To hold on to 7 years?

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-01-2006
To hold on to 7 years?
6
Mon, 05-01-2006 - 1:21pm
I've been with my bf for 6.5 years....my first and only love ever. But for the last 3 years, my feeling toward him has cooled down a lot, esp. with him going overseas (to Taiwan) 1.5 years ago. With the distance,I started to get used to my single happy life. At the moment, the only thing I want for my life is to stay in Korea and even starting a new relationship/life here. But the last time when I met (3 months ago) him, he was talking actually talking about our marriage and seriously purposed....it seems like he is still deeply in love with me, but I'm not, which makes it not fair to him if I say yes to his purposal. In fact, the more he wants to get married, the more I want to get away from him....and I even start to pick up on his personality flaws.....bad bad bad.....should I settle with this long-term relationship? Or should I leave it and go for what I want for life and explore around? After all, this is the only relatioship I've had ever, but then again, I'm in lack of the courage to face the fact that any new relationship may fail, or may not be as good as this one....ah~~~~help me!!
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-06-2004
Tue, 05-02-2006 - 11:00am

Go ahead and end it. It'll work out for the best. You already know that your heart simply isn't in this relationship any longer.

I wont lie to you I was faced with a similar choice and I choose to leave. It was hard. There was a lot of crying on both sides. After the fact I freaked a bit and worried that I was wrong and shouldn't have expected to find better or more. I dated my share of losers and jerks in the year or two that followed, then I met a nice guy and we dated for three years, but eventually that ended too. More dating and more losers, about seven years after I broke up with my high school sweetheart I met the man I'm married to now.

I knew I had made the right decision LONG before I met my husband, but being with him, knowing that I wouldn't have the relationship I had now if I hadn't had the courage then to set this chain of events in montion. Well, frankly, that just makes me pretty proud of myself. I could have gone the "safe" route, but it wouldn't have been right for me.

So my advice is do what you KNOW in your heart is right for you, stay true to yourself and your instincts and you can't go wrong, even if at the time it might feel pretty terrible.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-10-1999
Tue, 05-02-2006 - 2:50pm

Somebody else posted about what happened to them, and they chose not to marry the person. I can tell you what will most likely happen to you if you do agree to marry him, because I saw two of the women that I've been closest to, my sister and my best friend make that decision when they were in your shoes. Both of them had been with their first loves for several years and the guys were pushing for marriage. They both found themselves feeling that they really didn't want to be getting married. But the guys were pushing them, and since it was their first loves, they'd always assumed that they'd probably end up marrying the person somewhere down the line, and they didn't want to have to go through a break-up, and the relationship had survived for several years (in my best friends case, it was even longer than your relationship has been). So they went ahead and got married.

Now I bet I know what you're thinking because what my sister and my friend were thinking before they got married as well. You're expecting that if you marry him, that'll just be it, and you'll stay with him for a very long time, if not forever. After all, it's not like you're going into this marriage blindly, right? You know what you'll be sacrificing if you marry him. You've been with him long enough to know his flaws as well as his good sides, and to know what being married to him should be like. You'll be walking into this marriage seeing all of the pros and cons of it and swearing to stick with him despite the cons. You picture that once you've made the decision, you'll just be committed to sticking with it.

Only it doesn't work that way. That part of you that doesn't want to marry him and is resenting him for trying to push you into it isn't just going to magically disappear after you marry him. In fact, from what I've seen, it gets MUCH worse after the wedding. You think you resent him NOW for pushing you into marrying him, but at least now you still know you still have the option of not going through with it. You're going to resent him much more when that option has been taken away from you, and those feelings will seep through and poison the rest of the relationship and the marriage as well. I know that both my sister and my best friend walked down the aisle believing it would be for life, and taking their marriage vows very seriously, intending to do whatever it would take to make the marriage work. But they greatly underestimated the pain and stress of being married to somebody that you never truly wanted to marry in the first place. They both had two very miserable, difficult years of marriage before seperating from their husbands.

You say that you lack the courage to face that any new relationship will fail or not be as good as this one. But I think what you don't realize is that if you marry him when you're feeling this way, then THIS relationship will most likely fail and be much different from what you've had with him in the past.

Breaking up after you've been in a serious relationship isn't easy. Even my sister and my best friend, who said the break-ups of their marriage were a huge relief for them, shed a lot of tears over the dreams they'd once had of how they'd hoped things would be. But in the long run, it's much better than settling for the wrong reasons.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-27-2004
Tue, 05-02-2006 - 4:22pm
Both the posters gave great advice on this topic. I would have to say that I agree. If something doesnt' feel right to you now, marriage won't change that, in fact I hear that marriage intensifies the doubts and fears that you had to begin with and that person's flaws become even more apparent to you from others who have been married since I haven't. Unless you can truley accept him for who he is, flaws and all and really love him regardless it's probably best to let him go now and save yourself even more heartache in the future after marriage. It's always tough to walk from situations especially if you've spent years with that person or if you care for or love someone but know that the person or timing isn't right, I know that for a fact, but in the long-haul if you do have doubts about the person or situation, I have experienced in all my breakups that you never look back or regret your decision. Like the first poster said, always trust your intuition and what you think is best for you. You don't have to make a rash decision but give it a little more thought for a little while longer and if your gut is still telling you to go then walk away.
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-20-2004
Tue, 05-02-2006 - 11:51pm

I definately say that I couldn't agree more with what the other posters said.I was with my ex for almost 11 years, we were never married but we do have children together and that makes it even harder sometimes. I am just saying that if you are having your doubts now they will not go away if they are that strong. I started having doubts after year 4, then lived 6 more just absolutely miserable, I did NOT hate my ex and still don't but we just grew apart after the years and we were so young when we got together that we really didn't know what we wanted. I can promise you this, the longer you wait the harder it is going to be to get out of the relationship, like I said if you are feeling that strong about it now it will only get worse after the years progress and then it could turn into something ugly.

In my case it was not ugly but we had lost a child back in 2003 and it was then that I opened my eyes about certain things and it was then that I often seeked the comfort I was not getting at home from other people. I was crying on other men's shoulders about the loss of the baby when I should have felt comfort by my ex. There was nothing physical and I was not interested in any of them that way but I just needed SOMEONE to talkto,and since I work 3rd shift at a gas station it was easy to voice my feelings out to a few trusted regular customers(the police officers and paramedics you all hear me talk about)

I decided after my children started asking why we didn't love each-other any more that it was time for "the talk". And after being together for so long it was sooooo hard for me to instigate it but in all of those years things only got worse and we just drew apart more with each year.Next only to burying my son it was the hardest thing I ever have had to do, and we both cried like we have never cried before but it was something that we both knew in our hearts was coming. And it was not fair to either of us or our children to let things continue, we both decided that we and our children deserved to be happy and in a loving environment(which I have yet to find--LOL)But after almost 3 years we still think it was the best decision we could have made.

It was the hardest thing in the world to see him walk out that door for the last time and it was even scarier thinking about what I was going to do and I cried for weeks over it but as I said in the long run I knew it was for the best. It was like a giant weight had been lifted off from my shoulders, and it was almost like I could breathe again. We never fought, never argued, no cheating, and no other men/women was taking the other's place(only in friendship on both of our sides) it was just something that had to be done after I realized we were just co-existing, it was almost like living with my brother or something, I love him still but not in the way that a woman should love a man. I would never wish him harm and will always respect him because he is my children's father. So I know how you feel hun, and trust me it is better to end it now than to wait a few more years,trying to hang on to something that you already know is gone.

Betty

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-01-2006
Wed, 05-03-2006 - 4:31am
Thank you people so much for the advice and encouragement. I guess I'm indeed being afraid....having been in this relationship for so many years, and haven't had any experience on "breaking-up" with someone. Surely I know that with my attitude toward this relationship at the moment, I shouldn't get married with him at all. And to me, the ideal is to marry a person whom you love so much that it motivates you to want to marry him/her and be with him/her for the rest of your life (which is what my bf feels towards me....only)
Yet, friends have other comments.. Some people say that you will have a happier life being with a person who loves you more than you love him (And that's what it's more like btween us). Some suggest I should give it a last try, allowing a chance for us to stay in the same city (which I can) and give it 3 to 6 months and see if it works, so it's fairer to him that way. Afterall, it could have been the distance between us over the last 2 years that's caused the feeling fading away...(although.... I sort of started to have some signs b4 he left...)
I think he does realise how my feeling is like at the moment, and that's why he has been trying to do things that are very touching to me,....which makes it even harder....I feel sorry seeing him doing everything and wish those would "bring my heart back"....but I really don't know if we can go back to the way we used to be or not...Or it might be a hual afterall~~
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-06-2004
Wed, 05-03-2006 - 8:10am

You are the only person who knows if you want to continue to try things. Not any of us here or your friends and family. If you do agree to try again, just keep this in mind... IF you KNOW your heart isn't in it, if you KNOW there is no going back, how is that being fairer to him? How is that not simply leading him on?

The one thing I would change about how I ended my engagement to my high school sweetheart is to NOT agree to give it another chance and NOT to give him the list of little things that bugged me. Because the truth was it was already over. I knew in my heart there was no going back, no trying again. I had already given my all to the relationship. It hadn't been a bad relationship. It just wasn't right for me and in spite of trying to make it right for me for almost seven years it was NEVER going to be and the day I agreed to give it another shot I already knew that.

All I did was prolong the pain for both of us. For him because he was trying so hard and nothing he could do was going to fix what was broken and for me because I hated myself for hurting him.

The truth was it wasn't about the little things (and it NEVER is). It wasn't about the laundry or the toothpaste or the toilet seat or the "lack of romance" or any of the other things on the list of wrongs he had supposedly commited. It was about the big thing. We had grown up and we'd grown apart and I loved him but I no longer wanted to be with him. I wanted to move on to places I knew I couldn't go with him even though I didn't know what those places were yet.

So don't torture yourself or him if you already know what you really want and, frankly, it sounds to me like you already do. Think it over, don't rush; but, bare this in mind... You wont be sure you made the right choice until days, weeks, months, even years after the choice is made.

It is VERY rare to feel 100% certain of any big choices in life until hindsight kicks in. In fact the ONLY time in my life I have EVER been 100% certain I was doing the right thing, before I actually did it, was the day I married my husband. That I KNEW was right the day I said, "Yes." It was a stark contrast to when my high school sweetheart proposed and I said "Yes." on the outside, but on the inside I was thinking, "Maybe, I don't know. I don't think I'm ready for this. I know it's what I used to think I wanted but I'm not so sure any more. Could I have Month or two to think about?"

I'm just grateful I called it off before I wound up like the other poster's sister and friend.