I’ve (29F) been with my bf (31M) for 4 years and am wondering, how do others deal with the ‘Wait!? Is my partner right for me, forever?!’ thoughts/doubts, that some (most? all?) of us get, a few years into a relationship.

This might be a bit rambly, TL;DR at the bottom, but here we go. Have you ever gone through a period in your late 20s / early 30s (or whenever, really) when you were with a partner for a few years, things are great, about to make things more official (engagement/marriage) and you think, wait! Is this really it? Am I sure about this?? I’m sure a lot of you have. How do you deal with it?

Personally, I’ve been with my bf for about 4 years now, lived together for 2 (29F, 31M), we’ve both had serious relationships before. We have talked a lot about our future, marriage etc and will probably get married in the next two years/get engaged soon. I love him dearly, we have very similar values and life goals, have a lot of fun together and support each other in good times and bad. We get along great as partners, we love to hang out together, even if we are just at home doing our own thing. We also have our bad moments though, and we are both extremely stubborn people. That means that sometimes we forget we are ‘on the same team’ and are just opposite each other. In these moments when things get very heated (not physical or anything, but verbally heated / he yells and I cry), it’s hard to see the ‘good and forever’ sometimes in those moments and then I wonder if I should walk away. He was definitely not a great communicator when we started dating and got angry quickly. We have been to couples counseling and he has majorly improved, to the point where he is the one starting the ‘hard’ conversations that he would have refused to have 3.5 years ago, and approaching them much more calmly and reasonably. Overall our communication has improved vastly, but we still butt heads regularly and in those moments I get severely insecure about it all. I think part of it is also ‘trauma’ (for lack of a better word) from the first period of our relationship where I couldn’t deal with his anger. Then we make up, talk things over calmly and rationally and I feel great again. But part of me can’t shake those moments of insecurity and whether they are valid or not.

Then again, no relationship is perfect, and you generally don’t get to see other people’s ‘bad parts’ of a relationship so it’s hard to gauge what is normal and what is not. However, at a point like this where we are discussing marriage, every little thing feels like a thing that needs endless evaluation in my mind with the main being question ‘can I / do I want to live with this FOREVER??’, and asking that question for every little thing, would drive anyone insane (I think?). My gut feeling says that people will say ‘if you aren’t sure, don’t do it!!’, but I also believe that there must be lots of happy couples out there who at some point in their lives thought these thoughts.

So, I’m just wondering how other people have dealt with this. Any input is very appreciated!

TL;DR - How did you decide whether you wanted to get married / stay with a partner when you got those seemingly inevitable ‘I’m a few years in, is this what I really want forever?’ thoughts?

Submitted August 06, 2019 at 11:02AM by yayfornumbers0101011 https://ift.tt/2Ky9D6i