Just a question, for those who might know. How long should you hang onto a relationship, when it's becoming undeniably clear that it's going nowhere?
I'm so in love, with the most wonderful person I've ever known. He and I have been together for 6 1/2 years. After our first date, he told me he didn't want to see anyone else; I felt the same, so we've been exclusive from the first. We spend 3-4 days and nights per week together, but I still have my own apartment. He has a nice house, which he bought 4 years ago after I found it for him. I thought it would be for us together, but I guess not.
After a lifetime of loneliness and mismatches with guys I was incompatible with, I finally found someone who's like the other half of me. He's said that no woman has ever loved him as purely as I do, and that he never thought it possible to love someone as he does me.
Only problem is, he doesn't want to marry me. Everyone we know lives together, and I told him I seem to be the only person left on this earth who still believes in marriage. His reply: "Yup, apparently." He says marriage doesn't matter to him. I say, if it matters so much to me, how can it mean nothing at all to him? What if it is a meaningless piece of paper, which cannot possibly encompass the union we have? Fine, I say- do it just because it would make me happy. Jesus, I do everything for him, and this is all I ask. While I've been biding my time, waiting for the proposal I was so sure was coming, I've gotten so old, I doubt anyone else will ever want me.
Originally he told me the reasons he wasn't asking me to marry him were: His job was unstable because his supervisor hated him, and that he didn't have a home, just an apartment. So, his supervisor was transferred out of state and he got his supervisor's old job. Then I found him a house and got him a hell of a deal on it, as it belonged to an old friend of my dad's. Still no ring, no acknowledgement of any commitment.
How the hell can I walk away from someone I'm in love with? I can't do it, I just can't. At the same time, how can I stay, when I keep envisioning myself twenty years down the line, still in my damned spinster's apartment, still trying to explain to friends and family and self why we never wed? A stronger woman could have walked years ago, but I've allowed myself to sit for so long, my legs have atrophied so I can't move. Any time I broach the subject, he just says he's not ready. How do I walk away, and is it better to have what I have now, with no marriage, or to be out there all alone again? I spent most of my life being alone, and I just don't know if I could do it again. Nor could I ever envision being intimate with another man- and I mean this not just physically, but emotionally as well. I'm too damned old to start over.