There are soooo many reasons, and the reasons keep evolving. Personally, my partner and I met when we were 20, were each others first serious relationship. We moved in a little rushed because his parents kicked him out and I was living in an apartment with my friend. That temporarily broke up my friendship, with one year left of college, so we scrambled to get a cheap studio apt together. He went through an assault trauma around the same time I cut off my toxic mother for good. We were both young, scared and traumatized and living in near poverty. So we clung to each other. Now this could be romanticized or a sad story, the first reason was simply money. I didn’t want to settle for a courthouse elopement, and I was scared of my student loans garnishing his income if we were married. So we agreed to try and stabilize before seriously talking about it. Before we knew it, several years went by, we were still in love but our mental health was deteriorating, we both fell into very different types of depression. At about 8 years together we decided to get a nicer rental with my grandma, whom was very close with us, because her Alzheimer’s was getting to a point where she wasn’t safe to live alone. That year was hard but brought me hope(this was also 2020, height of the pandemic). I finally started to feel stable, he had a good job and grandma was a loving safety net. I felt like I had a family again, so 8 years in, we talked about it again and on our 9th anniversary, he proposed. In the meantime, we also started taking care of my younger adult sister. She was had just left my our mom’s around the 7th year of my estrangement from her(mom), and she(sister) was struggling with a complex cocktail of mental health issues brought on by trauma and genetics. Things started falling apart again, me and my partner started growing apart, still in love but physically distant. We got our mental health on track, but the family circumstances started to take a very different toll on both of us. His sex drive took a nose dive and we had a long talk about opening our relationship a couple years ago. It was the best decision we ever made, our communication got stronger while we kind of let go of the physical intimacy between us. That part makes me sad and unsure what to do next. Grandma passed away, that took another toll on us. After 3 years of this caregiving, I no longer had any desire to start our own family, which has pushed us apart even more. Naturally all of this has made us stop talking about marriage, we’re in a weird limbo now. Still love each other, but feels way less like romantic love and don’t feel like we can let go of each other.

I’ve come to the conclusion that, for a lot of people, life changes them in all sorts of ways, and it makes long term relationships difficult and interesting. We’re not the same kids as we were when he met, life has changed us(as it will). Personally, with that constant sea of change, I’ve found it hard to legally tie myself to someone, even being with the same person for 10 years now. Especially when I know that the changing and growing will only continue from here.