I'm [26F] at a crossroads in my marriage. My husband [24M, about to be 25] told me he doesn't think we should buy the house that we are days away from closing on. And now he's unsure of when he wants children, something we had previously agreed we would start on next year.

My husband, Tom*, and I have had lots of crossroads. It breaks my heart and I still refuse to say that we aren't meant to be, because I think we are. I just think we are both immature.

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The first crossroad was that we were long distance (but saw each other for one to two weeks every month) and I graduated one year early from college. I was from Alabama, he's from Connecticut. I moved to Connecticut and rented an apartment during my internship, but when that ended, his mom allowed me to stay with him in his bedroom in her house while I looked for a job. When I got a job a month later, we looked at apartments but then discussed it and asked his mother if we could stay in her house until Tom graduated college because we didn't know where we would end up living, but we had both agreed that we didn't want to live in CT. For as long as I had known Tom, he always complained about CT : the weather, the people, the economy, the taxes. He said he loved the South and how beautiful and affordable it was. We didn't want to get locked into rent in CT if we were just going to move a year later.

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It's very important that you understand this: several things we discussed before marrying was where we wanted to live, if we wanted to have kids, etc. Tom said he never wanted to live in New England again, and that he wanted at least 3 kids (4 if we have 3 girls) and I wanted 3 too. Those checked off my boxes so we seemed like a good match on those fronts.

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Living in Tom's mom's house was hard. She was very clingy to Tom, and I would often walk in on her pleading for him to not move away when he graduated. She'd try to guilt him or convince him that moving away was a bad idea. Tom and I would fight about this privately. Even though he never agreed with her, I felt like he should be more forceful and ask her to stop doing that behind my back. I would come home from my 8-5 job, and he would be home at 2 from college classes, and his mom would get home from her job at 3 and go to his room and talk about me behind my back. I didn't like it. We fought a lot. It wasn't revealed to me until later on that Tom had desired to break up with me then, before we even got engaged...but he claims he "has a disease where he thinks everything will get better after we move / get married /etc".

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We got engaged, then moved away to St. Louis for Tom's job. We fought a lot then too. Tom has always had bad acne and it was his first real job and he was in a competitive program that my father had helped him get into, in a competitive field, and we were in a new city...I attributed those reasons to our stressful fights. I would wake up early and pack his lunch and try to kiss him goodbye and he would yell at me "Don't touch my face, you make it greasy!" or "You'll make me break out!" he'd give me the meanest glare and slam the door and I would cry. Then he'd come home and we'd fight about the wedding planning. I was upset that he wanted nothing to do with it. He told me to plan it on my own. He also didn't want to hear about it ever.

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It wasn't all bad. We had lots of happy times. One day in St. Louis, he came home and held my hands and looked in my eyes and apologized for how mean he had been and said it was stress and fear and he asked that we lay in bed and just talk and be intimate. For a few days, we did that. Then it was back to him getting on his computer straight after dinner, ignoring me until bed when we would sleep and the next day would start.

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We moved from St. Louis to Tennessee. Tom was frustrated with me because in TN, I didn't have a job. I told him I wanted to wait until after the wedding because we were only five months away from the wedding and it didn't make sense to start a job because what if they didn't give me the time off? I know I was stupid. I did work part-time, however. We fought a lot about the wedding. But we also had lots of fun and happy times. Two weeks before the wedding, Tom woke up angry at me. I was trying to smooth things over. I apologized and straightened his tie and handed him his lunch. I kissed him goodbye and smiled. He stood by the door, glaring at me, and said "I want to say this while I'm mad. My grandfather is carving us a cake topper and we are using it. Goodbye."

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He slammed the door. I freaked out. I had spent a year planning this wedding and had already special-ordered a cake topper made to look like us. His grandfather has a hobby where he carves things out of wood. They look fine but they don't look pretty enough to put on a wedding cake. In fact, the toppers he ended up making were kind of ugly. I knew it was important to Tom so I called him and asked if we could put those on the groom's cake. He said "No, on the main cake. If you can't give this to me...then we aren't getting married."

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I freaked out, crying, called my mom to say the wedding was off, told my maid of honor. I was also angry because his parents had visited the weekend before and apparently told him this when I wasn't around - like they always do, going behind my back. I angrily texted his stepmom telling her I didn't appreciate this, that this was our wedding, not theirs to plan...she said they even told Tom we could just use the toppers from his grandfather as decor on the cake table or something...I told her Tom wasn't budging... she, his dad, and his mom all texted and called him to try to smooth things over. Tom came home and cried, apologizing, begging me to forgive him. We got married shortly after.

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A few months after the wedding, Tom came home one day to tell me that he didn't like his job, that he wasn't cut out for it. I encouraged him and tried to convince him that he's great. He told me no, that he had made his mind up. So he started looking for a job in the same major metropolitan area we were in. One day, we took a drive around a couple of suburbs that we thought we'd like to move to. We both fell in love with one place, but deep inside, I could sense that Tom wasn't happy. He claimed he was so happy and couldn't wait to move to a different suburb there, but he also had a look on his face that just seemed unsure. A month later, we were visiting his family in November for Thanksgiving. Tom and I had taken our new puppy for a walk at the park when he got a call from one of the places he had applied to. They scheduled an interview for when we returned. Again, that look of uncertainty returned. I cheered and said "Aren't you happy Tom?" In the car, he was silent. I pressed him to talk to me and finally he said, "I want to move back home."

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He pulled into a grocery store parking lot and I sobbed. I said "Then this is it, huh? We are over?" I never would have married him if I knew he would want to move back to New England. That was something that was never going to be okay with me, and he knew it. He also never led me to believe that that was what he wanted. Tom told me that he needs his friends and family. I told him "I have tried to make new friends here but you don't want to make friends with me" and he said "No I don't, I want my old friends" (the friends he grew up with). Finally he said "I'm sorry I said it, it doesn't matter, we won't move here anyway. Just forget it." I felt sick though, sick that I had torn him from his family. I said "Well...drive me around some of the nice towns we might consider if we lived here."

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He drove me around. Everything was lit by Christmas lights. I think that's what got me: the desperation to save my marriage, and the magic of the holidays. New England can also be beautiful. But I wasn't thinking straight. I told him I agreed, that we could move to CT.

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We moved to CT in February and have been here ever since, staying his a spare bedroom in his widowed grandpa's house to save money for a home of our own. Now we are a few days away from closing on a house. This morning I was cuddling our puppy and he was laying on his back beside us. All of a sudden, he sat up. I said "What's wrong, Tom?" He sat there in silence for a long time. I rubbed his back and said "What is it?" He then said "I don't think we should buy this house." He stood up.

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I said "What?!! Why?" He went on to say that he doesn't think it's a good idea if we just end up divorcing anyway. Everyday, he feels sick to think that he took me away from my family in the south, and he knows I hate living up here. But he can't leave. He doesn't want to. He wants to be near his family and friends. He also said "I know I promised you that we would retire in Florida, but I don't even know if I can do THAT." Then he said "I also don't know if I want kids anymore. I want my freedom and to be able to come home and play video games all night long."

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I cried and cried and asked him, "Why did you tell me before we got married that you wanted kids with me? And that you never wanted to move back to CT? Why would you promise those things if you didn't really want them?"

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He said "You were my first real relationship and I thought I wanted those things, but life changes. Things change. Also I don't have a fire for you anymore. I love you and I always will, but the fire is gone."

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We both cried. He asked if he could hold me. He held me and we cried. A little while later I looked up my current full-time job (yes I am employed in CT) to see if they have openings in other states. They have two openings in Alabama and two in Texas, where their headquarters is. Coincidentally enough, I was born in Texas, that's where my parents met and got married, and I always hoped to someday end up there. My husband and I almost did move there instead of Tennessee. He used to say he wanted to move to Texas too...but of course that changed...

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I looked up apartments in Texas. They were more affordable than CT, and also much newer, and included more amenities (washer and dryer in unit, AC which is something I can't live without and not many properties have up here). Then I looked up houses. The house we picked here in CT was built in the 30s, has a sketchy basement with cords falling out of the sky, a garage that doesn't even have an electric opener, no AC installed, etc. The houses in Texas were more than 100k less, and they all had 1000 more square footage, and AC installed, and no creepy basements, and big yards, and the houses were beautiful and built more recently. But as I imagined myself living in these beautiful affordable homes, I realized that my husband wouldn't be there with me. And my heart shattered into a million pieces and I sobbed. Because is a newer home with AC in a more affordable state with no income tax even worth it if I can't have my husband there to enjoy life with me?

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There are other issues. Like the fact that I think he's too dependent on his family emotionally. Or the fact that his mother hasn't saved for retirement or invested wisely and her mother (his grandmother) has a family beach house with property taxes of $18,000 that she can no longer pay (his grandma went through all her retirement to keep that beach house, even sold her primary home and moved in with my mother-in-law). Now my MIL is going to have to help pay the property taxes. She wants to sell the house though, which I think they should ,but my husband mentioned that he would like to be able to help pay the taxes...and I told him that's absurd, we can't afford that, we need to save for our retirement and have kids and put money into our old house that we are buying...etc.

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Also the fact that I think his MIL wants to live with one of her sons someday and we don't get along (because she is controlling, judgmental, and obsessed with my husband) and my husband said he would love for her to live with him if she had to financially.

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My husband came to me after our talk this morning and said he wants to fix it. He said he is just afraid. He loves me and thinks we should rent for a year and work on our relationship before buying a house.

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I don't know what to do. I don't want to end my marriage, we have only been married a little over a year...and if our grandparents could get married in their 20s and make it work, why can't we ?

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tl;dr Husband doesn't think we should buy a house anymore, doesn't know if he wants kids or the same things as me....what do we do?

Submitted July 14, 2019 at 01:38PM by Yellowbugkb https://ift.tt/30BPsuv