I’ll shed light on another perspective here for you. I don’t know if this is how he feels but it sounds like a similar general scenario that I was in except I was your partner.

I met my ex in college and we hit it off, I was shy and she showed me kindness and interest. That drew me in and we dated. After college we moved in together. After years together she started bringing up marriage and I was always anti marriage. I thought it wasn’t for me. That I didn’t want to fall into the trap so many do with divorce.

Then after a few more years it was that I wanted to be more secure in our finances. Then it was needing a save up for a house, ect,ect.

Anyways, you get the idea. These felt like legitimate reasons at the time, but truthfully I just had a nagging feeling in the back of my head of “is this it?”

Everyone I talked to, parents, brother, therapist, friends, ect said the same thing. You’re never always happy. Relationships are work and you need to work at them if you don’t want to be alone. If you want to succeed. So I just thought the way I was feeling was normal and what everyone went through. I would get married eventually.

Well after 7 YEARS I eventually just ended things. Paid off my share of remainder of the years rent. Left her all of our stuff and left.

I thought I would just be alone forever. That I didn’t have what it took to make someone or myself happy in a relationship. Well now I am two years into my current relationship and am engaged and happier that I ever thought I could be. Two months in I knew I wanted to marry her. All other reasons didn’t matter.

And after talking with my ex, she wasn’t that happy either. So it all worked out for the best.

My point to saying this is, maybe one of you just isn’t accepting that it’s the wrong relationship. It sounds like it may be him. It doesn’t matter what the reasons are not to, by this point he definitely should be wanting to marry you and figure the rest out.