Advice on how to work past my (21m) partner making me (19f) feel unrational?

I’m questioning whether I’m (19f) am clingy, or if my partner (21m) is gaslighting me into believing his behavior is okay.

So, we have been dating about 10 months at this point. We met last year in university, got super close really quick, and I adore him! 3ish months in, we both went home for break, and didn’t see eachother a whole lot. We lived 5 hours away from eachother, so we only saw each other a handful of times. Even during that, we maintained long distance well! I was always excited, however, to go back to school and see him. Well, fall of this year, we come back and things are okay for a while. He was on 20 hours, so he was focused a lot on school, and eventually I started to express how I missed hanging out with him. I was sad he didn’t come up and study with me in the library like he did when we started dating, he didn’t invite me over to his apartment ever really, and with all this, he texted and called me considerably less than he ever has.

Beginning of October is when we really started having issues. He was communicating to me WAY less than he used to, and I didn’t see him enough to feel like connected. When we did spend time together, he was often very making jokes at my expense, and never really complimented me or uplifted me. I will say, when he did see me, he was often taking me to get food because he knew I hadn’t eaten and wanted me to eat, and he always listened and supported me when I brought problems I was dealing with to him. But, if I ever tried to drive him to school, take him to dinner, offer to do a task, or even compliment him he wouldnt really accept/ appreciate that as ‘supporting’ him, because as I understand, he didn’t really take that as substantially helping him. Instead, he would often say the best way to help him was to ‘help myself’ which meant feeding myself so he didn’t worry about it, not wanting to spend a whole bunch of free time with him if I was stressed/ anytime I missed him, and generally getting enough sleep and caring for myself. I have pretty bad anxiety and school is often to main trigger of it, so I will usually neglect eating food and I struggle falling asleep during the school year. So, when he said that, I was pretty shocked, because no one had ever really told me that before. He was right though, and after thinking about it and realizing that, I’ve tried to improve my self-reliance, and have tried to stop crowding around him as much. I will say, his “crowding around” was seeing him after school a couple times, MAYBE sleeping over, and then hanging out a day on a weekend. Which, I take as a very reasonable amount! But he was right about my anxiety affecting his school, and I immediately noticed and tried to make considerable changes. Now, it’s really difficult to do that, considering you can’t snap your fingers and make anxiety go away! Additionally, his distant demenor and lack of engagement with me really stressed me out. I was wondering what I could do to help him A) handle school better B) alliviate myself as a burden so he could. I was also trying to built more self reliance, and not lean on him as much when he needed support. He was constantly stressed with school, and his family life started to get really complicated, but honestly I don’t know the extent because pretty much since October, he has not talked to me or confided in me for support. To be fair, I have not either, mainly because I haven’t had a chance to!

And this kinda dynamic has been happening since, with fights being dispersed through o it. Many, many fights where he has said some REALLY hurtful things out of stress and anger. These fights didn’t help me feel less anxious, especially when he’d say VERY hurtful things to me. These things have included him almost screaming he hated me, him laughing and calling me crazy when I was crying about how he was constantly demeaning me and making me insecure about myself, recently he told me a thesis I asked him to critique was bad, only after he spent an hour trying to tell me basically the same thing reworded (I’m a humanities major, he Biology, and the paper was for my philosophy class). Ive just felt there’s been a cycle of me reaching out, him slapping my hand and calling me clingy, and me trying to work on myself so he wouldn’t slap away my hand.

This whole time though, he has been in 20 hours of very difficult science classes. He’s also a perfectionist, so he is killing himself trying to get all A’s. Every day, he has a bunch to do, and when I’m around, he gets distracted. And for that, I’ve really tried to be patient, considering everytime he DOES see me he’s doing some sort of thing to care for me, usually without me realizing. But, during these past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about breaking up, and how I would feel. I didn’t really have many friends at the university besides him, so before I REALLY didn’t want to breakup, but now, I’ve developed some really good friendships and I’m starting to become more social in my department (philosophy lol) on campus. I’ve also been starting to really love my alone time and spending weekends by myself. I still don’t care for myself as I should, and am a anxious person, but these are things I haven’t really brought to him out of fear of overburdening him. So, I don’t feel particularly close with him these days. I don’t even really text or ask him to hang out (I sleep over at his house once a week and I’ll have dinner with him once a week as well ever since October) Honestly, now he is the thing most stressing me out. He is the person who brings me the most disstress. In fact, I often do school to take my mind off of our relationship! But, considering he is in 20 hours and spends all his time on school, I’ve been hesitant to describe him as “the problem” or anything, because he’s constantly on th verge of panic over school, and he associates seeing me with more responsibility. I’ve haven’t shared my struggles because of that, and I’ve been trying to be extra gentle with him and plan trips that I thought he would like to do together. But his continuous dismisal of my affection, and belittlement of my presence has started to anger me. And, my lack of self reliance and overexcitement/ affectionate nature has angered him too. But, I thought maybe that’s the natural ebb and flow, we’re going through a rough patch because he’s focused on school, and maybe i need to step back and sit with this before I bring my issues with the relationship to him.

This is just a side note, but he also (I felt) treated me really disrespectfully around his friends. They all like me, and think I’m nice, do that’s why I’m thinking he was disrespectful. But, he kinda snaps at me like I’m a child, and he’ll always critisize the things I say as “awkward” or “weird”. Especially around his friends and their girlfriends (who are honestly way more “maitanence” than me and constantly hang out with their boyfriends!) who were being treated by their boyfriends EXTREMELY nice, I have been kinda in despair over whether he likes me, or is just really stressed.

So, that brings us to now. He says he loves me, he cares for me, and he really wants to be together with me. However, he also is insulting to me and never initiates a hangout, which shows the opposite. Everytime I try to ask him to hang out, he sees it as me being clingy and acting like we never hang out. Which, to me, we don’t! He thinks I don’t take care of myself and everytime he sees me he needs to care for me, which, to me, I never asked him to do. There are MANY days well go without seeing eachother, and I get on fine without his help. Ive told him he doesn’t need to, and that I can do it myself, but he has said that it’s hard for him to watch how I treat myself.

Maybe this is wrong, but Im starting to think he infantilizes me and sees me as only a child he takes care of. And I’m starting to hate how everytime I see him, he is tossing insult after insult at me, and expects me not to say anything and “be patient” because he’s going through a lot. But, everytime Im patient with him, he’ll walk over me and disrespect me. And everytime I tell him he’s walking all over me and disrespecting me, he’ll accuse me of being “crazy”, “unable to take a joke”, and has even said I was “fucking exhausting”.

I really love him, though, and he is such a tender soul. There’s moments he’s told me things he’s never told anyone, and he’ll be so sweet and kind to me. There’s nights I have so much fun with him, and he’s free of this looming stress he usually carries. He’s been the person I’ve shared MY biggest struggles with that nobody else knows. And we’ve done so many fun things that I know nobody else who would EVER to that with me. We went camping for a week around the smoky mountains, we’ve gone on hikes and walks where we talk about books and philosophy and he’s the most gentle person on earth, we talk about future concert trips and camping all the time, and he’s gotten me into a lot of music and taken me to a lot of concerts. He has by far been one of the best influences ever on my life. He’s shown me value in myself I previously didn’t see, he’s encouraged me and shown me the value of being adventurous and seeking beauty actively in life. He has helped me at my lowest moments, and has made me feel valuable. He’s a beautiful soul, and I can’t help but constantly see those moments with him.

I’m asking if the down times of the relationship really are problematic like I think, or if I’m emotional and unrational. I question that because in all honesty Im 100% emotional and erradict in my personality, so that very well could be that case. And if it is, what am I not seeing that I can work on to stop that? Or, is he just going through a rough patch I should wait out? Do other people have this and have advice? I appreciate any advice