Background:
Both mid 40s, neither married before, I have two young children with a DV ex, he was in a childless 15 year relationship. We don't live together and have been dating for nearly two years. My children call him Daddy regularly now. Their own father has been totally absent for at least 3 years. Neither of us own our homes, he is in the proverbial batch pad and has his own business, and I'm currently on benefits looking to return to work now youngest started school last September.
This is what I'm finding increasingly hard to deal with, and it's causing some communication problems in our relationship:
We only see eachother at weekends. He stays over Sat eve-Sun eve. Occasionally may meet for coffee on a weekday, but that will be even less likely once I find work.
We communicate during the week by text, don't phone eachother. I'm not a proficient texter and I despair of the medium because it's so open to misinterpretation unless you're thoroughly articulate and can also 'sense' how a person is during the text conversation.
At the weekends, it feels like I'm on my best behaviour, because I don't want to spoil the little time we have together.
It's like having to get to know someone all over again every weekend.
Any of the big stuff or stress or worries that other couples chat about, I can't do with him, because I only see him at weekends. By which time, our problems have already risen, crested and fell again during the week and won't require that cosy, familiar, conversational airing that is such a fundamentental part of a strong friendship.
He doesn't have that opportunity with me either.
I don't feel like I'm in a relationship. It doesn't seem to have earnt that solid grounding that a few good arguments or rows, and plenty of shared in depth experiences, contribute to.
I know two years is still early days, but what is the next stage here in long term dating?
I need him to be able to talk to me or ring me during the week with his worries like other people do. But that isn't what's supposed to happen when you're just dating, is it? It's supposed to still be lighthearted and noncommittal. But I miss that solidity of a strong friendship, that was the basis for my other long term relationships before him (apart from the DV one, obviously).
Summarily, how can I gain that sense of long term friendship whilst not actually living with someone?
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Relationships
Long term dating. Can it work?
LeadingToGadeBank · 03/03/2014 21:22
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I've been with my boyfriend a similar amount of time, just over two years.
We don't see each other much during the week, mainly because he plays sports most evenings until gone 11, and I go to bed between 10 and half past. He could come here afterwards (and has done a couple of times when we are doing something together the next day or when he's helped me out with the kids if they need to be somewhere other than school), but there's not really much point as I'd normally be asleep before he got here. Plus his sports teams are based closer to his house than mine. But Wednesdays are mine, and he comes for dinner and stays over then. We also see each other on Fridays and Saturdays most of the time (usually stays over), as well as some point on Sundays.
When he gets a free evening other than Wednesdays he sometimes comes over, but I also appreciate that sometimes he just wants to sit in his own house for a change.
We haven't seen each other so much during the day at weekends recently as he's been renovating a house so spends his weekends doing that, and the dc no longer go to their dad, so I can't stay at his house anymore (he has lodgers so the dc can't really stay there with me). It has taken its toll a little bit but we'll hopefully get more time now he's nearly finished the house.
We text more than talk, mainly because I struggle on the phone and can't seem to hear or understand people 
but we text constantly through the day, 3 or 4 text 'conversations' as well as random messages here and there. Texting also means we can reply as and when we look at our phone, rather than having to stop what we're doing to chat. If it's important we ring though (and then revert to text after I get pissed of going "what? Say that again? I didn't catch that...")
So on the surface maybe not so different to the OP. BUT he's my best friend. He's the first person I think to tell when something happens to me, or the dc. He's the person I share all the snippets of my day with. If I'm happy, excited, worried or upset I tell him. I ring him to rant about things. We discuss problems together.
We've been on holiday together, we have shared experiences, we've gone to shows and events together. We do things as a couple, and also with the dc. The dc see him, not as a parent figure, but as an adult who has responsibility for them, probably around the same level as their aunties and uncles.
We talk about us, and our future. Living together isn't going to happen now, but we've discussed it, we both want it in the future. We've talked about marriage and babies, we know that long term we both want the same thing.
Maybe you just need to broach some of those conversations OP?
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