for reasons of practicality; again, his dad’s place is far, him and my meta have similar schedules so it works, and they feel it would be less costly for them. All but the last reason make sense to me, as there are many rooms for rent in the area and they cost significantly less than splitting a place. Not to mention, it would allow them both to have their own space, so it would be easier for me to, say, go to his place on a night he works and rest until he gets back. This way he could be in his own place with all of his stuff, with less of a worry about forgetting anything, which is also a factor that has led to him needing to go home in the past when he could have otherwise come over. While he did say that this would make it easier for him to come over as he would likely be closer, I worry that given his recent track record it wouldn’t change very much. Not to mention, this was something we’d discussed doing together FIRST, so again my feelings were hurt by a shifted expectation.

I have tried telling him a few times that I’m at a point where I don’t mind if he comes back really late, that he can leave his things here for convenience (which he already has but alas he still remains inconsistent in the time he can spend with me). I even sat him down and explicitly told him that I was unhappy with the current arrangement and would appreciate if we altered it. I asked if he could prioritize overnights with me on weekends, that I would be ok if he had other plans to attend to during the day, that I could try to be flexible with some warning so long as we still had the one set overnight date on Sundays; I’d just like it if he made more of an effort to chose to come over to mine instead of going all the way back to his dads. I told him I wanted weekends where we could only have one night together to be treated with the same consideration as if he were telling me he wouldn’t be able to stay over at all for whatever reason. And even after laying that out, all I got was a “maybe”, that he’d need to think about it. This weekend when I asked him if he could come over Saturday night (again, no specific time, just come back when you’re set for the night), he just said he wasn’t sure and left it at that. It was only after I woke up sick this morning that he agreed to come back here after work tonight, because I asked him to come take care of me as I’m too ill to do so.

I don’t know what to do, I have even spoken to my meta about this and she said she would not have any issues with him staying here a bit more often, though she seemed a bit confused that he wasn’t making more of an effort to do so. When I told her about our current arrangement she expressed that, in my position, she may have reconsidered the relationship. I feel like I’m only a priority one night a week and am exhausted from feeling undervalued. When we do see each other and spend quality time together, it is really enjoyable and I feel loved, it’s really this timing aspect that is the biggest issue. I don’t want to be demanding or entitled, but I need more time and commitment within this relationship if it is to remain at the same level of closeness it’s at right now. He calls me an anchor partner, yet I feel more like a secondary in spite of our dynamic supposedly not being hierarchical. I don’t know what to do, what I could tell him to convey how much this all is affecting me, how to make him understand and try to be more considerate. I don’t know if it’s even worth it to try at this point. The last thing I want is to leave this relationship, so ideally would want some advice on how to express myself in a way that might get through to him

EDIT: He works 7pm to 4am, not 2-4am, typo 😅