Skyblossom
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
With as much doubt as you have the two of you haven’t been together nearly long enough to consider moving in together. Especially since you’ve been long distance and so don’t see each other as often as you would if you could see each other on weekday evenings. Many couples that have been together for a year are broken up by the time they hit two years. The excitement of a new relationship tends to wear off between one to two years. It takes even longer if you don’t see each other very much.
If you do decide to move to his city you should get your own place. It’s good to always leave yourself room to break up. If you have your own place and it turns out to be a good relationship you can still see each other every day and go back and forth between his place and yours. If you move in with him then it is much more difficult for your to break up.
Don’t have children until you are certain you want to be a parent and feel ready to be a parent. You aren’t there for either of those.
Your relationship doesn’t sound like a good long term relationship. The two of you argue too much. A rocky first year in a relationship is a very bad sign. The first year should be sunshine and roses. It’s the honeymoon year where he should seem wonderful almost all of the time. That’s a really bad sign for this relationship being a good long term relationship. With that in mind proceed cautiously if at all.
If you feel that you would only move because he is pressuring you for marriage and kids then say no. Don’t be pressured into making major life commitments just because someone is trying to make the decision for you and is pressuring you. If he wanted someone who was ready for marriage and kids he should have picked someone who was at that point in their life. He didn’t. You really have an imbalance in your lives between what you want and he feels free to try and dominate you and push you into what he wants. That is never a good sign for a happy, healthy relationship.
I read through the entire thread. You began by sounding over the top infatuated with your boss’s boss and it sounded fairly one-sided. Then you updated with a post that makes him sound like a total creep.
If people are commenting about his choice to sit by you all the time it means that people are watching all of this. It has been noticed and people are talking about you behind your back. None of this is good for your career. You need to actively shut this down. Quit trying to catch him staring at you. Quit staring at him. Make sure you focus on everyone in a meeting, especially the person who is speaking. Find someone to sit with before he can sit with you. Quit acting interested. Start telling yourself a different story in your head. Instead of asking yourself if he is lusting after you or in love with you ask yourself what type of creep wants to cheat on their wife. Tell yourself you don’t want a guy who would cheat. You don’t want a guy who says mean things about his wife. Nice guys don’t go around bashing their wife.
Neither of you seems to appreciate what the other does. You don’t seem to appreciate what he does for the two of you any more than he appreciates what you do.
I personally wouldn’t try to interrupt someones morning schedule to try to get them to do an extra chore. It’s like saying who cares if you get to work late as long as I don’t have to get out of bed. It probably does take more than two minutes to get the dog out and back in again.
The two of you don’t seem to like each other too much and the two of you don’t talk about issues very well. It’s like you were paired up with an incompatible roommate.
OP I think you need to decide that when it comes to your birthday you and your group of friends aren’t compatible and then make your plans with that realization. This is a major incompatibility. That’s okay. Make the plans you want to make that will give you the birthday you want to experience.
So you have this relationship that is in constant crises. That should tell you that the relationship doesn’t work and that you need to move on. There is a cruelty in your relationship, a meanness and a huge lack of honesty. You don’t have a solid foundation for long term happiness. You don’t have short term happiness. You just jump from one crises to the next. Everyone can fall in love with someone who isn’t compatible. Everyone can fall in love with someone who isn’t good for them. Everyone can fall in love with someone who is emotionally harmful to them. The love, at least on your side, is very real but that doesn’t make the relationship a good one or a healthy one.
Your relationship is just limping along from one dramatic blow up to the next. That is no foundation for anything. It certainly isn’t a good foundation for living together and absolutely should rule out any thought of purchasing a house together. You should only purchase a house with someone when you can assume that the two of you can afford the long term financial commitment that goes with a mortgage and can assume that the relationship will last during that long germ financial commitment. Drug addicts have a high rate of relapse. You could easily find yourself funding the house by yourself while your boyfriend goes to jail or to rehab or both. Can you financially pull the weight of a mortgage by yourself? Can you extricate yourself if the two of you break up? How much of an emergency fund do the two of you have? These are the questions you need to be able to answer before you purchase a home with a drug addict.
You should break up. This relationship is far to fraught with angst for it to be a happy long term relationship. But if you don’t break up, which I’m assuming you won’t, don’t make any large financial commitments like a mortgage. Don’t combine bank accounts. Don’t merge your credit in any way. Before doing any of those things make sure you have two good years. Two years with no crises, not even one. Two years where the two of you are kind and considerate partners. Two years where there is no hint of drug abuse or lies. If any of those things happen then the two years starts all over. If he demands you change yourself you start the two years over. If he loses or quits a job without first having a replacement job you start the two years over because financial stability requires job stability. If he says anything cruel you start the two years over. If you find he has a major secret that could drastically affect your life together then the two years start again from the beginning. I think you’ll find that you can’t go a month without having to start the two year clock all over again. All this to say that you don’t have the stability or harmony or trust needed for a long term relationship. You have the love but love by itself can’t carry a relationship.
@Wendy Your ideas are good and workable if you have the money to spend on the babysitter. In one of her posts the OP said that some of these couples can’t afford to go out to dinner as a family because they can’t afford it and that these couples do cheaper things at home.
The bottom line is that many of these couples can’t afford to do the adults only event. They have tight budgets. That isn’t the fault of the OP but it is the reality of her friends lives. There is nothing wrong with wanting an adults only event but if your friends can’t do it then you either have kids involved or you do something just as a couple or with other friends.
I don’t think the OP has considered it this way but when you set limits that cost other people money you are telling them how to spend their budget and they aren’t willing to spend it the way the OP is wanting. They don’t have the money to do what the OP is asking.
It is very wrong for the friends to show up with their kids and definitely rude to try to tell them what kind of cake to serve. It isn’t rude to say that they just can’t do it and that is what the friends should have said from the start. There were times we didn’t do things because they just didn’t work for us. No hard feelings and no guilt on either side.
“We generally feel we do not get to enjoy our own parties in our home.”
You’re hosting parties that you don’t enjoy so do something very different. I wouldn’t keep trying the same thing and expecting a different result. You could do something very different like spending the weekend at a bed and breakfast.
They are telling you that a child only party doesn’t work for them and you are telling them that hosting their kids doesn’t work for you. Do something that doesn’t involve them. Do your favorite things as a couple or with other friends.
No one should bring children to an adults only event and absolutely no one should try to tell you what to serve unless they have a life threatening allergy. I think the most likely thing that will happen is that none of them come if they can’t bring the kids. There were times we turned down an invitation because it was adults only and we didn’t have an evening babysitter. We didn’t know anyone who was willing to watch a kid at night. I think it is easier now with the internet but it wasn’t an option for us.
Unfortunately for you, your birthday falls in December. December is an especially expensive month. You have all of the usual expenses plus heating bills go up and there are kids parties at school and you are expected to contribute to those and you need to buy presents for the kids and your families and we always had travel expenses because we had to travel to spend Christmas with family. It all adds up and you know that in January you have to start all over with your medical deductible which is really high for most families and you know you are going to be paying out of pocket if anyone gets sick. That’s on top of the usual things like paying for activities. That doesn’t even include things like photos with Santa or new Christmas dress clothes for each child and new dress shoes and new pajamas. When it comes down to paying $80 to $100 for a sitter or paying for the dance lessons or soccer or art, etc. you are going to pay for your kid’s activities and skip the sitter. Parents are usually balancing wants and needs and they are going to pay for their kids extras before they pay for extras with you. I’m assuming they were already purchasing a gift for you. December is an absolutely hugely expensive month and the time demands are huge. Besides the holiday parties many schools also have a holiday program and the kids need specific clothes for the program which may not be at all what they need to dress up for Christmas day.
I think you should go out and have the birthday you want with your husband and any other friends you may have who don’t have kids. Let the friends with kids know that they are welcome to join you but there will be no kids so you understand if they can’t make it. Then go out and enjoy yourself. Make the life for yourself that you want with the knowledge that you may need to find other friends. Your choice is fine and your wants are fine but they don’t necessarily fit with the choices and wants of your friends. You and the friends are going down different paths and they definitely take you in different directions. None of that makes anyone better or worse, just different. Assume that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have and look for friends who have similar wants and needs and abilities.
It sounds like your friends will probably not come if they have to hire a sitter. You could go out with your husband and celebrate your birthday.
Kids are labor intensive and expensive. Many people don’t have the money to afford a sitter on top of all the other costs that come with attending a party. It’s also hard to find a sitter. I don’t know a single teen who babysits and I have a teenage daughter and know a large number of teen girls. They get regular jobs at places like restaurants and they have lots of activities. They don’t do babysitting. Daycare centers close for the evening so the kids can’t go there. If you have no relatives in the area who are willing to watch the kids you end up unable to find anyone. There is also the fact that if your kids spend the day in daycare you want to see them and spend time with them and don’t want to dump them with a sitter, if you can even find a sitter.
You are asking your friends to choose between spending time with you and spending time with their kids. They are only willing to see you if they can do both. You may need to find different friends or give them some time until their kids are older. Those kids will hit an age when they don’t want to go with their parents and they will be old enough to stay home without supervision and the adults will start going out without them. Until that time these friends come with kids. It’s their fact of life. They are probably just as tired of your invitations saying their kids aren’t invited as you are of them bringing their kids along.
You can blame the friends but your son picked those friends. Those were the people who appealed to him. Even if you blame the friends you still have to blame your son for picking the bad friends and keeping the bad friends. No one could make him do anything. He chose to do the things that got him into trouble.
I don’t see anything wrong with doing the background check before asking. It would be very awkward to ask and then when she said yes do a check and then go back and say sorry we changed our minds about you. It makes sense to do a search first. Multiple days is a long time to assume she would have no other commitments. What if she needed a sitter while being the sitter?
The real problem I see here is that you are looking at people you don’t know very well to watch your children for a number of days. Is there some way to take your kids with you? Could you take them to a grandparent, even if the grandparent is across the country or pay to have the grandparent meet you where you are going? One of my cousins would travel with her baby while she was breastfeeding and since her mom was retired her mom would meet her at the work location and watch the baby while she had her meetings. She could run to her hotel room and feed the baby then go to another meeting.
In the end I think you need a better solution than asking relative strangers to watch your children. If you can’t find anyone then at least one of you should stay home.
Chris, I should add that we’ve been married for 31 years and still going strong. We’ve raised a son and our daughter is a senior in high school. We’ve lived in three states together. We’ve traveled together and faced cancer together and laughed together and cried together. Believe me when I say that the first time you have sex is absolutely irrelevant to a lasting relationship and absolutely trivial to life in general.
