[rockthefaces]

This is a long story, but it boils down to one thing: My girlfriend wants to move in together now, and I’m not ready.

The long version, with important details: My girlfriend and I have been together for about 1 year and 9 months. Since last August or so, we had been talking about the idea of us moving in together this May. In the meantime, however, we had a couple of really massive fights having to do with trust in the relationship (more on that in a bit). As the time when we’d have to notify our respective landlords of our intention to vacate our current apartments approached, I started to feel some serious doubts, and at a certain point in February, I realized that I wasn’t ready to take this step, yet. I told my girlfriend as much. She, to put it lightly, flipped out. She is devastated and hurt by the fact that I spent so long telling her I would be ready, and then changed my position. I own and acknowledge that this was a sucky thing to do. I didn’t do it deliberately – it’s not like I was sitting there the whole time thinking I wasn’t ready and just not telling her, or something – but the fact that I only reached the conclusion I did after a lengthy period of saying I *would* be ready…I understand why it upsets her. She says now that she doesn’t feel like she can trust or believe a word I say, that my word means nothing, etc., which seems pretty extreme, to me…but then, again, I realize that what I did was hurtful, even if not deliberately so. For what it’s worth, I’ve apologized for it repeatedly. Not that it’s been worth much.

Anyway. So, the past month or so has been spent trying to hash all this out. There are a couple of reasons I’m not ready to move in. The first set are primarily commitment-related – I am generally pretty slow on that front (the last girl I cohabitated with, we were three years in before we moved in together), anyway, and there is no doubt that she is seeing this move-in as a stepping stone to marriage and kids – she’s said she wants to have a kid in the next 2-3 years. I’ve always said that I do want kids – on some level, the idea appeals to me – but I also am a bit freaked out by it because it is pretty much THE responsibility, and it’s not something you can fudge – once that kid is born, there is a whole human life in your care, and so I want to be really sure that I’m ready to do that before I do it. Of course, she’s at a point in her life at which, biologically-speaking, that timeline totally makes sense, and I understand that. But it just feels to huge, to me. Does that make me a coward and a commitment-phobe? Maybe. But also, if a kid is something I’m not ready for, plunging ahead with that seems like it would be a huge disservice to everyone involved – *especially* the hypothetical child.

OK, so that’s all stuff that has to do with me. But there’s stuff about the relationship, too. We’ve had some pretty long-standing issues of trust. She has been burned in her past and so it is very hard for her to give trust…and, for me, I give trust very freely and kind of need it in return to feel safe, comfortable, and accepted for who I am in the relationship. I’m a good boyfriend (she says so, too), and I don’t cheat, but I do have a lot of female friends, coworkers, and associates, and the fact that she feels she has to question me a lot of the time over things that, by my lights, are completely innocuous (someone commenting about a song I post on Facebook, for example), makes me feel really not trusted, especially since, when she does question and I give an answer, she often won’t accept it despite no real evidence to support her suspicion. It puts us at loggerheads – what she needs to feel safe in the relationship (constant reassurance, someone who’s willing to “prove” their dedication by changing some things about the way he relates to other people) are the very things that make me feel not safe.

I have brought all this up in the course of our discussion over the past month. Her reaction when I tell her that I don’t feel trusted is to usually explain *why* she didn’t trust me, and then I’m supposed to accept that and not feel worried about it any more. But the fact of the matter is, even if she felt justified in not trusting me (again, I don’t cheat, I’m a good and attentive boyfriend – I am just trying to honor her point of view, here), we were still in a situation in which there wasn’t trust. And now we’re REALLY in that situation, because her reaction to me backing out of moving in together has been to feel like she can’t trust me at all or ever again.

Things are really, really bad. We can’t see each other without fighting. We haven’t had one phone conversation in the past month that hasn’t turned into an argument about this. And our arguments are really bad. Again, we have some basic incompatibility there. She is very, quick to anger – it’s how she protects herself from being sad – and lashes out, calls me names, etc. I, on the other hand, respond to that by shrinking. I’m not a fighter. I will listen and participate, but when someone (metaphorically) pushes me, I don’t push back. And she wants me to. Several times over the past month, she has said she is going to leave me over this, and while I say I don’t want that to happen, she gets angry because my response isn’t to beg and plead and tell her I’ll do anything to keep that from happening. And it’s not that I don’t love her – I just feel like, if she wants to leave, then that says something, so why *should* I fight it? I don’t know. At this point, I feel so worn out from all the arguing that I have a hard time even taking part in it any more.

I don’t know what to do. She wants and needs me to move forward *now*, and I am just not ready. Do I think I could be ready at some point in the future? Yes, assuming we’re also able to work through some of the trust stuff and the way we communicate about it, and about any other issues we might have. But once again, we’re in a catch-22, because what I need if there’s any hope of ever feeling OK about the idea of moving in and taking those steps with her is to reconnect with what was good about the relationship before all this happened – and there was plenty of good. I’ve tried to take her out to dinner or just spend a night enjoying each other so that we can do that…but she can’t do that. What she needs is for me to commit to taking these steps before she can reconnect with what was good about the relationship. I don’t think either of those things are *right* or *wrong* in an absolute sense, but they’re just direct opposites. Again, loggerheads.

So, do I end it? We’ve been to the brink of that a couple of times, but neither one of us seems able or willing to pull the trigger. I hate the idea of hurting her, and she’s told me that, if I were to break up with her, she would be devastated, that she sees me as possibly her last chance at this because she doesn’t think she’d be able to open herself up to anyone else again. It makes me feel so guilty. But I also know, because she has said this, too, that me putting her in limbo by not committing to move in together is hurting her every day, too.

Everything is such a mess. I am at my wits’ end, to the point at which I’m hoping posting in an Internet advice forum might offer me some sort of lifeline. Help?

[April Masini, your AskApril]

You are very clear and articulate about yourself, and that’s great. Not everybody is ready to move in, get married and have kids at the same time. The trick is to find someone with a compatible timeline. It’s not an uncommon problem — in fact there’s a Sex and The City television episode where one of the women says that you basically have to find a guy, like you would a cab, with the vacancy light on. Because if you find him and he’s not ready, what’s the point? It’s not going to work out. The bottom line is that you’re not ready to move in together, and she is. She’s in a rush and is trying to pressure you, and you’re holding strong to your values. This is an compatibility. And frankly, I don’t think she’s having trust issues because you told her you’re not ready to move in together. I think she’s just angry that this isn’t working out the way she had hoped, and is acting out and trying to make you feel badly by saying you you’ve blown her trust by waiting as long as you did to say you’re not ready, without giving her a time when you will be. The reality is that it’s great you realized this before the two of you did move in, and that this is how a lot of life happens — it’s inconvenient, and it’s not on your schedule and sometimes things don’t work out! 😉

Because she’s so focused on her goals — more than on the relationship she has with you and your needs as well as hers — I don’t think that this is going to work out. The ball is really in her court in that if [i]she[/i] wants it to work, she’s going to have to back off on the timeline as well as the jealousy issues. Instead, she’s trying to argue you into change. It’s backfiring and pushing you away. My advice is to try putting some space between the two of you to see if she can calm down and cool off and regroup. If she doesn’t change her focus, then I think you have no choice but to move on.

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