My(40f) boyfriend (51m) have been dating over a year, about 1 1/3 years. I’m a widow, having lost my late husband to Covid in early 2020, and was married prior to this. First marriage lasted 8 years, until his alcoholism became dangerous for me to stay. Second marriage was just shy of 10 years before he died. Boyfriend was married once for 6 years, and has had a couple of LTR. Marriage is important to me, but I also am not the type who wants to date for 5 years before getting engaged. Absolutely nothing wrong with that for some people, but it’s just not my preference.
My boyfriend and I have casually talked about if we would ever marry again, things like taking a last name, wanting an actual ceremony with family instead of courthouse wedding. This came up when we first started dating, so we knew these were values going in. What we haven’t discussed is how long we feel is “right” for each of us before seriously considering an engagement and future marriage.
My boyfriend has a highly complicated, generally negative relationship with his family, due to his mom, in his own words, being a lying, manipulative narcissist. His younger brother is following on her footsteps. She groomed him to cater to her, and uses everyone she can to get money assistance, or do things for her she doesn’t want to do, even if capable of doing them. Last month she was diagnosed with a terminal illness and placed in hospice. She’s improved since and is being moved to a nursing home. My boyfriend tries to distance himself from her because of her toxic behavior, but that’s still his mom at the end of the day, and he’s having to handle some difficult issues with her terminal illness and feeling a responsibility towards handling certain high expense issues, as his brother can’t contribute. He’s stressed.
My boyfriend also loves to travel, often for long periods of time. Generally a month. I freely admit that I get depressed and lonely when he’s gone, and didn’t realize when we first started dating that his lifestyle when single was to be gone almost every other month, for 3-4 weeks. I thought he went on a couple of trips a year, more as soul searching than a lifestyle, if that makes sense.
He’s about to leave once again for a month. He’s extremely stressed due to his family issues, and I don’t want to be the clingy, insecure, come across as trying to control him girlfriend, especially since by most standards, we haven’t dated long. But I also need to be honest with myself about if I can emotionally handle a future of him traveling a lot during the year and me feeling alone and like I’m in a LDR.
I want to have the discussion about if he sees our relationship as ending in marriage, and if so, that part of my needs are to have my partner with me at least most of the year. I don’t know if I’m being unreasonable here, since he was honest that he not only travels often, that he doesn’t like taking a short trip, he only likes long trips. I worry that if I’m not clear in communicating my needs and desires, it might come across as seemingly being like his mom, trying to guilt or manipulate him into traveling less/shorter trips.
If we don’t have similar future ideas about marriage, or we can’t compromise on traveling, I feel like I would be hurting us both to continue the relationship, even though I love him more than I thought I could ever love someone. I can’t express how wonderful he is to me, and my zoo of animals, but though I can usually communicate well, I’m at a loss how to have these two discussions with him. Or do I need to accept that he may fully intend every year to be gone five or so months, throughout the year, and I better figure out how to emotionally handle being alone those times?
2 comments
You had 18 years of marriage between two different men before the age of 37? 🤔
He’s not your guy