My BF and I
will have been together 3 years this September. I love him and I know I want to
spend my life with him. When we were first dating, he was against marriage
because literally everyone in his life has been divorced - family, friends,
coworkers. Everyone. His view was that IF he got married, it would be like 15
years from now and he'd want a prenup. But he's warmed up to the idea over the
years.
I didn't
push the idea of marriage because I wanted to give him time to come around.
Plus I have a pretty slow timeline myself (date for 3 - 4 years, then move in
together for at least 1 year, then be engaged for at least 1 year), so I'm not
in any rush. Slowly his wording changed from "I want to live in a place
like that," to "when we get a house..." I was really happy
knowing that he was opening his mind to that kind of commitment.
In the past
few weeks he's mentioned taking the next step of moving in together, and then
last weekend he surprised me by taking me engagement ring shopping. And
although he made it clear that he wouldn't be making any purchases for a couple
more years, I still found myself having an anxiety attack. I was smiling on the
outside and having a meltdown on the inside.
I'm really
scared because I never ever thought I would react like that. Moving in together
and marrying him is what I’ve always wanted. Even with the anxiety I’m feeling,
when I picture myself 30 years from now, I picture him next to me.
I’ve always
had a hard time with change and stepping outside of my comfort zone, and the
thought of such a huge change is giving me pretty bad anxiety attacks. For the
record, I am very stressed at work right now and I’ve been trying some new
medications to treat my anxiety (which I’ve always had, so it’s nothing new).
And I’m sure that’s contributing to all this uncertainty.
I’m going to
talk to him tonight and let him know I’m not ready to move in yet. I’m not
worried about that. I’m worried because these feelings just came out of nowhere
and I don’t understand how or why I’m experiencing such a drastic change. It’s
like I’ve been blindsided by my own brain and I’m scared that these feelings
won’t go away.
I’d like to
talk to him about it in detail, but I can’t even pinpoint what my specific
concerns are so I don’t know how to explain what I’m thinking. Has anyone else
experienced this? Were you ever able to identify what exactly you were afraid
of? How did you handle it?