Q.

My partner of nearly nine years proposed to me and left me feeling totally blindsided. We’ve been together for a long time. I knew from year one that I could see him as my husband. We agree on almost all key topics – kids, pets, house. We have fun together and love each other deeply, even though we aren’t perfect. 

Sometimes we bring out the worst in each other. We exacerbate each other’s bad eating and exercising habits, and I know this will lead to health issues in future. We still struggle to communicate effectively – he avoids conflict and I bottle things up.

Around year five, I lost my father, which led to months of depression and re-evaluating things. That whole year and a half was honestly a blur. This is when I started to address the feelings of resentment I had that built up in the relationship. I am a romantic who goes the extra mile – surprise birthdays, love letters, and a treasure hunt on an anniversary. But I always felt he deserved it. This is a man who is funny, loving, and kind. Someone who cooks, cleans, etc. 

When I compare him to other partners in my family, I can’t believe how lucky I am. But after years of giving too much of myself, I lost hope that he could meet my needs. I said I wanted to break up to work on myself because I felt broken after my father passed. He didn’t want to throw the relationship away while I did this work, so we tried again. I expressed my unmet needs and how I always wanted to marry him. I wanted a house and a family. I felt like I had been waiting. He said he saw us growing old together and me being his wife, but when he said it, it felt too late. 

From there we started to dig into many issues – love languages, bad habits, and patterns. I asked him to go to therapy with me and we seemingly made an action plan after many talks. Cue the plan not being followed and us having the same conversation a year later when I got a new job in a different city. I needed to time to myself, and we compromised on long-distance and going to therapy. We made the distance work, but therapy didn’t happen. 

During long-distance we worked on ourselves – we got healthier and spent time on other close relationships. It honestly felt like he was better without me. I saw growth in him that I was proud of, and I was proud of my own work. I planned travel I always wanted to experience. After a year, he got a job in my city and the long-distance ended. We moved in together and it felt like we were in a really great place. Though we were slightly improved, we still fell into some old patterns, and foundational issues bubbled up again. We talked about it. Things started to improve, but we needed to do a lot more work, and I knew that.

At this time, I was close to having enough to a huge trip I had planned and invited him to come with me. We figured out a way to travel for six months. It has been so incredible. It was something I had always imagined doing by myself but having him here has been such a blessing. I see how fun and reliable he is. I have felt safe with him. He understands me and helps so much. 

Then, during our final month of traveling together, he suddenly proposed. We haven’t spoken about marriage more than a few times in the last couple of years, as I thought we were focussing on the core issues in our relationship. In the moment, I was so shocked I couldn’t say anything for about 10 seconds and then eventually spat out a pathetic, “I think so.” Then I turned to him and asked, “Why now?” He said he wanted to show me where he was at in the relationship, and looking back I can see how lovely the gesture was.

I know I need to tell him that I need more time, but the more I think about it, the more worried I become. If my instinctual answer wasn’t a resounding “Yes!” … should it be no? He deserves someone who can say HELL YES to him, no? And am I crazy for thinking we aren’t ready for this until we’ve solved these issues in couples therapy before even considering a proposal? 

The potential next steps I have dreamed up are: A) Couples therapy. If the therapist thinks I should be able to work on myself in this relationship, I will try my best and we can re-visit the marriage discussion after working through these core issues. B) I ask us to break up and then will give him the power to make contact with me in a year if he wants to try things again. I genuinely don’t think I will ever stop loving him and can’t imagine being with anyone else.

This is so long I know! Apologies if it is too much, but please weigh in here. What do you think? What would you do? 

– From a teary-eyed-traveller