We have been together for two years. I live alone and she lives with her brother and a roommate who just moved in. I spend every weekend at their place and whenever her bro is away I am there with her every night with no issue. And she seems sad when I pack up and leave.
They have been at their place for a year and want to stay another year. I asked her if we could make a plan to move in together in a year’s time, (so after we’ve been dating 3 years) but she shut down and looked sad. She said she’s not ready and liked living where she is.
This isn’t the first time I’ve brought the topic up. The time that I asked about it before, she did the same thing. Just got sad and shut down and made me feel bad for wanting to talking about it, so I said OK, forget it and we moved on.
I get she’s made the place look nice and it has a lot of space, good location etc, but her brother is on the lease, not her, so really it’s his place. I would like us to find a new place together, but she doesn’t seem to want that. Even if she asked me to move in (she hasn’t) I don’t want to live there with her and her brother because it feels like their place to me, and I can’t be myself with him there.
So I don’t know what the solution to this is. I feel like 2-3 years of dating is a good time to talk about it, but she never wants to talk about it.
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TL:DR Girlfriend of two years doesn’t want to live with me and I don’t know how to talk to her about it without her shutting down.
3 comments
I think you need to stop letting her end the conversation. Let her know you want to talk about it and timelines for the relationship, set a time a few days away so she has time to process and you both can come to it prepared to discuss things calmly.
A discussion about relationship goals (that happens to also include the topic of living together) might be more instructive for you. Instead of asking her about moving in together again, ask her about her vision for the future of the relationship. Does she want to get married, specifically to you? Engaged? How long would she want an engagement to be? Would she want to live together prior to those things or after? And ideally she’d ask you for your thoughts as well.
She doesn’t want to talk about it.
She doesn’t want to move.
She’s not going to move in with you.
Since you’ve already has this conversation a few times, the only thing you can do now is make your needs known.
“Girlfriend, I’ve stated that I wanted us to move in together within a year, but you don’t seem to want that. I need to make a decision regarding our future. I want us to move in together, but your reluctance makes me think you’re not in this relationship long-term.”
Or something to this effect. She needs to know if this is a deal breaker for you.