If Your Relationship is a Secret From His Family Will He Ever Marry You?

Your page is great. So glad that I found it.

Here's my situation. I've been in a long distance relationship with my bf for 4 years. I'm 32, and he's 28. Though we don't see each other very often, we love each other very much. Now I want to get married, but he says he doesn't want to right now. When I asked when he might think about marriage, he said after 35, which means I have to wait 7 years, by then I'll be almost 40...

He's a workaholic, working at least 12 hours a day, sometimes even 20 hours. His family run a very big business, and he wants to make it bigger and better. I totally understand that right now his first priority is work and he's too young to think of marriage. But 7 years wait sounds impossible to me. I may not be able to get pregnant by then. But I don't want to break up, neither does he. We did once before, but we were so heartbroken that the next day we back together. So this time he came up with open relationship. Actually he brought that up before. But he called me 3am that day sobbing that he didn't want me to date other guys. So we forgot about the whole thing.

There's one more thing I should mention that we keep our relationship a secret from his family all these years because his mother disapproves of me and my bf wants to protect me. So we are like modern Romeo and Juliet. What should Juliet do now?

cheese cake

Sit down dear, this is a three martini answer.

He’s not going to marry you.

7 years is one of those projections that isn’t really coming from a logical place. He’s saying he doesn’t want to get married in his foreseeable future.

His actions speak loudly. He wants what he has right now without changing it. He doesn’t want to marry you. Of course he doesn’t want you dating other people, and he doesn’t want to break up. He has it all right now. He has you on his terms.

The busy with work thing is such a lame excuse I don’t even want to address it. Sure he’s busy, sure he’s working. But if you were the one, if he wanted to marry, guess what. He’d make the time. Work would somehow “work-out.” You would be engaged, not writing to me.

You know the big problem here is that you’re a secret from his family. This is a foreshadow of things to come.

When he doesn’t want to deal with something… he doesn’t.

I’m not sure which thing it is right now that he doesn’t want to deal with: standing up to his mother, or just admitting to you that you’re not important enough for him to take a stand over.  And frankly, I’m not sure which is worse. 

Cheese, maybe think about it in a different perspective. It’s nice that you had this experience. That you felt love, and had great sex, and maybe made a friend, or whatever it is you’re getting out of this. But this is not your forever partner. Not all relationships are the forever one.

There’s nothing wrong with having an experience and falling in love. The problems come when we try to make those experiences into something they are not.

With actions and words, he’s saying he has absolutely no plans to marry you.

Maybe you have a career too, maybe you’re busy and independent and this long distance secret relationship situation was conducive to your life.  But if you’re in a place now where you’re thinking about marriage and kids, you have to see that this isn’t the right relationship for you anymore.

It’s not Romeo and Juliet. They were kids in love trying to spend the rest of eternity together no matter what the price. Romeo isn’t doing anything to try to spend his life with you. You’re romanticizing something that’s not at all romantic.

And why do you do that? Why does anybody do that? Hope. Fear of being alone. Loneliness. Wanting to be committed, even when the commitment is wrong. Lots of reasons. But none of them are good enough to sustain. 

Love is a really intoxicating thing. It makes us loopy. It makes us see only what we want to, and create excuses for the rest. It  makes us drunk, and then we cling to that feeling and fight for it when all of reality is saying, “Ummm… HELLO.”

It’s nice that you loved him. And I don’t even doubt he loves you too. But he doesn’t want to marry you. And all the excuses and romanticism in the world isn’t going to change that.

It is what it is, cheese. If you want more than what you have at this moment, if you want the marriage and the kids and the forever, you need to move on, because you aren’t going to get it where you are.