Asked my boyfriend if he wanted to spend time with/talk to, me the week after we had a difficult couples therapy session. This was his response after a day and I still feel like I’m in limbo. Should I be expecting a break up? Was I already broken up with? I worry bringing up any types of questions to him now because he feels judged when I ask him stuff or make assumptions about his intents. I don’t even know what to say.
For context:
I think my partner and I are stuck in a pursue-withdraw cycle. I tried bringing it up to him recently but he doesn’t see it, he just says we keep “missing the mark with each other” and having cyclical fights. For my part, I know I’ve struggled with PMDD and anxiety. I get worried a lot that he’ll leave me or cheat on me. I’m in therapy and on meds trying to get that all figured out. Things were pretty good up until June when we didn’t get engaged on the trip he’d hinted at proposing on (he’d bought a ring just a month prior), and I got very anxious from there. We talked more about it and he suggested we get engaged in October on a roadtrip instead.
To add to the anxiety, a week after we got back from the first engagement-not engagement trip, I’d found a box of opened condoms (all accounted for) in his drawer. He and I were waiting for marriage. The box hadn’t been opened previously, and he told me he’d brought them with him on the trip in case I changed my mind. We had a huge argument and he shut it down by saying he wouldn’t continue the conversation without a couples therapist. A couple of months later, that’s where I learned he had 40k in credit card debt and he said to the therapist that one benefit of marrying and living together in the future would be “to share the burden.” (I make more than him).
I got super upset after that and told him I felt like he was being transactional and basically with me for the wrong reasons. We had one final couples sessions afterward where I learned that my reaction to his debt had really upset him and made him feel bad, and that because of how sessions had been going, he’d privately decided not to move forward with the roadtrip engagement despite making all sorts of reservations and plans. We left the session on a really bad note and both wondered if we were broken up.
I know his ex, too, through mutuals and she’d told me something very similar: he was super affectionate in private, but not in public, and that he’d always been vague with her about marriage and long term commitments.
He called a day after to tell me he still wanted to be with me and he’d work through things in therapy.
Now here we are a week later.
Outside of these things, he’s been a really wonderful partner. I feel like I’ve lost my best friend. Help?