TL;DR will be at the bottom!
I woke up from a bad dream related to this so my emotions are running high, but I feel like I can’t keep trying to ignore this problem anymore.
First, a little background information:
My boyfriend (27M) and I (27F) have been together for 10 years. We’re high school sweethearts. We did break up once in that time frame (he broke up with me) and we dated other people for a while. I actually really fell for another guy during that time and my boyfriend got jealous and managed to sabotage that relationship. I was really mad at him for about a year and half and tried to push him out of my life but he was very persistent and wore me down and I eventually got back together with him. We’ve been back together for 4 years now.
Here’s the main problem:
Over the last 4 years he’s been asking me to live with him. Last winter, he made it clear that he wants to get married. I have always used being in college and not able to work full time as an excuse to get out of that. I finally just graduated this spring… It took me forever because I have ADHD and I kept cutting down to part time or had to retake classes. Anyway, now I don’t have my excuse anymore and I’m forced to really think about it. I don’t know if I’m just scared to move forward with him or if it truly isn’t the right decision for me. I love him, but I can’t picture us living together and me being happy in that situation. I see the situation being very triggering for me. I’ve tried to convince myself that it will work out and I even thought about how we could possibly be engaged this year and how exciting it’d be to have an engagement ring and call him my fiancé… but I still can’t shake the fear of living with him. I know that’s probably a red flag.
Here’s the other problem:
Last year he started getting cold sores out of nowhere. He claims he’s had them his whole life, but I’ve known him for a very long time and never seen him have one before. He claimed he got them all the time in high school. I saw him nearly everyday in high school though… I feel like he must have caught it from someone recently and is trying to gaslight me about it… Especially since I have ADHD which makes it easy to make me question my memory. But it’s working memory (short term memory) I struggle with, not long term memory. He’s never given me a reason to think he’s lying to me before but this has me really stressed out. I don’t even feel comfortable kissing him anymore. Which obviously that’s not a good thing either.
I feel like I know what everyone is going say, but I think I just need to see people say it… I need others wisdom. I’ve never broken up with anyone before and need to know if it’s the right thing to do. I’m worried I’m stringing him along out of fear of being alone. TIA.
TL;DR: Boyfriend of 10 years wants to move in together and get married but I feel very unsure about it. I also have reason to believe he might be trying to gaslight me on one particular thing, but I’m not sure. I want to know if breaking up with him really is the right decision for me. TIA.
3 comments
If the only reason you’re staying with him is fear of being alone, you’re wasting *your* time.
If you’re not excited to build a life together, you’re wasting *your* time.
Everyone feels a little fear about moving in with someone, but overwhelmingly it should be exciting and something to look forward to. If you’re only feeling dread, when he talks about a future with you, then this isn’t the right relationship.
> I actually really fell for another guy during that time and my boyfriend got jealous and managed to sabotage that relationship.
That’s the point where I stopped paying too much attention to anything else you wrote. I mean, I read it, but my mind kept coming back to this point. Let’s make one point REALLY obvious – he’s obsessed and controlling. He wouldn’t accept that you had moved on and actively sought to destroy something good that you had. I don’t care how persistent someone is. They would never be a part of my life after that. Ever.
But, you caved.
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>how exciting it’d be to have an engagement ring and call him my fiancé
Are you interested in having an engagement ring and calling HIM your fiancé or having an engagement ring and calling SOMEONE your fiancé? I think this is a question you really need to take a deeper look it because if it’s the second one, you don’t want to just settle for the first guy that asks.
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>Last year he started getting cold sores out of nowhere. He claims he’s had them his whole life, but I’ve known him for a very long time and never seen him have one before. He claimed he got them all the time in high school. I saw him nearly everyday in high school though… I feel like he must have caught it from someone recently and is trying to gaslight me about it…
He is absolutely gaslighting you about it. Something like a cold sore, you’d remember if he had them often enough. And being uncomfortable kissing him is never going to change because he’s never going to get away from having those cold sores.
If you do find the courage to break up with him, you can give him a litany of reasons, but I suspect he will try to counter them all. The one I would probably use is “You actively sabotaged a good relationship with someone I liked and hurt me very deeply. I’ve never felt the same about you since then. I’ve been trying to make it work, but it’s not working. Now that I’ve graduated, I don’t have any other excuses to delay a decision. It’s over between us. Given your past behavior, I’m also going to be blocking you everywhere. Don’t contact me ever again.”
And then stick to it. If he persists, threaten to involve the police for harassment. Threaten a restraining order. You two aren’t high school sweethearts. People who are don’t actively sabotage relationships because they genuinely care about the other person and only want to see them happy.
1. You let your boyfriend sabotage your other relationship by not having appropriate boundaries with him. Take it as a learning experience.
2. If you don’t want to live with him after 10 years, please end this relationship. It’s only going to get worse.
3. Cold sores can lay dormant for a decade. Chickenpox is a form of herpes, we have all been exposed, there are 1000 ways to get it aside from cheating. Obviously avoid kissing and oral during a breakout.