Have name changed, please help. I just feel I need some outside perspective and some objective advice. Apologies if this ends up being really long, but just want to get it all down and not dripfeed.
I've been feeling increasingly on edge, anxious and down about a lot of things over the last 18 months. This has to do with a lot of instability in all areas of my life and I'm just not sure how to fix it and move on.
Ive been with DP for 6 years now - he is a wonderful man, does lots for me, cooks, cleans, shares the work load, supportive in my career, kind and generous to me and my family, and more than that I love chatting to him. He's really interesting and aware. However, over the last few years I feel very depressed about my relationship. He's very laid back about life goals and most of the time he is happy to just 'be' and not progress. For example, he felt no need to buy a place of his own (although he could afford to), isn't bothered about getting married or having children. I had to nag him to buy a place and as for the last two, he now says if that's what you want we can do it. But there's no initiation from his part. For what it's worth, I have no hesitation that he would be a wonderful and fantastic father. But he seems to have just drifted through his personal life with little impetus to do things, although he's fairly successful in his professional life.
The situation is complicated by the fact that he is significantly older than me and I'm starting to feel time is running out. I've never had a timetable of when to do things by and have naturally gone with the flow of my own instincts but now I'm increasingly feeling worried about things. I'm 29 and I feel that I would like to have a family at some point and that if it's not going to work out with him then I should move on now.
But more than anything the reason I have so many doubts is because, although he has been very supportive, he let me down on something fundamental to me last year. I say let me down but he let me down repeatedly on this thing over the last 3 years - after repeatedly promising the opposite - and all my trust in him now has gone. It was something that he knew meant the world to me and could have potentially changed my life around...I just feel like it was so disrespectful and vindictive and after what happened last year when he let me down on it for the last time, I had what I think was a nervous break down and I don't feel like I've recovered and I can't see how I can move on from what he did. That more than anything is why I feel I am now better off out of the relationship.
However, I also feel very trapped. I work in a field which is notoriously financially unstable, competitive and very difficult to make a success of. In the last year, I've had some fantastic opportunities and although things are still unstable (they may well be for years still) I'm at the stage now where I need to push through and capitalise on these opportunities. DP has been a tremendous support in helping over the years - including financially supporting me to pursue my career and giving advice and suggestions with work - and I honestly feel I wouldn't have got to this stage without his input. And so I feel like I am financially and professionally reliant on him.
Furthermore, I have no family support. I grew up homeless and what support I had as a child has pretty much gone now. In many ways, DP has become like my surrogate family.
I just don't know whether to stay or go. As I said, last year I pretty much had a break down that very few people would know about or even guess but I feel so depressed that I've stopped working over the last few months and am just 'existing' every day. I know I need to snap out of this and do something. But i just can't see through the fog about whether to say or go. I feel like if I go, I'll lose my career, have to settle for something else which is gutting and lose the reasonably good life we have but if I stay I'll also still be unhappy and miserable.
He knows about all of this and how I feel but he just doesn't seem to have an opinion either way, apart from when I say I'm going he says not to and that he's sorry. but nothing really changes and more than that I just don't know how to move forward from what he did last year.
I think if he had never let me down on this thing I wouldn't be so worried, but I feel like I just can't get over what happened.