Can love conquer all?

[Peppin]

Do you believe that if 2 people love each other, they can work anything out? Or do you think sometimes you have to accept that even though you both love each other, you simply can't make your relationship work?

Have been with DP for 2.5 years. He's not bothered about having his own kids but is brilliant with mine. We're both in our mid-30s, and live about an hour apart. I have my own home and he currently lives in a shared house. My kids love him and he is an important part of their lives: every weekend he arrives on Friday night and stays until Monday morning.

For a long time, I have wanted us to move in together. He's always said he does too, but there has always been a reason why it couldn't be quite yet.

I've felt that this constant delaying is insincere, i.e. that the real issue isn't the logistics/timing, but that he is not sure about the relationship. He has admitted that he does have doubts - these are to do with the fact that I have a very strong personality and he is quite gentle and feels I can be abrasive when I should be soothing and sympathetic. There is truth in this. I am just not as "nice" a person as he is.

This weekend, it came to a head over the most trivial thing on Friday night - a comment that he took exception to, and stormed out with all his stuff, declaring the relationship over. I was devastated. I saw him yesterday (he'd left behind some things he needed for work) and he looked miserable and said he'd never loved anyone as much as me and didn't want our relationship to be over but felt he could not commit to me without some "security" for himself first.

I don't know what to do now because I love him, I think he loves me, and I feel that if I tell him I want us to make it work, he will probably agree to move in and give it a go. But nothing has actually changed overnight, and so the reservations he has had up to now would still be there, albeit he would be repressing them to "give it another go". I can't believe that overnight, the relationship I have hoped would be "the one" for 2.5 years can just end. But maybe if it is never going to work, I should just accept that now?

What should I do?

You probably do love each other in your own ways, but you're not compatible by the sound of it. Living with someone requires commitment and compromise or it's extremely hard work. Love is a good start but it's not everything

I used to have that fairy-tale thing about love can conquer all...

But reality has a way of hitting you in the face and showed me it's just that, a fairy tale.

Life is not a fairy tale and people are under so much pressure nowadays, there has to be so much compromise and it doesn't always work. Pressure from work/study, money problems, kids, family, self-actualisation (follow your dream) and a myriad other things.

For what it's worth, as an LP with one child, I am not willing to accommodate a new relationship living in my house - a whole new set of dynamics!
Of course, I will always compromise if he's willing to cook, clean and help really take care of the kids! . And be there for me of course....

I usually attract the kind of men that need looking after too!

For me, it's the best to each keep your own place and then the relationship can flourish, or not. At least you know then (he's not looking for a "ready-made" family/mother figure).

Nothing worse than having a man around the house you don't want and he refuses to move out/nowhere to go.....

The great thing about living alone (with kids) is you can do what you want, when you want (for you and the kids). Anything else is extra.

By the way, you have been together for 2.5 years yet you say I think he loves me . That says something fundamental to me... i.e. (how) has(?) he shown you he loves you in the last 2.5 years?.

Do nothing and wait to see if he makes any approach to you.

You've described yourself as having a 'strong' personality and capable of being 'abrasive', and any overture to reconciliation has to come from him otherwise you'll torment yourself with thoughts of having browbeaten him further down the line.

As for love conquering all; if that were the case, there'd be no wars.

Well, I say "I think he loves me" in the context that he has just apparently ended our relationship, which I have to assume might mean he doesn't love me any more, or not enough. But during the course of our relationship, I have always felt incredibly loved. He does everything for me and the kids. Little, thoughtful things like finding toys/games the kids are after but I can't get hold of, little treats that I like, every week he gets a copy of Stylist magazine for me (he works in London, I don't)... and then when things go wrong in my house he has always been there to help out. He has taken time off work to help me with the kids/home repairs. Basically he is an amazing boyfriend. But I think the "commitment" thing has pushed him to the point where he has had to confront whether or not he wants to commit, and he's found he's not sure. I think he would like to just carry on as we are. I want more. But at the same time I think: if I don't have him then I don't want anyone else so maybe I should just accept that what we had is the best I can hope for?

agree with izzy

also, if you are abrasive and find yourself upsetting him at times, you might want to think about changing your behavior.

it sounds to me like he loves you, but the way you speak to him at times confuses him and makes him think he shouldn't trust you completely, that he would regret moving in with you and then being "stuck" there if you turn properly nasty.

perhaps if you were kinder and less abrasive, he would feel he could trust you, and commitment problems might end up evaporating as he manages to do that.

my DH and I went through something similar, and as I became more aware of how i was coming across, things changed for the better for us tbh.

Oikopolis I know that my "presentation" is often spiky and that I need to change it - this is something that is a problem in my other relationships too (with my family, ex-husband, etc.). I don't mean to be hard or abrasive but somehow things just come out wrong. I hate this in myself and in some ways I feel unloveable because of it, but still I seem to find it so hard to change - I don't know when I'n doing it until someone says something and then I feel all defensive which doesn't help either.

I need to try harder but I don't know how to do it.

i really so understand!! been there in a big way. esp the defensiveness. i am going to ramble now, in hopes that you might find something useful in this ramble. apologies if there is nothing to be gleaned

the way i tackled this issue in my own life was through making it a major goal, for a whole year, to learn about and then practice humility.

i decided on that specifically because the idea of humility "attacked" many of my weak points: a need for control (because "i know best"), a love of being "right", a feeling that if i'm not "right"/clever/on-top-of-things, i'm not acceptable.... etc. etc. etc. these were all things that were biting me in the arse quite hard in my relationships. they were the root of the sometimes bitchy/harsh things that fell out of my mouth at times. (the root may be different for you)

so i spent a year reading books about humility, forgiveness, the intrinsic worth of human beings, etc. (Maximilian Kolbe's story for example, also Mother Theresa, Corrie Ten Boom) and journalling about it, how it made me feel and trying to find links in my own life to what i was reading.

it was basically a consciousness-raising exercise. i needed to become more mindful of the people around me, how different they might be from me.

after a bit i started tentatively modelling the behaviour i was reading about. forcing myself to apologise, stop saving face, listen carefully to criticism, name my feelings to other people when i started to want to defend myself, slow down my reactions as much as possible so i could be more thoughtful.

it was quite scary and hard. all these changes made me feel quite exposed and exasperated sometimes. but they did teach me a lot and i am really a very different person now. maybe you could take on a similar project, if you feel this part of your personality is truly problematic.

Thanks for your message, oikopolis. All of what you say in your third paragraph really resonates with me, in fact it more or less describes my own behaviour. I think I have reached a point where I have to do something about this and your thoughts on humility are interesting. It's hard to think about these things but what you did sounds illuminating. Perhaps I can do something similar. Thank you.

goodness me, if you have to change your basic personality so profoundly to please a man, he isn't the right man for you

I cannot believe what I am reading here

what does he mean by you should be more "soothing"...does he mean you shouldn't argue back, and agree with him more ? That you shouldn't "upset" him, by pointing out things that don't work for you ?

what does he mean by "security" ? Financial security ? What is he expecting you to do to make him more "secure", bearing in mind he is in a shared house now, so moving in with you wouldn't change that much for him (it certainly wouldn't make him less secure)

"humility" is not something I would aspire to, if it meant quashing my natural thoughts and feelings, and ignoring what could actually be very approppriate reservations about a relationship (actually, not ever )

at best, this man sounds needy and immature

don't bend over backwards to accomadate that for the sake of a relationship...you will regret it

Has it occurred to you that you might not be doing anything wrong?

I had a boyfriend whom this reminds me of now, and i was always having to watch what I said, because he would flip over something I had assumed was Ok to say, and walk out. and then come back saying he loved me.

I couldn't stand to walk around on eggshells so I ended it. He still insisted he loved me but he was fed up with 'giving' all the time when I was not accommodating his needs (I had a child, he didn't) which really took me by surprise as I had had no idea he felt that way, and I didn't think I was demanding at all.

He did have some issues.

I am wondering if your DP is possibly playing out a role play thing, where he steps into an existing dynamic and has an impact on all of you, butwill not commit in terms of having his own child with you or moving in - basically so that he is never actually really part of it, and can't be held responsible for something he is quite detached from. It's not 'his' family. Nothing is his fault. He has no 'needs', while you and the children constantly do (or in his head he has none, iyswim).
So then he can turn it around onto you and say, 'look at what I have done for you, you ought to treat me better than this'.
I don't know but I am a bit concerned due to some of the things you've said.

might be totally wrong. But you really don't sound happy.

Sadly - no. Love does not conquer all (much as we would want it to) what it does conquer is a sense of self and boundaries, which are not always good in the long run.

There should be no conquering in love...of any kind.

women !

be nicer to keep your man !

squash your personality, change yourself !

The Relationship is all !

fuck me, it's an emotional abuser's wet dream on Mumsnet sometimes

< shakes head in despair >

And I agree with the other posters here...radical personality overhauls to please or appease another - 1. Can't last, 2. Should not be expected, 3. Should not be undertaken by only one party.

Whose love and all what?

Him storming off over a trivial issue and declaring the relationship over makes him sound like the abrasive one.

What did he get so annoyed about?

Love conquers all is just a euphemism for Women stay in abusive relationships and is quite frankly a load of bollocks.

As for breaking up over a minor disagreement, well that is most definitely his issue. A "spiky" woman = normal behaviour in a man.

Nyac, maybe Op wasn't "soothing" enough ?

Hard to make a judgement on the OP's situation from what she's said here - but if a woman had written from the DP's perspective ('he said something insensitive AGAIN - I couldn't bear it and just had to leave') wouldn't we be sympathetic to her?

It sounds like oikopolis set out to change herself in response to feedback from various people in her life, not just her H. And I admire her for that. I've certainly been told at various points by various people that I was behaving in an arse-ish way, and I have really made an effort to observe and improve my behaviour accordingly. This is very different from coming under sustained criticism from an abusive partner and trying to be as meek as possible as a result, which is certainly a phenomenon that can be spotted on other threads, but not necessarily here.

AnyFucker yes, as others said, it wasn't about changing myself to "please my man". my husband happened to be my primary relationship at the time that i made this change, but he was last in a long line of people (friends and boyfriends) who'd had very fraught relationships with...

i set out to learn a new way to be because the old way was making me deeply unhappy. that's making empowering choices for myself. not "squashing my personality". i didn't even tell anyone in my life what i was doing! it was for myself.

i was an unusually unhappy person who found myself constantly in conflict with everyone i met... even people i liked... why would i not want to change that?

the OP is a grown woman and sounds awfully intelligent. she can weigh up whether she has a similar challenge on her hands to what i do... if she doesn't, i'm sure she will find a better way to deal with it

if she had sounded vulnerable and insecure, i wouldn't have shared what i did because obviously you need a strong sense of self in order to discern such things.

fwiw i don't think love can conquer all.
the most i believe is that, at times, the stupid things we learn to do from our parents/whoever can sabotage relationships that might otherwise be fulfilling and happy.

I think you should separate this into two questions.

First, the relationship. Love does not conquer all, if you are not compatible then all the love in the world will not solve things. I think you should let him go. Putting aside any personality issues, it sounds like you want very different things from the relationship. If you can't get on the same page in that regard, you will always have problems.

Second, the question of your personality. You should never try to change your personality for the sake of a man. But I do agree that if you are having issues with people from many parts of your life, it is worth some self-examination.

My family is full of 'spiky' women. Some are just feisty and good-natured and a bit blunt, but some are total nightmares. They hurt a lot of people.

The problem is, I don't think you can realistically address this as long as you are preoccupied by what your DP thinks of you. So I think you should settle that first. Then take some time later on to think if there really is anything you want to change about yourself -- emphasis on IF!

what DB said

Op, you need to examine very very closely whether this "spiky" personality is a problem in the rest of your life, or just indealings with this man, and probably men in general too

"spiky" is a euphemism (sometimes) for standing up for yourself, and accusations of it can come from people who wish to shut you up and get their own way without complaints from you

I expect, in RL, I would be described as assertive by most, as "bolshy" by a few, but those are the few that are uncomfortable with it for reasons of their own

it doesn't ruin my relationships, the ones that matter

I think there is a difference between Oikopolis and the OP in that Oikopolise said that everyone in her life found her difficult to get on with. Some people are abrasive, tactless, steamrollery and should perhaps try to be a little less so.
However, like AF said, Peppin, if other people don't find you too aggressive, you may not be so and this man may just be determined to maintain the relationship in a way that keeps the reins in his hands ie make sure you are too busy worrying about how to keep him to think about whether he's actually worth keeping.

There is so much to think about here, I had forgotten (long absence) how helpful and enlightening Mumsnetters can be!

It is true that my "rough edges" have been problematic in a lot of my relationships (both romantic ones and others), but until recently I have always attributed others' complaints about this to their own over-sensitivity, chips on shoulders, etc. I totally agree that no one should set out to fundamentally change themself to accommodate the needs of their partner, but as I get older I can also see that if a common theme emerges in all your relationships, and the common denominator is you, then perhaps it's time to look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. The reason that some of the things DP said to me were so upsetting is because I know there is more than a grain of truth in them.

That said, we are very different people and perhaps we are not compatible. Today he has been in touch saying he wants to see me (we both have time off this week, had planned a couple of things to do with the kids), and I have said I think we do need to talk but I don't want to do that until the kids have gone to their dad's for next week. There's no point in us just carrying on as we were before; something has to change on both sides. I don't know if that is realistic. But I don't want to leave it unexplored either. He is a wonderful person and I may not be the right person for him, or he for me - I know I need to be very honest about this now. It's hard because we get along so well, my kids adore him, and it would be a big rupture in our lives for us to part. However, I can see that if it is going to happen then it might as well be now not in another year or two.

Relationships can be hard, can't they?

I think OP if you are aware that you can be a bit spiky and you want to alter that it is possible, but you should be doing it for yourself and not for a man.

Like oikopolis I went on a programme of change after my marriage broke down. I learned that my anger stemmed from hurt and an inability to state my feelings and stand up for myself until I was in a steaming rage and overreacted with ferocity. I went to a counsellor for two years and learned about my triggers and how to deal with them.

Three years on I am chilled and easy going and a much nicer person (I hope!)