Dear Steve and Shirley,
I'm a thirty-nine-year-old woman dating a forty-five-year-old man. We met a year ago and things started off fantastic and moved quickly. He is a very sensitive and emotional man who has no difficulty expressing his every emotion to me. After dating men that play games and aren't serious about settling down with one woman, my boyfriend's openness was refreshing, but now it's proving to be way too much.
He has started to complain about me being too busy for him since I'm back at work full-time. Now, I get home and need a few minutes to chill and relax. But he's in my driveway every day this week when I get home. He wants to be right up under me every weeknight and keeps telling me that he's afraid we're growing apart. He told me that he loved me. He loved when we were quarantined together because we were inseparable.
I liked it too, because we were getting to know each other.
Then he started bringing his work clothes to my house and says it's too cold to go home every night and he'd rather cuddle with me. This man loves to cuddle, wine, and make love to me whenever we're together. I told him he's smothering me with his actions and smothering me in the bed nightly.
I have to roll him off of me.
He says he can't sleep unless he's touching some part of my body. Recently, I had a conversation about taking a break or dialing it back a little bit, but he couldn't process a conversation without crying and telling me that he can't live without me. I love this type of attention and all of the affection, but I'm afraid of falling too deeply for him because he may have emotional issues.
How do I handle this relationship's emotional issues?