To persevere with this relationship?

[BeMoreSoThen]

I have posted about this before under a different name but it is my birthday next month and I suppose it is making me reflect on what I want in life.

In my early 20s I had a very good male friend with whom I had no romantic relationship at all. By my mid 20s, that had changed and after night outs we would often end up going home together, but it was all very casual and we were both single. We both would see other people too.

In our late 20s we had a pregnancy scared and got much closer. He then text me one day to say he was going on a date with someone else and I ended it. I knew I liked him, and he knew it too, and I was not interested in sharing him with anyone. We didn’t speak for a while after this.

During this time, I met someone who I thought I would end up marrying. I thought he was perfect. And then he cheated on me and finished it to be with his affair partner. Upset and drunk, I got in touch again with the first man.

We gradually started seeing each other again but it was never serious. I again met someone else, and told him about it. I gave him every opportunity to say he’d prefer we were together and I didn’t see this other man, but he was clearly not bothered so I ended things and gave it a whirl with the other man.

That lasted just a few months and I felt suffocated and unhappy. I hated how often he wanted to see me and stay at mine, and the expectations placed on me, and ended it. I went back to the first man again.

This was five years ago. We agreed a long time ago that we are monogamous. We speak all day every day, and holiday together a couple of times a year. But we only see each other every couple of weeks, despite living five minutes away from each other.

I sometimes wonder if I’m ‘settling’, and whether I want a proper relationship with the aim to be living together and marriage. But then I think about the previous relationship where I felt suffocated because he wanted exactly that and I hated it. I hated him wanting to stay over on week nights or wanting to go for dinner or to see his family.

I’m not getting any younger and I wonder whether I should be brave, call it off and look for someone with a more traditional view of a relationship. Or it it okay to stick with what I’ve got despite being relentlessly told by friends that it’s not a ‘real’ relationship.

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

You keep asking the same questions.

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…🩵

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!

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 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.

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.

Okay. But I’m not sure there’s any point repeatedly asking it when I’ve answered numerous times. I think this thread has ran its course.

I don’t know really. I guess I enjoy the idea of being in the same space together but doing our own thing.

He’s happy with the way things are. He likes his own space.

He already has picked me.

Have you read the numerous times I’ve said I don’t want children, or are you just refusing to accept that a woman does not want kids?

I don’t understand this word salad at all.

What a load of absolute self absorbed inconsequential bollocks.

Grow up 🙄

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.

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

You’re spending your time being deeply bitter and unpleasant to people, so I can only imagine you’re deeply unhappy in your life, which is a shame.

You don’t need to type ‘just saying’. You haven’t actually said it, and people know you’ve written it because we are reading it. Absolutely does my head in.

What a peculiar assertion to make in relation to me and my happiness or lack of. You started a thread about whether or not to persevere with a relationship on the circumstances you describe sharing extensive details. If I had been you and done this then I would have expected to canvass a range of opinions. I am merely giving mine. It’s not my problem that you cannot take the opinions / questions your dilemma has yielded amongst a group of strangers online.

just saying

You say he has picked you, but in all honesty neither of you has REALLY picked each other.
You’re both each other’s ’side hustle’.
Seeing someone once a fortnight for 24 hours isn’t something that people who have chosen each other as life partners do. It wouldn’t be enough.
It seems you’ve both chosen NOT to choose, and as I’ve said numerous times now, if you’re both happy with that you should ignore any naysayers.
At the same time, you should probably, for the sake of avoiding future disappointment, not frame it as anything other than an unusual relationship arrangement.

We have picked each other. We are together and we do not look at, want, or consider anyone else. That will do me.

I’ve only read the first few words, because I get the impression the rest is about you, and this thread is about me.

Is the crux of the matter you want him to declare he really wants to marry you or at least live together?

This whole thread is literally about you considering someone else.

I sometimes wonder if I’m ‘settling’, and whether I want a proper relationship

He is happy with the way things are.

You consistently contradict yourself, hence you are going round in circles and feel you don't know what to do. You will not feel any differently about this conundrum, until you can accept that he does not want what you want.

If you were happy with this once a fortnight separate set up, and you might very well be, it's perfectly valid as a relationship, you wouldn't be here ten pages deep, still no further.

If this is also too word salad too let me know and I'll see if I can simplify it further.

Thank Christ this thread is about you and not me or anyone else who also thinks you are just this man’s stop gap, accepting his breadcrumbs and fitting around everything because you can. You don’t have any experience of a healthy respectful and beneficial relationship and that has enabled this scenario to unfold. You asked a question of strangers online whether you should “persevere” . Your choice of word. Most people think you are wasting your time and deserve better. I think you know that you know all of this but can’t face up to what acknowledging this means and being involved in something with someone is better than nobody at all.

You don’t actually need or want an answer to the question, you just wanted some people to metaphorically show up and provide affirmation that what you have going with this man is unconventional, cool and more exciting than what most adults in relationships end up in: conflating things you don’t have and have never had emotionally as being humdrum and plodding, dismissing them with no lived experience of this sort of life whatsoever. You cannot accept that people telling you to end this “relationship” or their advice in the spirit it was intended and became increasingly condescending and often rude to people in the process. I thought that was out of line and commented accordingly.

If you think that my posts are all about me then that’s your prerogative. I genuinely do not care. At the end of the day you are the one in this situation and whether you chose to actually read and think about what most people have posted in response to your question is up to you so crack on. Nobody here is invested in your life. Neither I suspect is the man who is at the centre of your so called dilemma.

If it works for you who cares what others think? But it sounds like you might want more, and I don’t think you’re unreasonable.

Seeing someone for fun every two weeks and keeping in touch over text is fine. But lots of people want to build a home and a life together, to work together towards shared goals, to talk and support each other in person a every day, to have daily physical contact, no matter how small, and (as you say you’d like) to spend quiet time simply being in each other’s company. Most people want that level of emotional and physical connection with a life partner — even if it does mean also providing hands-on daily help with hard periods, or coping in-person with low moods, stresses, and the mundane.

It’s not really hard to see why your friends think your relationship is different, because it is. And while there might be many benefits to your situation, and it might suit you, they’re not unreasonable to view it as involving less commitment and closeness, in many ways.

Even I am getting frustrated, @BeMoreSoThen. You've had a lot of criticism which I've not joined in with and, indeed, have been supportive of your current lifestyle if it is freely chosen by both of you. But since part of you seems to want more I have posed questions to help you explore what you want and you have ignored them. You must realise that if you reach out for help, which is the nature of your AIBU, and then don't engage when it is offered that you are going to alienate people.
Edited to add that last I get accused of making this about me I don't care about getting a personalised response. Other people have done the same as me. It would just be nice to get some kind of update that indicates you are reflecting on the questions and comments made by a various people. There's very little sense of that coming through.