Dear Prudence,
How can I fall back in love with my partner? Although I (21F) love my partner (23M), things have not felt as good recently, and I want to remedy this. He is comforting, sweet, effusive with his love and praise, very open to conversation, very open to vulnerability; he makes me laugh, and we can talk about anything at length together. He is the only person I know who doesn’t drain my “social battery.” All that said, my feelings have been killed recently (the last few weeks), and this worries me. I feel more averse to physical touch and sex, more easily overstimulated and overwhelmed. I am sometimes embarrassed by him in public situations (for which I feel terrible guilt), as he can be a little cheeky and dry-humored and over-confident (though I am socially anxious, so I may misread others’ discomfort). He has let me down in some of our difficult conversations recently, frequently falling back on mental health and making me feel like I am gaslighting him or expecting too much (I worry I am, somehow), and when he says things about our future, I feel a new twinge of anxiety.
He has been hurt and abandoned before, and talks at length about how he would likely have to check himself into inpatient if we broke up, how he would never find someone like me again, how he would spend his whole life settling, and how he sees nothing wrong with me, nothing that makes him even slightly uncomfortable or unsure. I feel a niggling sickness when he expresses this, because I do not reciprocate fully, and that is awful. I see things I find frustrating or upsetting about him (not that I ever express it in that context). All his little human faults are starting to irk me, which is deeply unfair. His lateness, his hurtful people-pleasing, his behavior at the height of hard conversations, his incapacity to grit his teeth and do what needs to get done (work, relationships) … I hate how I am becoming frustrated. Is it possible to re-fan that flame? He deserves so much better.
—Love Ache