Guardian Weekend magazine's agony aunt advises a woman worried about her relationship
My partner and I have been living together for the past two years and knew each other for several years before that. We are both middle-aged with grown children from previous marriages, but he won't introduce me to any of his family, friends or work colleagues. When I have told him how humiliated, hurt and angry I feel he says that I'm going to have to suck it up – because his family blames him entirely for the breakup of his former marriage, and if I came on the scene I would just make things worse for him. Am I being silly?
If you had written that you had been together for only a few months, I would have told you not to worry and just to take your time. Likewise, if you said that you didn't live together and that you only see each other occasional nights to, ahem, "catch up". The choice to cohabit implies a common desire to share a life, assuming that you aren't simply trying to save on rent. But you are not sharing a life. You are sharing part of a life, a sliver of a life.
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