I just want to call my boyfriend! But feel like I can't

[yellowhills]

I feel really lonely right now staying in my apartment over Christmas while my roommates and boy I’ve been seeing for about two months have left. I'm not sure if I would call him my boyfriend but it's hard to talk about him otherwise. He left yesterday morning and I have felt really anxious and alone since. I want to reach out and call him but he has said before he doesn’t like talking on the phone. I'm not sure if I should communicate with him and ask or just suck it up and talk to friends to get the loneliness out and then just see him when he comes back.

I don't even know what I would talk to him about. I'm not sure if I want to speak to him or just feel lonely and want validation and reassurance from him. When we are together, we don't speak very much we are usually just making casual conversation or touching/having sex.

I start to wonder why am I dating him if I can’t even call him on the phone and I feel like I start to mentally spiral about the situation. He doesn't really feel like what I would imagine a boyfriend to be. We aren't very close and it is just starting to bother me. Especially since my last boyfriend and I would spend hours talking and got so much out of being on the phone.

[Heather]

Welcome to the boards, yellowhills. Sorry what brought you here today is feeling like this.

It sounds to me like you're saying that you're feeling like this relationship isn't meeting your needs. You seem to be saying you want an intimate relationship that involves more communication and deeper communication and what this one is mostly offering you is physical sexual intimacy and small talk. Do I have that right?

If so, is this something you've ever talked to this guy about? If not, do you want to? Do you want to try and see if this relationship can't be more like what it sounds like you actually want?

In the meantime, if you're feeling lonely, are there people you ARE emotionally close to who you do talk with who you can call?

[yellowhills]

Yeah I think you might be right. It's hard to face that the relationship isn't meeting my needs, especially when it feels so nice to have physical intimacy and closeness.
But as we've gotten to spend more time together, I notice the gaps in closeness of knowing much about him outside the context of sex and small talk. I would really like more, but I don't know how to bring it up to him without feeling overwhelmed, like I have to "fix" the whole relationship right away by becoming closer or just leaving it outright because it doesn't meet those needs.

I would really like to talk to him and see, and I'd really like to call and talk, but that feels intense because I don't know how to have the conversation asking for that closeness in the first place when he's not here in person! I am also really scared that if I cant have that, I will have to give up the sexual intimacy that feels really important in my life right now.

I do have people I'm very close with who I can call, and that makes me feel a lot better when I remember those friends.

[Sam W]

Hi yellowhills,

Having big conversations about a relationship can definitely feel stressful, especially if we feel like we don't have a strong grasp of how to even approach it. That's certainly something we can talk about and help you brainstorm how to approach that conversation. But I do want to touch on that fear that it would fall to you to fix the whole relationship. Do you feel like that's something that's already happening on a smaller scale with this person? In other words, does it feel like most of the work of maintaining the relationship falls to you?

I totally get not wanting to lose sexual intimacy right now, especially if you're someone for whom that's an important part of a relationship. But it might be worth keeping in mind that, if you do decide to end this relationship, there are other partners out there who can help you build a relationship with sexual intimacy AND deep conversations.