Hello,
I've just got back from a two week holiday with my partner of four years. I actually thought he might propose - it felt like we were in a good space.
But holidays can be tricky as he tends to be fine sitting in silence at meals, isn't tactile and doesn't make much eye contact. He has trouble connecting, and has said as much....but when we're at home, it's great. He's GREAT domestically - does the cooking and shopping, and fixes stuff.
Anyway, the huge pluses and what attracted me to him are that he's loyal, honest, practically EXTREMELY helpful, I feel his love through 'acts of service' (when I'm able to focus on them), he loves animals like me and he's always willing to work on things.
But when I seek the connection that's sometimes lacking, and touch - and he said he's not proposed because he thinks it might not work because I'd get frustrated with him/he's worried it'd end in divorce. He loves me completely but doesn't want to failure of divorce, he's been mentally struggling, and feels he's wired completetely differenty to me and can't support well enough emotionally. He says he's got a number of a therapist and wants to go and get help, and for us to go together too to work on understanding each other.
I feel so utterly torn. Half of me thinks it's great he's opened up and maybe we can make it work - and half of me feels utterly flat, and like I'm destined to be alone and torn up about this relationship inevitably ending. I feel like he's fine since we've been home and back into our routines - but I'm completely in turmoil. Plus my family are very 'old school' and desperate for us to work because he is a good man.
I'm 43, no kids and both parents are dead - and despite what I've said, our relationship works on a 'day to day' level. He's amazing around the house and never complains. It's just the connection, and being able to really chat and be easily intimate that is hard.
I should add thta he feels he can't do what's expected of him in relationship, and it takes him a long time to connect with anyone. I feel a lot like we slip into 'just friends' and I long for that deep connection and a lifetime's real partnership. I know people just end up with friends in the end though. He is down on himself, and he doesn't have many friends, and he can seem v funcational and disconnected - doesn't ask questions, which at first was a big issue. But at the same time he's the most gentle, sweet guy I've dated, and not an arrogant bone in his body. It feels really hard to know what to do now he's started telling me that he feels 'different to normal people'. I feel like we can never understand each other. But he said yesterday that even if we split up, how could either of us know we'd ever meet someone who's totally 'right' and fall in love again, as we have with each other, and everyone has issues.
I just feel so utterly low but will see if the therapy helps him - his sister says this could make us a lot closer. He says it could be the making of us, but when you're wired differently like us, can it ever be...
Am I better off alone? I am unsure I'd ever meet anyone again, or is this ridiculous?
Thanks for listening.