Expectations after a year together .

[Golfcaddymad]

I don’t want to give a ‘he does this ‘and ‘I do that ‘ scenario as I would dearly love your unbiased opinions .
After a year of being in a relationship , as two people who are in their early thirties who don’t live together, but one of whom is a house owner , what would average expectations be? Both working . Him professional job, high earning. Me low earning but full time work.
There have been no serious highs or lows. We meet a couple of times a week . I am possibly more keen generally and to to move to next step . He is not. What would You expect thanks . I don’t want to be unreasonable but I don’t want to wait forever for him to decide his future either . Thanks

I don’t know. Depends on the people. It took my DH 2 years to say I love you. 3 yrs to discuss moving in. I would have married him after 6 months but he’s very very careful with the important stuff in life. I earned a fraction what he did but we were equals in the important ways which was and is important. I wasn’t looking for a ‘catch’, both of us were looking for a partner. I brought lots to the relationship even if I earned less. (Feel like I have to justify that as he is someone with a serious career and investments, I know how it could look from the outside). So OP, are you an equal to your boyfriend and does he treat you like one? My DH did a lot of extreme sports and worked and played hard but I never felt unconsidered or held at arms length.

If it feels like you’re being held at arms length then I think something isn’t right with you two as a match.

Just saw @Glasscrab s post and she explains what I was trying to describe. That equality of person is important. And it’s not necessarily about the money (though that can be an issue). As a side note, lots of men (and women) assume/accept they’re going to be financially responsible for a woman once they settle down, maybe OPs man is not one of those guys? I’m personally not happy with that dynamic myself.

This would be ok perhaps if you were in your 20s but in your 30s if you are looking for marriage and family I would need things to be progressing faster than this and I would move on.

You are wanting something he doesn't want to give at the moment and I just don't think that works.

@Golfcaddymad

I don't know if it will help or not but here's my tuppence worth.

DP and I are both mid thirties, been together almost 4 years, living together for 18 months, bought our (my very first, his second) house together in May. Getting married next year.

When we first met I was renting with a friend and he owned his own home about an hour away. We too would only see each other 2 / 3 times a week (we both work shifts, sometimes I wanted to go out with my friends, sometimes he wanted to go out with his).

We never spoke about the future for at least the first 18 months – we enjoyed being in that extended honeymoon period that not seeing each other every night brings. We retained (and have still retained) a lot of our independence, but enjoyed being a couple when we were together.

4 years later we’re settled and I’m still as in love with him as the day I met him. We’ve never put any pressure on each other and have enjoyed seeing where our relationship goes, instead of manoeuvring it to be a certain way.

If you’re having a lovely time and he has said that he WILL discuss things, but just not now, I say roll with it. Continue enjoying your time together and equally your time apart. This is the best time to make memories before real life sets in and you’re picking up his dirty boxers off the floor.

Grobags, public schools still advertise for linen girls - maybe under different names - and OP needs to be aware that this man might see her in this light. Glossing over it won’t help. I’ve seen too many young women cling to a romantic ideal and be disappointed.

OP, can’t you see that he schedules you for sex and keeps the rest of his life separate? You are being used. Fine if you’re ok with that, but not if you want more.

@barryfromclareisfit don't be ridiculous, that would breach gender equality legislation for a start. Your comment to the OP likening her to some destitute serving girl was extremely bitchy and designed to put her in her place.

No one can read into the future, you know what you want, he doesn't, at least not concretely. All is possible. He could be happy the way things are and feel anything above would be disruption to his life. He might have nothing more to ever offer you.

However, it could very well be that things evolve gradually without him even being conscious of it, and one day, taking the next step will come naturally.

Or many tomorrow hell be involved in a car crash, coming close to death, making him reassess what is important in life and proposed to you and suggest you start trying for a baby.

Sadly, there are no guarantees and you'll have to decide how long you wait for him to make a move or when you decide any more time is a waste and opt to set yourself free to meet someone else who can move at the same speed than you.

public schools still advertise for linen girls - maybe under different names

If you mean that public schools advertise for housekeepers/scouts/bedders, then certainly they do (without specifying their sex). If you mean that statistically, a minority of these employees are likely to have slept with a pupil at some point over the entire course of the school's history, then I'm sure that's likely to be true.

If, however, you mean that part of the unofficial job description for domestic workers at today's public schools is that they provide no strings attached sex for adolescent Harrovians, then you've been reading too many 19thc novels.

Like many posters, I think there is a big difference between relationships in your twenties to those in your thirties. I had a long term relationship in my twenties that didn’t work out, then met DH when we were both in our early thirties.

He asked me to marry him after six months and we’re got married at a year, with our DSs arriving a year later. He was also set in his ways, until he met me! We have been married for over 30 years.

Sadly, I think that you are stopping yourself from meeting someone better for you by hanging on to this guy. Best of luck.

Wasting your time on me, posters. Tell the poor OP to cut her losses and find a man who intends to spend his life with her.

I think having set expectations on which relationship "milestones" you are expected to have hit after one month/six months/on year etc are a major reason why relationships break down. They are based on nothing more than convention and put ridiculous amounts of pressure on people just to effectively keep up with the Joneses. So I would not devote any time to worrying about this sort of thing.

That said, you clearly are uncomfortable with the speed, or lack of it, at which things are moving and I think you do have to listen to your instincts. If you're not getting what you want, you should perhaps pull back a bit.

Are you sure you are his one and only?

I just think he’s very cautious. He’s in a serious financial job and I reckon it’s in his natural nature to be cautious. Perhaps you could do something to test him a bit. Like for example go quiet for a week and see what he does.

And I went out with my dh for four years before he proposed to me. Been married 35 years now. So one year is nothing.

I know three women who are in their 40s with no children because they've either been kept dangling by a man with no intention to commit or married a man they though would change his mind about not wanting children. In two cases the men have gone onto have children very quickly with a younger woman.

I'm personally 7 months into a relationship that's moving very slowly, we've talked vaguely about living together at some point in the future, even getting married but it's at least a couple of years away, we see each other a couple of times a week, but it's more spontaneous than your set up. The difference is we're both 45+ own our own homes and have children. If we were early 30s with no children we'd be living together by now.

He has a rich and busy social life which he doesn’t seem to want to leave behind him yet.

What does this mean? Why are YOU not his rich and busy social life? Where is the passion?

Expectations are premeditated resentments OP!! Stop expecting anything and let things go whichever way they go OR you instigate whatever it is you are thinking!BUT remember.....don’t have expectations around what his answer will be!!

I’m not sure that he isnt as interested in it as I am, he just moves at a very slow pace and is busier than I am

How can both of these things be true - he move at a very slow and is busier than I am?

He chooses to move at a very slow pace with your relationship but he sounds fast paced and v busy with the rest of his friends/social life.

You are an option. Even a bi weekly booty call. As PPs have already said - I am a couple of decades older than you and have seen a few wonderful women miss out on children because they hung around for the wrong man. He isn’t that into you. And you are not compatible - he has told your loud and clear repeatedly that “he is unsure about children” - listen to that and move on. Sorry xxx

Absolutely not a booty call. I’m much more interested in sex than he is. He is anxious he said because it’s his first long term relationship. What upsets me is that after a perfectly wonderful/ night / day , he sees me out of the car , quick peck on the cheek and says that he’ll see me in a few days despite living minutes down the motorway from him and him on leave from work and him knowing that I am free to meet him every lunchtime and evening during the week not to mention all weekend .

Can I ask this too please? He knows I have very little disposable income and he likes to organise walks, trips to the seaside, cinema, breakfast together. I think it’s because he is sensitive to my financials .he does treat me
To dinner now and again and we have an odd night away( staying at his friends vacant house) which i am
Grateful for. However am I correct in thinking that this is sensitivity and kindness or as a friend has said , is it because he wants to keep all his wealth for his multiple holidays and jollies with all his friends ?

OP, the more you write, the worse this sounds. In the nicest possible way, it sounds as if he's just not that into you, compared to how much you are invested in him -- he's not that interested sexually, he only wants to see you at regulated intervals etc, whereas you sound as if you either have nothing at all going on in your own life other than him, or you are willing to sacrifice everything else for him.

Reading you saying that you are available to meet him every lunchtime, every evening and all weekend is really sad, OP. And I don't mean that patronisingly. You owe it to yourself to inhabit your own life more fully than that!

I think you're asking the wrong questions. Finances are irrelevant to this. You have been unlucky enough to fall for someone who is extremely set in his ways, and while you want a conventional romantic progression to moving in together, marriage, children etc -- he simply doesn't. His life is fine as it is. And you aren't helping yourself by being so abjectly available to him 24/7.

I don't think this is going anywhere, in the sense that you want it to, or at the pace that will allow you to have children with him, if he eventually comes around to an idea he's not keen on and may never be keen on, or, if you continue hanging on for dear life for a few more years, to allow you to meet and have children with someone else, who is as much into you as you are into him.

Forget finances, OP -- they're largely irrelevant to the real dynamic here, except insofar as you are the poorer partner in the relationship in several ways.

You sound v lonely in this relationship.

It doesn’t meet your needs emotionally right now or where you see your near term future. It won’t deliver for you. You are not compatible - sounds like he is stuck in his ways and I bet he has a v clear plan of finding a wife in his early forties. Don’t squander your fertility, youth, hopes and dreams on this man.

OP, why dont you have plans yourself? Why arent you reaching out to people to do things outside of your relationship?

That being said. This does remind me of an ex. After almost a year there was no progression which i wanted. We would only see eachother 2 nights a week. He even drove past my house to go elsewhere a few times without popping in! Yet he was loving, attentive and respectful. To be honest he just wasn't the "settling down" type. He never had a proper girlfriend before me. It was like he was seeing our relationship through the lenses of a 17 year old dating.

Anyway he broke up over the progression issue. I then met my now new boyfriend. We literally see eachother 4/5nights a week and only dont see eachother when we have other plans with friends. Even then we'll sometimes nip over to each others when we get back in from seeing friends if its still early. The honeymoon period its normal to want to constantly be in contact with that person. Then it usually dies off a bit over time. But if hes not crazy about you in the beginning when it's all fresh and exciting then hes not suddenly going to be in another years time.

Id cut my losses and move on!

Maybe he does want to save his wealth for himself.

Whats the issue with that? There seems to be an expectation, that if a man has money he has to curtail his own social life and what he wants to do and spend money on his girlfriend instead ensuring she can do these things, if the female earns a lot less.

Yet if a woman was the higher earner, no one would tell her to cut back on things she likes to do so she can pay for her low earning male partner to do these things too.

I don’t think that finances are irrelevant in this specific relationship. He has a clear idea how to get and fund a mortgage. He knows how he likes to holiday and the lifestyle he pursues. However he doesn’t include you in this or share this with you. Maybe he sees you as a compromise too far - maybe he wants equality financially - nothing wrong with that - he just needs to be honest with you.

Can’t see how moving in with him and his tenants is an issue for him - he would be quids in? Wouldn’t have to move tenants out?