Weddingbee boards

Right now I feel incredibly trapped. I am engaged to a man who's cute, who works and gets paid decently, who has a supportive circle of friends, who helps with housework and cooking, who loves me dearly and would do anything for me, and who puts up with my crazy. He isn't abusive, hateful, dangerous, stupid, lazy, stoic, inattentive, unfaithful, or a drug/alcohol abuser.

But I am not in love with him.

Oh, I love him. If he got hurt or died, I'd be horribly upset, and would be losing my best friend.

But it's getting harder and harder to go on with this.

When he says he loves me, I tell him I love him too. Usually when I do, a little voice in my head screams "LIAR!" I am not scizophrenic. I know this is my guilt talking.

And it's easy to know this because I HAVE been in love before.

I fell in love at first sight with a man I met through a mutual friend. I didn't believe in that until then. Our eyes met, and something just happened. I have no words sufficient to describe it.

Well, he liked me too, and eventually we got together. We dated for several months, and after awhile he hadn't mentioned marriage. I was getting worried, because my feelings for him were intensifying every day, and I needed to know whether there was at least a chance this could be a lifelong thing so that I wouldn't continue to get closer to him, and then be devastated later on.

We both have a history of depression, self-esteem problems and "daddy issues". We would push one another away with silly things, for silly reasons. I'd bring up marriage, and he would change the subject, or say he wasn't ready. And I understood not being ready at that moment; I wasn't expecting a ring right then or even within the next year necessarily. I just wanted to know that SOMEDAY it WOULD HAPPEN, and that I wasn't wasting my time, that I wasn't just a place to stay and a piece of ass until his REAL soulmate came along.

But he would never say that. He would never give me that assurance. He would say he wanted to get married, but he never said he wanted to MARRY ME. And I've heard that's a red flag. Plus, in college he dated another girl in this group of friends for four years, and showed a marked lack of desire to commit, (so she....married his best friend.) So I was thinking at that point, "Ok, this guy is either a lifetime bachelor, or else he wants to get married, but not TO ME." But I loved him, and didn't want to leave him, so when the subject would come up, I'd start referring to "When I have a family someday..."  "or one of these days if I ever meet someone and get married..." It was a bad idea, but I didn't want him to feel pressured, especially since I thought the matter was prettty much settled that he didn't want to marry me. And I fancied myself too much a feminist to allow myself to be strung along.

I loved him desperately and with an intensity that surprises me even now. I stayed until the pain of rejection became too great,and then I broke up.

At that point, I had read "Marry him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough". My best friend/ex from college wanted to date me. Even though it had been barely a month, he was super persistent, and finally I figured I might as well. Nine months later, he proposed. I kept repeating to myself that love is a decision rather than this magical thing. And trying to convince myself that even though the man I loved didn't return my feelings, getting to marry my best friend was one hell of a silver medal, and hey, those feelings could grow in time!

Fast-forward to now. I've been talking to the ex in question. I gave myself several months of no contact before I would talk to him again because it was painful, but then after that I was pretty sure I was over him. We always knew we wanted to stay friends. I won't go into specifics, but when you haev the sort of family background/past that I have, it's VERY hard to find people who understand you, and we have a ton in common. Also, it's super hard for me to make friends because I am so shy.

Well, anyways, he's moving away to another city soon. He will be three hours away. We got together at the bar to hang out one last time before he left (we have hung out several times, always completely platonically) and had a nice, long talk. After we had had a few, we got on the subject of relationships, and basically I told him to be careful, because those love feeelings can lie, and you might end up with someone who isn't half as into you as you are them. And I gave him a pointed look. He asked me to explain, and I did.

And then he began crying. All that time, he wanted to marry me, and loved me too. And he had thought about telling me, but when I "moved on so quickly" he decided against it.

In the immortal words of Gob Bluth, I think I've made a terrible mistake.

@bakerella: Breaking up with FI is no guarantee I could get together with this guy. He's going to live really far away. He may have gotten too hurt by the breakup to be able to realistically consider being with me again. And there's a chance I suppose that he was just telling me that to make me feel better, thinking there was no way it would make a difference at this point to give my ego a little stroke.

And. faced with the prospect of actually committing, he may well prove to be a lifetime bachelor. At that point I would lose everything--friendship with him, friendship with current FI, my entire social circle here, etc.

I guess an ideal solution would be to do something to make myself feel about FI the way I feel about this guy. But I don't know how to do that.

@sueanddemetrius: LOL, that's a fake date. The actual wedding is in 2012, but I didn't want anyone to know who I was, because I normally post under another name and have people I know in real life on here.

@dianeanthony: So you don't think there's any way I can get myself to love FI more? I mean, there has to be some way, or else arranged marriages wouldn't work out so well, right?

@donnaaries: I know he does. And I am/have been trying. Believe me, if there was a magic pill that would give me those feelings, I'd take two a day.

@jholler25: ... It is the fact that I do respect him that is compelling me to post this under a fake name. I would never say that to his face or  to anyone he knows, or even to my mother.

@bells: It's not really that I'm staying with him because I'm not sure whether I can get with my ex. In fact, I'm trying to go about it right now with the opinion that I for sure cannot get with my ex. It's very possible that the love he was talking about was all meant to be past-tense.

I am staying with FI now because I am still grappling with the question of whether chemistry is necessary for love. Whether breaking up with him will wind up being the worst decision I've ever made. Whether I will ever find anyone else who feels about me the way FI does--and therefore, would it be better to be with someone who I am not "in love" with but who is in love with me, than it would be to be with someone who I am in love with, but who is NOT in love with me? Maybe I am just not being appreciative enough of how good FI really is. Maybe I only want someone else because of cold feet/fear related to my broken home growing up and FI's parents getting divorced this year because of his mother's long-term affair with an old boyfriend.

If I did break up with FI and then later realize we were indeed meant to be together, and my feelings are a result of fear, he would probably take me back--but I don't think it would be worth the pain it would cause him, and I know he may never trust me again. So I am trying to tread VERY carefully until I figure stuff out with me.