breakdown/ relationship help

I can't seem to wrap my head around this situation or my reactions to it...

I'm a 24 year old grad student currently living in france. I moved here last fall to study fashion design. My program is extremely demanding and i work constantly. Six months ago, before my workload became so intense, i met my 31 year old boyfriend. When i met him, he had recently quit his job to pursue one of his long-time dreams. I was captivated by his bravely leaving a comfortable lifestyle to pursue new things. He seemed fresh, exciting and open to new experiences.

My first real relationship experience was with the boy I lost my virginity to when I was 18. After several months together, he basically forced himself on me one night while I continually said no and tried to push him off of me. After that traumatic experience I stayed with him for a few more months. My relationship experiences after that have been numerous and fairly short as I find it difficult to become invested emotionally.

This year as the months passed i became more enveloped in school work and enjoying the company of my boyfriend when i had the time. As i learned more about him i discovered that he has dealt with clinical depression since the death of his father when he was 15. This depression came back for a month or so around Christmas. He is still struggling to manage his depression. During these months I became increasingly frustrated with the situation. I read as much information as I could on how to be constructively supportive and listened to him when he needed to talk. I invited him out of his house for walks, to see live music, or to do things he was passionate about. Although it was early in our relationship, I already cared about him deeply and believed that he was capable of realizing his dream career.

Also during this difficult time, our previously vivacious sex life drastically decreased, mostly due to his depression medication. Due to the stress at school, insomnia, and the stress on my relationship, I relapsed into periodic bulimic cycles. I have suffered from bulimia/ binges for three years. I thought I was done with the bulimic period of my life as it had been a long time since I last binged/ purged. It has been almost a month and a half since the last bulimic cycle and I feel like I’m on more solid ground mentally.

Lately our relationship has felt different. A bit colder maybe. My boyfriend is still figuring out what he wants to do next. He has gone from being an ambitious dreamer to a jobless depressed man. Either way I find it charming because I love him. There is something magical about us when we click together. Although he is feeling better, he still is not that interested in sex. When we talk about it he says that it is because I don’t initiate or that I’m a lazy lover. I’ve made an effort to initiate more lovemaking sessions and to be more attentive, but we still don’t have sex as much as I’d like.

After this program i was hoping to gain entry to another design program and was rejected. I've applied to two other schools and numerous jobs and i hope for a reason to stay here because it is a good place to begin building my career. If I don’t find the right opportunity, legally I have to go back home. I am at an extremely stressful point in my life. Lately I have become less social than I normally am in favor of introspection and i find myself missing English-speaking friends. This week I found out that one of my good friends back home may have cancer and that my mother is thinking of leaving my father. I also received a lower grade than I felt I deserved on a recent exam and the prof told me that I can do better and she would award me more points at the end of the semester if I did better work.

Last night I went out to dinner with my boyfriend. Lately I have been seeing him about twice a week because of my schedule. I like these times together to communicate and connect. This dinner was for a food-wine experience event at friend’s restaurant. After a super-hard 10 hr solitary creative work session, I sat for this event with my boyfriend at our own little table, but next to a lot of other people. It was loud, I wasn’t in the mood to make an effort to speak French, so I tried just talking to my boyfriend in English. As he is jobless his social interaction is much less than me, which makes him super eager to talk to everybody when he does go out. Soon he began talking to people at all of the nearby tables, and getting up to go smoke a cigarettes (I don’t smoke) for 30+ minutes. I felt abandoned. After one cigarette break, I let the waitress clear the rest of his drink from the table after first trying to stop her and then her insisting to take it. As the event was a food-wine experience, and another drink was going to come with the next course they were preparing so I figured it was no big deal. When my boyfriend got back he made a scene about the drink resulting in the people at the next table explaining what had happened. He wouldn’t drop the drink issue and I became upset. After two more courses of me enduring the cold comments from my boyfriend, and him talking to the people at the next tables, I couldn’t do it anymore. I totally checked out of the conversation, fighting the urge to cry. The people at the next table over asked my boyfriend why I was so sad. He told them that I was sad because he wasn’t talking with me and that I could actually speak French and could join the conversation any time I wanted. I continued to say nothing and ignore the tears that were clenching my throat. My boyfriend finally told me that the lady to my right was looking at me, then looking at him and laughing. I couldn’t take it. My eyes were watering and the chin was wobbling; I couldn’t fight the tears. I asked my boyfriend to take me to the car. As soon as I left the restaurant I began crying and didn’t stop for almost an hour.

This overwhelms me because I almost never cry. I didn’t ever really cry when my grandmother died last year. I have never sobbed like that in my whole life. I asked my boyfriend to give me some time to think, and we both agreed that a week to think would be a good thing. I’m scared. I really care about him, but lately I feel like I am just trying to endure the time we spend together. I realize that these are just my perceptions and I might be painting myself the victim when that really is not the case. I know that I am a difficult person to be with and I’m afraid that I’ve put too much pressure on him and now he resents me. I don’t know. I’m not ready to loose him, but this isn’t working. I’m just trying to gain some perspective on the current situation. Any insight or advice on how I can approach the situation to open a more positive flow of communication?