u/harley2uinn

I’ve been seeing this man for about a month and while he fast tracked us becoming official and even told his mom I was her future daughter in law, he hasn’t rushed anything else and I was cautious but optimistic as we had a good time together and had a lot in common. Everything seemed to click fast and I was comfortable with him in a way that was unusual for me. He’s been sweet as can be and absolutely worshipped me until just recently. However my mother recently flew into town to clear out her storage unit 3 years after moving away and this has been stressful for me. My mom has been abusive in the past and I have struggled with my feelings towards her as a result. She has been violent but mostly she was emotionally abusive, stole money from me, lied about me, and spent most of my childhood and adolescence treating me more as a partner than a child after she and my dad split. I tend to say I was raised in a two person cult of her personality and because everything was presented as a normal expression of love, it’s been hard to undo the programming and that’s why I haven’t cut her off entirely. Needless to say this trip has played havoc with my nervous system and it has affected me physically. It doesn’t help that I found in the course of cleaning out the unit my mother was fully prepared to throw away the first baby pictures and other photos of me and my three deceased brothers and I had to rescue them from the trash without her knowledge.
In the course of all this, my boyfriend has been semi-supportive but I’ve lately been feeling a growing distance with him. He hasn’t been as talkative or as physically affectionate with me, and we did go out yesterday and he bought me a cute little gift, but I still felt as if something was off. Like he was only half there. I talked to him about it today and he said that mostly he’s been tired from work and new allergy meds, but also I’ve been a “depressed nelly” because of my mom and he can’t emotionally compete with it, as in nothing he has tried has made it better in his opinion. I tried to tell him he has helped and been my only relief this week but he still insists I’m in a bad mood all the time outwardly and “if you were trying to put out a fire on a car and someone kept re-lighting it you wouldn’t keep trying to put it out”. Meaning that he’s just waiting for her to leave and for me to go back to normal at this point and has stepped back mentally until that happens. But the lack of that emotional support has made things worse for me and compounded the grief and insecurity that was already there. I tried to explain that to him as kindly as I could but it still just kept coming back to he can’t be peppy when I’m always in a bad mood. I was hurt and am concerned about whether he’s just in it for the good times and he’s going to pull back when life inevitably throws another curveball in the future. More than that, I’m bothered that there was no apology or accountability for his own behavior. No admission that his behavior hurt me or added to how I was feeling and no acknowledgement that I myself was saying he had helped me feel somewhat better.
I know it’s early but I have feelings for this man and I’m struggling with how to proceed. I went through an abusive relationship previously and I’m concerned this could go down the same road and it’s feeling disconcertingly familiar. I don’t know if it’s worth continuing to try for a bit longer to see how things shape up once we’ve gotten back to a normal state of affairs.