To persevere with this relationship?

I’m not the one living in some sort of Anglicised suburban budget Sex and the City fantasy.
just saying

But another part of you would find it 'stifling' to live together - how do you square that? Particularly since it would be a huge leap to go from once a fortnight to living together. Even couples not living together usually spend a lot more time at each other's houses before they move in compared to you and your partner. I think your relationship as is should not be criticised if you're both happy with it but I am pretty unclear as to what you really want.

Can you not try out the parallel cohabiting lifestyle by going to his (or vice versa) more often with your admin/book/knitting or whatever and just rub along for the evening? I know it is a bit contrived but it would give you some idea.

What a load of absolute self absorbed inconsequential bollocks.

After 10 pages you're still motoring round in the same obtuse circle as you were when you started, and will continue to do so until you stop getting in your own way OP. Good luck with it.

I hadn’t asked if you ever see him spontaneously. You keep talking in platitudes and un trying to argue for a middle ground but I’m wasting my time. I asked about a shared social life and you said you don’t have that in your social circle but earlier you said your friends keep badgering you for him to join when they socialise with husbands. You’re changing your argument to defend him and making excuses.
We’re a bunch of strangers on the internet. Your friends have had long enough to get to know him and they don’t trust him. That’s nothing to do with how often you see each other or your set up.

You clearly can't let go of him, you love him and you hope he will pick you. He won't. He is wasting your time, showing he does not respect you. He is using you. If you are the same age, he has a reproductive advantage over you. He is wasting your reproductive years. Dump him, if he loved you, he would have proposed and made a proper life with you years ago. Please don't be one of those 'my boyfriend/partner and I are thinking of moving together. We are in our late 50s'. Please don't be this laughing stock - live your life now, and here.

I had a couple of questions, OP, that I don’t think have been asked/answered before but apologies if they have.

What do you feel you are missing out on by not living together? What do you feel you would gain? You say you like the time you spend together to be quality time but if you lived together there would be a lot of time spent doing boring routine stuff like cleaning, shopping, etc. How would you feel about that?

What are his reasons for not wanting to live together? Just that he is happy the way things are and is worried it would affect your relationship adversely and he doesn’t want to risk that?

I don’t understand why you keep getting grief from your friends about your relationship. They really need to just stop. If it works for you both, they should just accept it!

She’s right though. It’s all a bit odd for most people. But as I’ve said before, if it works for both of you…🩵

Do you ever just pop round to see him unannounced? I don’t mean for a ‘quick shag’.

A quick cup of tea after work to chat about your day, a midweek dinner if one of you has had a tough week, finishing an episode of a series together… the sort of everyday moments couples often have or you’d have with friends. You don’t have to live together or be joint at the hip to have these moments.

Everything you’ve described sounds very scheduled and controlled, rather than two people whose lives naturally overlap. You seem to jump to extremes to defend the relationship but there is a lot of middle ground between seeing someone once a fortnight and being suffocated

I got the impression before that you didn’t have mutual friends but that makes it even more odd that so many mutual friends who’ve known you both for years have the same concerns. That doesn’t mean they’re right, but I’d be wondering why they’re all seeing the same thing and why they don’t trust him not to leave you for the ‘one.’

You’ve also said before that they badger you as to why he never wants to socialise with them and their husbands. That’s not the same as expecting him to tag along to a girls’ night.

There’s no law that says relationships must include marriage, cohabiting and infiltrating each other’s friendship groups but a lot of people are very narrow-minded about this sort of thing. All that matters is that you’re happy. It sounds like you’ve both found something that works for you.

So you both have fairly low sex drives?
If the sex is great, once a fortnight is quite a push!!

This is interesting given you only see each other once a fortnight! Don’t you want more?!
You live 5 mins apart. Don’t you pop around for a quickie at least?!

Sorry, I got the idea from not seeing each other much though you live near each other. That's the only reason! Plus it's been on and off for so long, but maybe that does show you're both very attracted to each other.

Please, no need to be defensive, you asked for advice so as an older woman with lots of experience with relationships, this was my question, not an assumption.

Well it doesn't sound like rock n roll, not being able to keep your hands off each sort of passion, or maybe it was at first? Not that this type of relationship is guaranteed to last but I think there has to be some sort of lust for a while.

It seems you both love each other but are aware either of you could have a sparked attraction to someone else.

You're still young, maybe don't overthink and let life happen. Xx