DEAR EMILY,
My boyfriend and I have been living together for six years. I am 36 and he is 37. We are business partners, manufacturing food products that are exported abroad. We both started it, but I have the majority stake while he is my industrial partner.
Our business has had its share of ups in that we have a relatively good life. We travel abroad, go to good restaurants and own properties together. Recently, our business experienced a downturn, and that’s when he began blaming me for his “miserable” life, which I couldn’t understand.
We haven’t skipped meals, we live in an air-conditioned three-story house and we own our car. He had to give up some of his gadgets to tide us over. I asked him to find a new job and let me handle the business alone. He almost did, but I eventually solved our cash problem; so he stayed.
He is diligent and a hard worker, but I feel he is sucking my energy. He is problematic, hard-headed and very pessimistic, while I am very positive in my business outlook and handle our business well. Good accounts will be coming in soon, and if that happens, our problems will be solved.
He’s been cold to me, seldom says “I love you,” and we haven’t had sex in a long time. He is always on his Iphone playing, or watching TV. I asked him if he still loves me and he said yes, but I should stop doubting him and focus on our business. One night, I just broke down. He said that with his parents still struggling hard and four of his siblings about to enter college, I am not his priority anymore. I want to blame his father for bringing up eight children, and all the while depending on my boyfriend for support.
I suggested he start looking for a more stable job and not be an entrepreneur anymore. Instead of answering, he just hugged me. He is really diligent and dependable and he puts 100 percent into the business. But from what I can see, women are more patient and hardworking, while the men, with their pride and machismo, aren’t.
My worry is, he may not be the husband for me. Perhaps a foreigner who is a fighter like me? There are, of course, losers among them, as well. I am wondering if this phase in our life will pass and we could be happy together, eventually.
CONFUSED BUSINESSWOMAN
Don’t you wish you had a crystal ball you could look into, to pick out that perfect man spot on? Won’t that make life dandy, so I, too, will be lucky in the Lotto? But living is no fantasy. It’s more of a hit-and-miss, a game of peek-a-boo, that fate has made more interesting with the road map of life in layers, like peeling an onion.
Your boyfriend, as I visualize him, finds you such a strong woman and feels he doesn’t need to do anything extraordinary, knowing you do everything so well; any more contribution from him will be redundant. He may be your industrial partner, but with your initiative and relentless drive in this business, his creativity, to put it mildly, is stifled. Of course you’d want him to put in his two cents’ worth, but he is obviously overwhelmed and diminished by your strong personality.
What can he do when he sees before him a well-oiled machine? He definitely won’t fix something that ain’t broke! And if anything breaks down, as what you said recently happened, you were there right away with your “tools,” fixing it and making it viable again. No help needed.
You have the money, the acumen, the stamina. So, what is someone like him to do? Isn’t that enough to emasculate a lesser man? And with his family’s incessant needs tying him down, and turning him into this worthless creature right before your eyes, would you have possibly known the inner demons he is beset with and struggling to free himself from—without you getting into his shoes?
If you can’t take him anymore, take a breather. Take a week or a few months away from him. That may enable you to see the trees, not just the forest, and begin to understand and appreciate the things you thought didn’t matter anymore. See what happens.
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