Me and my boyfriend have been dating for about 4 months now. We’ve been super close friends for almost 3 years now but only recently gained a romantic attraction to each other. There’s been a lot of great stuff and we’re pretty much synced in the brain. However he has a pretty rough life. He’s 18, and I’m 20. His mom is emotionally abusive and kicked him out of the house and placed a restraining order on him but is constantly calling him or texting him saying how he needs to come home and be with him family so he can have their support. His parents are separated and his dad literally lives in his car. I should add that about a month ago I moved states to attend school, so I’m now 7+ hours away rather than a 15 minutes drive from his house.

My boyfriend has really bad anxiety, I do not. And I’m not going to lie, I have a really hard time sympathizing with him. I’ll be honest. I don’t understand it because it’s not something I deal with. However, I do all I can to try and help, but nothing I do seems to help. I feel like I’ve tried everything. I’ll listen to him and be the shoulder to cry on, type of thing. I’ve tried to encourage him to go do things and and try to give him courage. And there’s times where I don’t say anything. But it’s getting to a point where he’s just so negative about everything. If he spills milk he’ll complain about how this would only happen to him and say how much his life sucks.

He’s living at a friend;s house currently and doesn’t have a car to drive to work, so he has to ask for rides from his friend or their parents. He complains how he never has a ride, but when I ask him if he’s asked anyone at the house he says no and refuses to. I completely understand that being kicked out of his house and everything has been really hard for him. I really do.  And with bigger issues like that, I literally do all I can to help, but now that I’m out of state it’s hard to, I always offer to ask my parents to give him a ride, and they like him, so it’s like it would not it would be a problem. But with things like this he just wallows in self pity and anytime I try to offer help he just shoots it down and complains more.

It’s getting to a point where I just get angry and annoyed. He always says how tired he is and can’t deal with anything going on. Which is understandable. But it’s gotten to the point now where he’s not handling anything. Making things worse since he doesn’t handle any of the problems that come up. He’s almost been fired from work for being late so many times because he can’t find a ride, meaning he fails to ask people.

I don’t know what to do anymore. Everytime something comes up I’m frantically trying to solve the issue so he doesn’t have to worry or stress about it, but then he doesn’t cooperate and it makes me feel dumb for even trying.

I care about him so much. And I truly believe he can improve his situation and be happy. I believe if he really tried he could be happy even with everything going on, but he doesn’t try anymore.

I’ve thought about breaking up with him, it’s just one of those thoughts that pop up. I don’t want to. When he is happy I have such an incredible time. He’s a great musician and I love hearing him sing and play the piano. But he’s just lost so much drive. I know that if I end things he’ll crumble. He won’t do anything. But at the same time I feel like I’m being dragged through so much negativity. And not to make excuses, but I’m working two jobs. I moved to a state where I don’t know anyone besides my 2 roommates and I’ve always had a really strong social life and right now I really don’t have any social life at all, and it has been difficult. But I’m still trying to help my boyfriend as much as possible but I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should just stay and help him as much as I can, or if I should try to end things, even though I don’t want to, but it’s been hard.

Any advice or thoughts would be helpful, thank you.