I live with my boyfriend of several years and our two dogs. I work full-time and make pretty good money, especially for our needs.
He is a part-time student (graduating in a few months), volunteer firefighter (pulls shifts at a station 50+ hours a month), and has two part-time jobs. One of these jobs may benefit his future career plans, but both of them pay poorly and have hours opposite of mine. He has a very hard time saying no to people. The only real reason he works one of them is because a self-employed friend asked for his help, and he always ends up picking up shifts that he doesn't want or need at the other one because people know when they want a day off or have a scheduling conflict, he will almost never say no.
His goal is to become a career firefighter which is a very competitive field. At any given time he is in 2-3+ hiring processes with various fire departments all over the state, each with their own lengthy processes that often involve multiple written and physical tests, interviews, even polygraphs.
If you do the math he makes about $3-4 an hour if you combine his volunteer work with paid employment. Most of that ends up being spent on gas anyways because these places are not very close.
I have expressed my displeasure with never seeing him for no good reason several times. He swings between apologizing and promising to make efforts to spend more time with me, and justifying it by saying we need more cash. We've been tight occasionally, but have no debt and this argument drives me nuts when I've gone without new clothes or a new bra in over a year and went 9 months without a haircut to save money, but he buys unnecessary toys like bb guns and splurges on food like ridiculously expensive organic trail mix.
When we actually do spend time together, we have a great time. We have shared interests. I'm at a loss as to what to do anymore.This is all compounded by the fact that I've recently started having a medical problem (no... we don't need money for that nor does it threaten my job) that causes chronic pain. I don't get out and about as much, so many days after work I come home, sit on the couch in pain, wait for hours for him to come home, eventually give up and go to bed alone in tears.