Dear Roe,
I’m 29 and have been seeing someone for nearly a year. He’s a creative who’s been struggling to make rent and keep his mental health steady. When we met, I was drawn to how gentle he was, how romantic, how present he could be. I love how passionate he is about his work, and me. But he’s also very flaky and inconsistent. He disappears for days when he’s “not in a good headspace”, then texts long, apologetic paragraphs about how much he misses me and how he wants to be better. I know that he always means it.
But meaning it doesn’t change that I’m usually the one checking in, making plans, being bailed on, giving him emotional support. A few weeks ago, I had a big event on that was a real achievement for me and he said he’d come, but an hour before, he texted that he was “too tired to be around people”. He said he felt ashamed for letting me down, that he’d make it up to me. (I don’t know how he could, but he hasn’t made any big attempt or gestures since.) The next day we met up and he ended up crying about how he wishes he could “get it together”. I know he did feel guilty and overwhelmed, but I also ended up comforting him even though he had let me down and abandoned me for something that was very important to me.
I know he loves me and wants to show up for me. He says all the right things, and I believe him. But it feels like there’s always something: exhaustion, anxiety, work, guilt. I don’t want to be someone who breaks up with a loving person because they struggle with finances and anxiety, but I don’t know how long I can do this.
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There are two things I need you to remember, one about him and one about you.
When it comes to this man, I need you to remember that desire is not willingness or capacity.
There’s a phrase that floats around online: “If he wanted to, he would.” Sometimes it’s true – some people talk a big game but have no intention of following through. But other times it’s too simple. Some people genuinely want to love well, to be present and supportive, but they can’t. Not because they don’t care, but because they don’t have the capacity – whether that’s due to mental health, burnout, trauma, financial strain or sheer exhaustion. The desire is there; the ability isn’t.
This distinction matters when it comes to how you understand this person’s character. Someone who doesn’t actually want to commit but keeps making hollow promises is manipulative and wasting your time. Someone who genuinely wants to be with you but doesn’t have the capacity has good intentions but is stuck. Keeping that difference clear in your mind and heart matters, because it tells you where to spend your compassion.
But even though the difference in intentions is real, the outcome is often the same: you feel alone. You hear promises that go unfulfilled, plans that keep being postponed, commitments that quietly crumble under the weight of everything else in their life. You find yourself making excuses on their behalf, translating every “I’m sorry” into hope, holding faith that next time will be different - because you know they want that to be true. But good intentions, no matter how sincere, don’t keep you company when they’ve cancelled again. They don’t stand beside you at the event you worked so hard for. They don’t build the life you keep trying to imagine together.
[ ‘I’m a woman in my early 30s, and I’m exhausted by dating’Opens in new window ]
At some point, what matters is not what someone wants to do, but what they are able and willing to do - and what that means for you. Desire without capacity is like potential energy that never converts into motion: all promise, no presence. You can’t build a partnership out of someone’s potential; you can only build from what they can actually give you consistently in reality.
So, stop weighing people’s words more heavily than their actions. Words are often aspirational - the person they wish they could be. Actions are the truth of who they currently are. Both can be honest, but only one of them sustains you.
I feel for this man, I really do. I hope he finds more financial success with his passion, or the ability to get a job that pays the bills while still allowing him time to invest in more fulfilling pursuits. I hope he gets therapeutic support for his anxiety. I hope that capitalism and the housing crisis and our lack of support for the arts burns to the ground or at least transforms so he and the rest of us all live better lives. I hope he has supportive people around him, that his future is filled with more ease, and when love find him again, he has the capacity to show up for it in the way he wants.
But I do not hope that a woman abandons herself for him to feel loved. And I do not hope that a woman is placed in the role of being a surrogate fix for all his other problems.
Which brings us to what you need to remember about you: Compassion is not the same as self-abandonment. You can have compassion for this man - you can see his goodness, understand his exhaustion, even grieve for the ways life has made it hard for him to show up. You can believe he’s doing his best and still admit that his best is not enough for you. Those two things can be true at once.
Loving someone doesn’t mean forfeiting your own needs to accommodate their limitations. It’s not cruelty to want a relationship that feels reciprocal, grounded, and dependable. Compassion asks you to see his struggle clearly; self-respect asks you to see your own suffering clearly, too. If staying requires you to keep shrinking yourself - to lower your expectations, to cushion every disappointment, to mother every apology, to never have your achievements or your hurt actually witnessed - that isn’t love anymore. That’s caretaking. That’s endurance. And endurance on its own isn’t intimacy.
This relationship isn’t working for you. You have needs he cannot fulfil, and you’re allowed want more.
[ ‘My husband’s family operate like a cult, with my mother-in-law as leader’Opens in new window ]
If you want to give him another chance, have a conversation where you are absolutely unequivocal about what you need from a relationship – reliability, consistency in communication, equal emotional and personal support, shared responsibility over making plans and investing in the relationship. If he says he wants that too, ask him to tell you the specific steps he’s going to take to turn that into a reality: can he find low-cost therapy, can he come up with specific plans or coping mechanisms so he can attend important events when feeling anxious, what will he do to keep communication consistent, how will he ensure your emotional needs are not subsumed by his, like they were after your event? If he can get specific, and if his actions live up to his words, great. If not you know that he doesn’t have the capacity to love you the way you need.
Sometimes love isn’t about waiting until someone changes; it’s about acknowledging that they might not - and that you deserve more than the version of them that always means to, but never quite does. You don’t have to punish him or villainize him for falling short, but you also don’t have to keep standing in the space where he doesn’t show up. Good luck.
