End of a five year relationship.

[RoyalWelsh]

I've posted things about DP and I on other places on MN. I have woken up this morning to an empty bed as DP has slept on the sofa. We agreed to split last night. I don't think it has properly sunk in yet. He says he will look for somewhere else to live and be gone by the weekend.

We love each other, but we want different things. I was clear at the start of the relationship that I wanted babies and a marriage and I wasn't prepared to compromise. He said he had never really considered them but he wanted to make me happy etc.

I have finished university now and have a job. We are both working and have a good relationship. I brought up starting a family and he said, let me think about it for a while but probably.

Yesterday he told me he's not ready for children, doesn't know if he will ever be ready. I told him I appreciated that he isn't ready, but I am and have been since the beginning and that I wasn't sure if I could continue in the same way for the next five, ten years without knowing for definite. So we decided that we had to end it.

It has all been very amicable, very polite. I know, though, that in a few hours when I stop feeling numb, that I will feel like m heart has been ripped out. I can feel it coming already as it's getting harder to breath.

I don't want to lose him but a marriage and babies... It's all I've ever wanted and he knows that. We have to stay apart, don't we?

I remember when I was 25 and almost insane with wanting a baby (in very unsuitable circumstances) I read an agony column in Cosmo, written by Irma Kurtz where she said that about the longing for a child not being extinguished by the birth of a child. She said that the person writing to her should accept this was the case for her and spend her twenties creating the kind of mother she wanted her children to have. I thought it was very, very good advice.

On the other hand, some of us, myself included, regret having waited till our 30s to have children.

You sound lovely OP

Fwiw me and DH went through similar - he's 3 years younger than me and I wanted marriage and kids well before him. As time went by, our friends started to get married or pregnant and I think that made it less scary for him - less of a leap into the unknown.

He proposed maybe 2 years after we almost broke up, and when he did, he kept apologising for making me wait so long. All I could think was 'but you weren't ready then, this is perfect because you want it!' and a couple more years and I'm 6mo pregnant.

Please stay together, keep talking about it, make your feelings clear without resentment or blackmail and he will come round, I'd put money on it. He'll do it for you, because he loves you. And you'll wait, because you love him.