DP and I have been together coming up for 2 years. I know not long but we moved in together after a couple of months. Our relationship has been pretty brilliant. Close friends, team mates, own language, future plans etc. We broke up tonight b/c despite telling me he wants us to get engaged soon, it came out that he doesn't see that for a few years.
From the outside that is entirely reasonable but there is a backstory. I tend to date people older and more settled. I am an only child and my mother died when I was young; I also went to boarding school. As such, I am very emotionally self reliant but also very wary of people. Writing this, crying, I realise that's probably bollocks that I'm in control of my emotions, I'm more a control freak with a huge abandonment complex.
Anyway, I've managed it by concentrating on friends, career, not men as an emotional crutch. That is all going well - I have 2 Masters degrees and a fulfilling, well paid job that I enjoy, after a lot of searching. Then I met DP and I felt like things made sense. When we met, I told him that we are probably at different life stages but he disagreed, fought for me to be in a proper relationship, broke down my walls and made me feel truly loved. He immersed himself in my life, my friends, my family and moved in to my flat. I became calmer and happier and let my guard down for the first time in as long as I can remember.
There have been huge hiccups along the way - I wrote a post a month or so ago but mismatched sex drives (mine higher) but there are other things; he is 25 and I am 28 (hence different stages of life). I think he drinks too much but then so do I (live and work in central London with sociable jobs and I drink a fraction of what I used to). He got drunk and crashed my car (I was in bed). He didn't come home for a few nights and apologised but then did it again (I can almost guarantee no other women, just booze) and he's been verbally abusive many times. Half the time now I feel like he doesn't even notice that I'm around.
Which comes to tonight where he tells me he doesn't see himself settling down properly for a few years. As I said before, I get it. But he is the one who told my friends he had plans to propose, knowing they have no filter. THen told me he was planning to early this year without me asking, then when we heard a mutual friend was planning to propose on a holiday we are all meant to be going on in September he implied "he would do so before". All unprompted, aside occasionally in jest after he had said something about it. So why mess with me and take me from strong and independent and indifferent to feeling like my future is imploding and I've lost my strength and will and that at 28 I'm a bit past it and probably my chances of moving on and having kids are limited.
This has been such ramble, I'm sorry. I'm just so sad and I need someone to try to help me make sense of the mess I have let myself in to.