Dear Doctor Lover,

I love my boyfriend we have been together for the last 6 years and we have a daughter. I'm only 22 and he's but I find myself maturing and the same things that impressed me with him before is no longer impressing. All we do is argue and break-up. He says that according to me he can never do anything right and I only give him negative. However, all I want is to fix our problems and take our relationship to the next level. Every time I tell him lets add structure to our relationship and we come up with a way to do so He ends up changing it. This really bothers me!! I want structure and I want things to run smoothly! He only does what he wants to do when he wants to do it and on top of that if he's mad at me he won't do anything for our daughter!! He's barely around and he blames it on him being a musician and a full time student. He says he's trying to prepare our future! AM I wrong for wanting him to help me more now?? I feel like we won't have a future if we won't make it through the present!! Right now I'm getting to the point where I'm losing interest in trying. What should I do???

Sincerely Kell

Dear Kell,

It sounds like your boyfriend may just be in that state of his life where he is stressing out. He has you, a child, school and work and he's still young. At this point in your relationship, you both need the support from one another to make it work. I married at 21 and had my son at 23. I understand the pressures of being young parents with school and life. Of course you are going to want structure to make it work and you do need structure. However, when a man is stressed, structure is the last thing that he is thinking about. All he wants to do is fix his problems and have them come to success as quickly as possible. It's not that he is intentionally not trying to work with you in structuring your relationship, it's just that he has a to do list and hasn't yet added structure as a priority on it. Being that you are dealing with the child more often, you had to learn structure much quicker than he did. The last thing that you want to do at this point is to not support him in what he is doing. It sounds like he has a good head on his shoulders and you don't want to lose that.

Try to wait it out and try the support method and see how that plays out. Most men, when they don't get support from home, they will find it elsewhere. I don't want you contacting me later about how your boyfriend cheated with another woman.

There is one thing that women need in relationships and one thing that men need in relationships in the order to make it last. Men simply need support and women need affection - anything beyond that is extra. And selfishly men want their's first a majority of the time.

~Doctor Lover