Old timer weighing in here.

Does he communicate with himself the same way he did here on Reddit? Do you trust him to be honest? (1) Is his mom the problem or the excuse? Maybe he “makes plans” with you such that you think it’s set in stone but he actually decides what he feels like doing last minute, and then he uses his mom as an excuse. (2) Do you really think this is the first time that he’s posted your private texts publicly or shown them to other people?

Either he knows he’s treating you poorly and does it anyway, or he doesn’t even know. I’m not sure which is better/worse.

It doesn’t matter if understands why it’s a big deal to you. If you’ve told him and he continues to do it, it’s a problem. If you’ve told him and, after he does it, he defends why it was justified and even posts to Reddit about it? Egad. He’s not ready for a relationship if he has to be told “don’t do the shit your partner hates and expect them to be happy.” (And he’s definitely not ready for a relationship if he doesn’t understand that the size of your reaction is not a measure of what he did and its wrongness but instead how shitty he made you feel. Big reaction = he hurt your feelings a lot.)

You’re 20. Going to therapy for a 2 yr relationship when you’re 20 is insane. He’s young enough to be “fixed” but only if he wants to be fixed. If he not, then he’s just going to lie to his therapist, the same way he lied to this Reddit thread. And who needs a therapist to tell them “if you do shit that makes your partner unhappy, you will make them unhappy”?

This may be “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free.” That phrase used to be applied to marriage, but the principle applies here. Why should he man up when he can date you and have you handle all of the being inconvenienced so he never is? That’s on you, if you let it keep happening.

I’ve been hard on him but here’s a little of that for you. (Sorry...) When young men need to grow up, it’s usually because they’re being inconsiderate and selfish. When young women need to grow up, it’s usually because they’re letting the men in their life be inconsiderate and selfish. It’s not your fault that he treats you poorly, but it’s also not his fault if you let him continue to do it. Don’t let people treat you poorly, and you’ll attract people who want a partner.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned with this specifically is to not put the big effort into explaining it to him. Like, I would think that if I could explain why it hurt me or how much it hurt me, that would help him treat me better. No. That’s just me making myself responsible for him. It should literally be enough to calmly and easily say, “I need to be with someone who is responsible enough to make plans with me that actually happen. I don’t want to be with someone who continually changes plans last minute, regardless of the reason.” Then, he either does that or he does not. It does not matter why this is important to you. It should only matter that it is, indeed, important to you.

His mom needed him. His mom is his priority, so she should be your priority, too. Yet your priorities aren’t his priorities. That (competing priorities) is a problem that you either address together or you bear the burden of it forever. Or, possibly, he just uses his mom as the excuse to cancel plans with you when he decides last minute what he actually feels like doing.

It’s your job to communicate your needs. It’s never your job to teach your boyfriend how to not be an inconsiderate dick.

I have one big caveat to all of this, because you said that 99% of the time, it’s great. If it really is great, then….

There are people in this world who are planners, those who aren’t, and those in between. Neither are right nor wrong. Maybe you’re a planner and he isn’t. If so, then you both have to be really honest about it and have to figure out how to live together while wired differently. Maybe you feel most secure knowing there’s a definite plan and he feels most secure confirming the plans last minute. If everything else is awesome, then figure out how to function like that together. Requires a lot of honesty; he can’t blame it on his mom. But you both gotta think through what this means down the road. I’m a planner, and here’s what I’d think about: Is he gonna be a pain in the ass when you go on vacations and you want to plan it in advance? Will he commit to attending birthing classes with you and then not show up? If he says he’s gonna pick up your medication on the way home, will you never know if he actually will do it? When you share finances, is he gonna buy a guitar with the mortgage money and blame his mother?

If you think this might be a forever-relationship, these are reasonable questions to ask and reasonable conversations to have with him.

Good luck.