Can't sleep. 4am. I just need some sort of confirmation I'm not going mad.
My boyfriend was always a bit of a commitment phobe and emotional nightmare. Awful past which I won't go into. Attachment issues. It also happens that he's kind and funny and I love him.
But, he's made my life pretty miserable.
He cheated on me about three years ago, for which there is a lot of unresolved pain for two reasons:
- He didn't really do any work to fix it. Yes, he sat for more than a year wiping away my tears and he apologised endlessly. But in a material sense he never did anything. He just sort of wanted to wait for me to feel better and wallowed in the guilt. Which I think compounded the pain of the affair. It made me feel worthless. That he didn't do the hard work.
- He promised me at the time that the affair had woken him up to what he what he had and he loved me and he'd commit fully with no more nonsense and we'd get a house together. Three years later I'm still waiting.
He was very happy for me to move in with him. Into his 1 bedroom flat, but not to get a house together. His main gripe being that our relationship was rocky (as they tend to be when you cheat) and if we split up he had to be able to afford the rent alone.
The key problem with this is that I have a child (17 at the time) and therefore can't live anywhere with just one bedroom. I also, frankly, had been a single Mum for 17 years and had lived month to month the entire time.
Financially speaking I couldn't afford, after my child left for uni, to continue paying rent on a two bedroom flat AND the added upkeep of university living costs and I really needed financial security of splitting rent and bills.
So what happened is that after a year of waiting, I said to my BF that when my child left for university I was leaving my flat, either to move in to a house together OR to move across the country somewhere cheaper. He begged me not to move away and asked me to live in his flat with him for a brief time whilst we found a place together.
So I agreed, and put all my belongings in storage and went to stay with him. To cut a long story short that went on for over a year with him essentially making house hunting such an ordeal that I eventually just gave up.
In the end, after a year of his nonsense, I ended up finding a house three hours away because its what I could afford by myself. I went and looked by myself, I chose it, sighened the lease and I've moved in.
But he kind of persuaded me during this process that it was OUR house. And we'd live in it at weekends and uni holidays, then live in his flat during the week. And he's moved some of his stuff in. And he built the furniture. He's looking to buy a car locally. And he's joined the cricket club.
At first I went along with this.
Then I just suddenly got incredibly angry.
Because deep down what I feel has happenned is that he's gone to extreme lengths to ensure we have two separate houses. To avoid that commitment to me. Because while it was like pulling teeth to get him to fully move in with me, he absolutely loves this concept of having two seperate houses.
He still wants to sleep together every night. In fact he can't stand being apart from me. I think it's more that he needs to feel he's okay financially if I leave him and not lumbered with an expensive larger house.
So now we have two houses. And I feel completely angry and betrayed. Like he's let me down and somehow framed it as a good thing.
If we'd shared a house I'd be well off. Now I'll struggle to survive to be honest. Forget holidays or fun things or haircuts or dentists. I'll just about be able to do it. So practically speaking I feel SO LET DOWN. Like he's whippee away my financial security.
To help, he paid off a £10,000 loan for me (which he considers a gift) to help lower my monthly Outgoings. So he has been very generous financially. It's more that I just wanted a proper shared life. And him breaking this promise makes me sad and angry and betrayed - which brings up the affair emotionally for me.
Because I think what has really happened is that he's a man who cheated on me, broke endless promises to move in together (ongoing 4 years now), and now what I wanted (to have a two income household- he earns double what I do and a proper home) is instead two seperate houses hours apart.
Am I going mad, or am I right?
It all just hit me and I nessaged him saying it was a betrayal and if he wanted two houses then he could have his autonomy until the cows come home because the relationship is over.
AIBU? Do two adults our age reasonably live like this? Or has he set completely unreasonable parameters?