Dear Therapist,
My boyfriend and I’ve been relationship for a few 12 months and a half. About six months in, I might inform he was uncomfortable with the topic of marriage—he’s divorced and a bit jaded by the expertise. A 12 months into relationship, we sat down and talked. He mentioned he didn’t know whether or not he wished to get married once more, whereas I knew I wished to get married sooner or later. We agreed that two folks ought to know whether or not or not they wish to get married after two years of relationship, so one 12 months from that dialog was going to be our deadline.
Since then, we have now tried to find out if we’re suited to marriage with one another. There is a lot that’s going properly. He treats me very properly, and does romantic, type issues that I think about solely somebody who actually cares about me would do. We had been buddies earlier than we began relationship, and I treasure this friendship and love the time we spend collectively.
However, marriage as a subject nonetheless makes him uncomfortable. We at the moment are six months away from our deadline for the wedding resolution. When I ask him to think about a future collectively, he says he can’t take into consideration that, as a result of he’s so centered on his job.
We haven’t talked about some huge issues, like whether or not we wish to have children, or to stay within the suburbs or town—issues I consider we must always focus on to have the ability to make the choice to construct a life collectively. I attempt asking questions like “What kind of sports would be fun to watch our kids play?” or “What country have you never traveled to that you have always wanted to go to?” and he at all times says, “I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it.” So I say, “Think about it now!” and he simply says he doesn’t know once more, or that he can’t suppose that far into the longer term.
I’m 30, and I don’t think about that in six months he’ll all of a sudden have the opportunity to consider the longer term in the best way that I have to. So I’ve been slowly making ready myself to be upset by what occurs at our two-year deadline.
My buddies suppose I’m simply delaying an inevitable disappointment as soon as the deadline is right here. Is two years an arbitrary deadline, and may I give him extra time if he isn’t prepared? Or did I already give him too lengthy, and may I attempt to get him to determine this stuff now? Am I losing my time?
Anonymous
Dear Anonymous,
I can hear how anxious you’re about what would possibly occur when your deadline arrives, however I wish to counsel that the deadline is sort of inappropriate. You’re proper that you simply and your boyfriend haven’t talked about “some big things,” however the greatest factor you must focus on is the sample happening between you two.
The sample appears to be like like this: He avoids. You collude along with his avoidance by making an attempt to carry issues up obliquely. He feels pressured and avoids extra. Hoping for a solution, you push him (“Think about it now!”), and the one clear reply he offers you—that he doesn’t wish to take into consideration the longer term—leaves you feeling anxious. The extra anxious you get, the extra you push for a solution, and the extra he shuts down and says, “I don’t know.”
So the cycle continues, with you changing into ever extra anxious and attempting to get info that he isn’t in a position or prepared to provide you. Maybe he actually doesn’t have a solution, however it’s additionally attainable that he does have a solution and fears you’ll go away if he shares it with you. Or perhaps he suspects that you simply’ll stick with him anyway, which creates a special dilemma for him: He is aware of this isn’t truthful to you and doesn’t wish to damage you, so he convinces himself that he doesn’t know the reply when certainly he does.
Avoidance is an try to deal with discomfort by not having to manage in any respect. I see each of you partaking in avoidance—if we don’t voice the reality, we will faux it doesn’t exist. But the reality doesn’t change based mostly in your skill to acknowledge it. The fact continues to be there, at the same time as you each keep away from it. At the one-year mark, you each spoke your truths: You wish to get married; he won’t wish to marry once more. Then, like turtles pulling their heads again into their shells, you each determined, subconsciously or not, that you’d purchase a while by setting a deadline, however with none actual plan for how one can use that 12 months to grasp extra about yourselves and one another. Your plan has been I hope he decides he desires to get married in a 12 months. His plan appears to be: I hope she’ll stick with me even when I haven’t figured it out by then.
But the 2 of you don’t know how one can be trustworthy with one another. And that issues excess of the query of whether or not it’s best to give him extra time, as I think about your aim isn’t simply to get engaged however to have a contented long-term marriage, and trustworthy communication is the core of a contented marriage.
All of that is to say, extra vital than the reply on the two-year mark is the speak you must have proper now. You would possibly method your boyfriend by saying one thing like this:
Honey, I really like a lot about our relationship, and I additionally really feel like we have now some problem speaking about delicate matters collectively. I wish to have an actual dialog about how I’m feeling and study extra about the way you’re feeling about us and our future—not nearly marriage, however about how we work together with one another. When we talked after a 12 months of relationship about my desirous to get married and your ambivalence round it, I assumed that setting a deadline would assist me comprise my anxiousness and provides me the consolation of understanding I wasn’t losing my time. That hasn’t actually labored, as a result of I’m simply as anxious about our relationship as I used to be then. I’m beginning to notice that even when we hit the deadline in a couple of months and you intend, I gained’t really feel utterly comfy, as a result of as a lot as the wedding query weighs on me, so does the truth that we each keep away from having arduous conversations with one another, one thing we’re going to want to get higher at on this relationship or any relationship we’re in.
I don’t suppose we’re going to learn to have wholesome, open conversations by doing nothing, and I feel the subsequent few months can be far more useful for us if we might use the time to go to remedy, both individually or as a pair. I feel we’ll study so much about ourselves and one another and make extra knowledgeable choices about our compatibility by getting some readability with some exterior assist. How do you are feeling about that?
Note that you simply’re not asking him to reply a query in regards to the future—one thing he doesn’t wish to take into consideration. You’re asking him how he desires to spend time with you now—both getting assist to enhance communication between you (regardless of the end result), or persevering with to keep away from self-reflection and retaining issues in an ambiguous holding sample that results in anxiousness and frustration.
Through remedy, he would possibly have the ability to articulate what makes serious about the longer term so arduous for him. He would possibly achieve a greater understanding of what it’s about his historical past—whether or not it’s his childhood or his earlier marriage or one thing he hasn’t shared with you but—that stands in the best way of him getting in contact with what he desires. And if he’s in contact with what he desires, what’s it about marriage that provides him pause? Similarly, by means of remedy, you’ll be able to study why your communication fashion has been as avoidant as your boyfriend’s, and on a sensible degree, remedy can assist you determine not what deadline to provide him, however what deadline you’d like to provide your self so that you simply’re taking good care of your individual wants, no matter what he does or doesn’t determine.
By asking him to be proactive with you within the current as a substitute of passively ready out the deadline collectively, you’ll study what sort of dedication he’s prepared to make to this relationship now as a substitute of at some future date. This is vital info, as a result of if he’s not fascinated with addressing the present points you two have with avoidance and communication, or in doing a little self-reflection, you’ll have the reply you’ve been searching for. Better but, you’ll have lastly requested the fitting query.
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