Well, for me, in answer to your last question, I had to start thinking that I mattered as much as he did. It was not easy. Friends helped. See, what happens with this sort of thing is you get sucked in, you allow it, fair enough, I did. And he's not a bad man, he just wasn't on the same page and wasn't as far along in maturity as I was, it happens, and age has nothing to do with it, my husband is younger than I am by nearly 7 years.
So it really hurt but all the more so because he did make it clear where he was before we got so further along, IYKWIM. I chose to ignore it, thinking he'd change, things were so good, after all.
But I really wish I'd ended it at the stage where you are because he was happy to coast and I made him think I was, too, by going along with it, IYKWIM. It ended up costing me a lot more than it should have because I was stuck to my ideals and the fallacy of sunken costs and 'if only he'.
I actually practised ending it with him in the mirror, yes! Many times and I'd cry and cry. It was painful.
One good friend, a gay man, I told him, 'But where am I without him?' He said, 'Where are you with him now? Where will you be in a year, two, whatever, like this? Where are YOU? Because, honey, I survived a lot, I went through a lot and here I am!' I was furious with him but then I went home and chewed on what he said and I realised, he was right.
I was actually re-reading 'Jane Eyre' and that passage where she goes on about 'Who cares about me? I'm no one and I love him,' and contemplates staying as his mistress. And then she writes, 'I care about myself.'
And realising that what I wanted, a real relationship with a future, and to me this meant marriage and kids, was not ridiculous or needy or grasping but quite ordinary and normal and why shouldn't I have it? Did I not deserve that, or even the chance for that to be possible? If I went out there and tried it and it didn't work out, I'd know I tried to the best of my abilities and not given away my power to do that for someone who didn't want the same thing with me; that that was not wrong, and very common. But that I'd be okay with that, at least I tried.
And I was older than you, I was 30 then. But my strength was that if I tried and it failed, I could better live with that than having given the rights to that decision to someone else because I was too weak to stand up for what I wanted and deserved.
Because you deserve a real boyfriend because that is what you want and you are not a bad or needy or grasping person for wanting that. Someone who's like, I want that, too, I want a girlfriend, a partner, a wife, etc.
You deserve that. You're in the prime of your life. You deserve what you want.
I read it on here once and it begs repeating. A woman who stated, 'Would you trade a diamond as big as your fist for 50 quid and some NEXT vouchers? No, you wouldn't. So don't do it now. You're giving diamond behaviour. You should have it return.'
You're not on the same page. That doesn't make him or you bad people. But it makes you incompatible and it makes you waste your time.
Just don't.