Hi all,
This will be a long post, so please bear with me!
My partner and I have been together for three & a half years. It hasn't always been the easiest relationship, but a lot of the issues have been caused by his lack of commitment & inability to be happy with what he has in life (i.e. jobs, our home, income, responsibilities, etc.). I've always wanted a family & have been very open about this from the start, as I've had my time wasted before.
My partner & I began TTC over a year ago. Unfortunately, we struggled with this, mainly due to issues he had in the bedroom (this was always a problem for him, even before me). Fertility checks for us both have all come back OK though, so it was never a major concern for me. In December he proposed to me and in March we began to look for a new (bigger) home (the last home I'd bought with my ex, and he'd bought him out of it). I felt like he was finally committing. He then began to have a wobble about whether he could stay in his current role or not and right before exchange, he decided to pull out of the house purchase. Long story short, we went ahead with selling our current home, he secured a new job and we had an offer accepted on another home which was a much better option for us.
We moved our of our home and began to move into his Mum's home in the interim whilst the purchase went through. That day, he told me he couldn't be with me anymore. He couldn't give me what I wanted. This wasn't the first time he'd told me this, just a couple of days prior he'd had this back-and-forth about whether he wanted to be with me, or not. He told me he'd always felt like I was more invested. I loved him more. It wasn't unusual for him to always be one foot in/one foot out and to be honest, it was just something I'd accepted about him. This time, though, he made me leave. He didn't turn up to his job the next day. He told me wasn't ready for children, or a home together. He wanted to travel. He pulled out of this house purchase, too.
As much as it hurt, I felt a sense of relief... but just a couple of days later, he was begging for another chance. He said all of the right things, but any time I tried to discuss the future, he'd put the brakes on again. Any time I tried to leave, he'd tell me everything I wanted to hear.
I'm now in a situation where I'm living back at my Mum's (I won't move back into his, now), with the prospect of a family on hold indefinitely, and no home. He doesn't start his new job for a couple of weeks and even if we were to look at buying a home together in the future, we're talking at least 3 months before we could look, and then another 3-6 before we could even move in. Effectively, 9 months until we could even live together again. Talking about the subject is a no-go area. He wants us to take the time to enjoy life, to go away together, but I'm just stuck in limbo. I'm 28, I've always been very independent, have a good, stable career & could afford to buy on my own, eventually.
The hardest part is I had everything I'd wanted: the home, we were trying for a family, we were engaged & planning a wedding. Then that all just got taken away, and now I'm living back at my Mum's, with everything now on hold.
Do I stay & see if this time is what he needs to get his life figured out? Maybe it was all just too much, too soon for him. Or am I kidding myself, and he's just having his cake & eating it with me? I just don't want to waste any more of my time.