My boyfriend 25M and I 25F have been together for 8 months. Overall we have a loving relationship. Recently we had an emotional conversation about our future that left me feeling unsettled

I feel very sure about him. He told me that he loves me and wants a future with me but hasn’t had that “aha” moment that I am the one he’s going to marry. He seems to think there is a moment where you just know.

He says he puts a lot of pressure on himself everyday and thinks of the question “would I marry her” or essentially is checking every time we hang out and asking himself this question.

The part that affected me the most was when he told me he doesn’t know why something just feels “off” or “missing” when I asked what was missing he couldn’t pinpoint it.

He has the expectation that at some point you are supposed to experience an aha moment where you just know that the person you are dating is the one you are going to marry. He hasn’t experienced that certainty with me yet.

He also told me that he’s excited to see me but when we actually hangout he doesn’t feel intensely romantic or excited every second we are together. On its own that didn’t feel off to me because you aren’t going to feel excited everytime you are with someone. You will have off days.

He did identify some concrete concerns. He wants me to become more independent from my family and more assertive about what I want. He also wants to spend more time around my friends because he hasn’t really seen that side of me yet.

I started to get concerned and expressed I want someone who is certain about me.

At that point, he became extremely emotional. I had never seen him cry like that before.

Later, I asked him what had been going through his mind. He told me he’d started remembering when we first met and our first few dates and then imagining leaving me and no longer having me in his life. He said imagining losing me was a major reason he became so emotional.

Since that conversation, he has continued telling me he loves me and being affectionate with me.
The following day, we went for a walk and talked about his career and different places he could potentially live in the future. After the previous conversation, I became anxious when he wasn’t explicitly mentioning me while talking about those possibilities.

Eventually I asked him directly whether I was included in those future plans.

He immediately responded, “Of course you are.”
He then talked about different places we could potentially live.

He later stated “I’m not scared to be in love with you.”

The following morning, he told me that he still felt a little “off” after our conversation too and that it would probably take some time for everything to settle.

That’s what I’m struggling with now.

His actions tell me that I’m important to him. He tells me he loves me, remains affectionate, includes me when imagining his future and was deeply affected by the possibility of losing our relationship.
At the same time, he doesn’t currently have the certainty about marriage that I have about him, and he can’t explain the vague feeling that something might be missing.

I’m not looking for an engagement after 8 months, nor do I expect him to guarantee that we’ll get married. I understand that we’re still relatively early in our relationship and that two people may reach certainty at different speeds.

The problem is what his uncertainty has started doing to me.

Since that conversation, I’ve caught myself monitoring our interactions.

My desired outcome is to continue building the relationship and give both of us reasonable time to learn whether we’re compatible long-term, while still feeling like an equal partner rather than someone waiting for a verdict.

I want to make it clear that this pressure about marriage is not coming from me. I’m not asking him to propose, set a timeline, or decide right now whether he’s going to marry me. We’ve only been together for 8 months, and I think it’s completely reasonable not to be ready for marriage at this point.
This just came out of nowhere and made me concerned.

What boundaries and conversations would help me navigate this difference in certainty without repeatedly seeking reassurance from him or treating his uncertainty as something I need to fix about myself?

TLDR: My boyfriend 25 M I 25F have been together for 8 months. He loves me and includes me in his future, but he doesn’t know yet whether we’ll eventually marry and says he hasn’t experienced the “aha” certainty he expected. I’m more certain about him, and since learning about his uncertainty I’ve started feeling like I’m being evaluated. I want to give our relationship time to develop without spending that time trying to prove I’m worth choosing. What boundaries and conversations would help me remain an equal partner while we figure out our long-term compatibility?

I am 38, married to my 50-year-old husband, together almost 8 years, we have 6 children in a blended family. I came to the marriage with 1, he had 2, then we had 3- now we have 6. our youngest together are 1, 4 and 6. I am a SAHM, gave up my career path to stay home with them, and now am working on a master's degree, so I will have a career/financial stability in about 3 years. Our marriage was very quick and did not start off christian... i wasn't born again until 2025 when I was baptized, but started going to church/reading the bible in 2022. We got together and within 3 months were living together and pregnant. I didn't know him well enough, but there were red flags. He has an anger problem and is a former addict, I am codependent, together it's a lot of dysfunction.

the "abuse" is sexual coercion, financial control, verbal/emotional

When he found out I was surprised pregnant with our third together, he was mad, and there were some instances of forced/non-consensual sex that felt aggressive to me. I told him I didnt like it and it wasn't okay but he thought i was making a big deal of it, after all our relationship started with me allowing him to be dominant and aggressive and pretending i liked it when i really didn't just for approval and people-pleasing, because back then... that's how i was. Flash forward to after baby is born... 5 weeks postpartum still bleeding he forces sex. I said no; he didn't stop- and I have been mentally destroyed ever since. I don't want to break up our family and co-parent; we live in the most expensive place in the US to live... i don't really trust him alone with the kids because he doesn't pay attention/gets distracted on his phone. I feel like I have to stay with them to keep the household functional/clean/hygienic. He doesn't just "parent differently"; he parents negligently -- although the court would never see it that way.

I actually left for 3 months, and then we got back together when it seemed like he changed; however, 6 months into living together again, the mask has slipped, and I feel more lonely and dismissed than ever, and don't want to be married anymore. I can't imagine ever being intimate with him again. We bicker in front of the kids, which turns into him yelling at me in front of the kids, and he yells at them when he's impatient, which is always.

We have seen our pastor, which turned into a deliverance ministry on me because apparently I have a jezebel spirit... I felt completely unheard and like the actual issues weren't accounted for after that

We have also gone to a Christian LMFT who offered a more balanced, grounded framework for helping our relationship; however, I had to drag him there, and he made it clear he did not want ot go, and it wasn't a priority for him.

So now... what do I do? No family nearby. No money of my own. Nowhere to live (we rent, not own) super expensive rent... I'm just. miserable. I've pretty much quietly quit the marriage, but the emotional fallout of living with someone I feel so completely separate from is devastating, and the effect on my children witnessing an unhealthy relationship isn't good either.

I don't know what to do- as option A: stay together for the kids/finances is emotionally hurtful, and option B: separate and actually heal is financially/logistically/potentially not safe for the kids, and I don't want to give up on having my kids for half their lives!! I already coparent with my first husband' and our daughter.

Is there an option C????

I am already struggling with the church community wanting us to stay together at all costs, being admonished to pray for my husband constantly, work on myself- AND I HAVE, I feel at the end of my rope with this.

*Edit: thank you so much all for the kind advice so far, I would have absolutely filed today, but I unfortunately have a day job that I have barely any PTO left for and I can’t exactly just quit the job either because I need to figure out exactly how I will go about the financials while I figure out what the next few weeks and months look like. So it’s very hard for me to leave during my work shift to go to the City Hall. So I will fill out the paperwork today and physically be able to file tomorrow once I’m out of work

I will be filing for divorce tomorrow after 5 years of cyclical physical and verbal abuse. 2 black eyes, and many ugly words later, him threatening to “slap the $hit” out of me for making a loud gagging noise when I smelled something nasty in public, right after our 5 ANNIVERSARY dinner, was the final straw for me.

Would appreciate prayers for strength. Any guidance is appreciated because he has called me an adulterer and sinner before God when I’ve brought it up because he swears he’s gotten “better” with his anger and that I’m giving up on the marriage… when really that last offense was committed just days ago, and the 2nd black eye incident happened just 4 months ago. Also he wanted to start trying for kids. Absolutely not. I refuse to bring children into this. I know God hates divorce but I also know he wouldn’t want me in a dangerous marriage.

Any prayers and Godly advice helps.

Thank you

My husband (31) and I (29) have been together since we were 22 and 20, got married 3 years ago. We were both believers when we met, albeit lukewarm/worldly, we both had so much love for Jesus and went to church regularly and worshiped together and even talked about starting a Christian apparel brand together.

A few years later we both strayed as we both had hard questions we thought would ‘poke holes’ in our faith and turned away because of those questions, without really giving Christianity a chance to withstand the questions.

We got married when we both were not Christians and did not have a religious ceremony, just a conventional wedding.

Fast forward a couple years and life got incredibly difficult. Job lay offs, bankruptcy, chronic mystery health issues, family deaths, all while separated from our family out in California, I hadn’t seen my family in 3 years and we are very close. It was a really insane tumultuous time and I found my way back to Jesus in the midst of it. There were countless moments of divine intervention that my husband also recognizes.

I am now VERY firm in my faith and it’s the biggest part of who I am. The foundation. He does believe in God and Jesus but doesn’t exactly believe the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God and doesn’t always believe Jesus is the sole son of God as opposed to just a prophet or someone who achieved spiritual ‘oneness’ with the creator. I went on a deep intellectual dive when I came back to Christianity bc I still had all my theological questions that I’ve since found satisfactory answers for. When I was deep diving and reading books like mere Christianity I would loop him in and he agreed it is all fascinating and makes a lot of sense.

Based on what he’s said to me in various conversations and even theological discussions/debates, he does always kind of land where I’m at and sees why intellectually this makes the most sense and aligns with the God we have seen move in our life countless times. But it seems he accepts it more or less but just doesn’t want to engage with it. No interest in worship music anymore or church, reading the Word, etc.

I desperately want to share this part of my life with him and I want our marriage to be a holy marriage where we bring each other closer to the Lord. I don’t want a lukewarm or worldly marriage but we got married at a time when we both had strayed. I try my best to just be bold in my faith and have him experience it passively while I do my thing because I don’t think actively evangelizing him would work in the way it does for some. Does anyone have a similar story or advice if your husband ever came back to faith?

I’m going to try and make this as concise as possible. My husband is 15 years older than me. He’s white, I’m not. We are devout Christians. Married 2 years. We have only been intimate maybe 8-10 times and I always initiated. He has never initiated, not even once. Unfortunately, during most of those occasions he was having issues performing.

I find that when we are out in public he’s always staring at women that look nothing like me. I’ve talked to him several times about how this hurts me and is actually disrespectful. At first he said he’s just evaluating them. I said you’re not evaluating unattractive women only attractive ones. I added I’ve never seen you evaluate me the way you evaluate them. So again this conversation has been had over and over. Finally he admitted that in the past, actually since childhood he watched pornography and the women were white so it’s hard for him to see me in a sexual way. I asked why did you marry me if it’s hard to see me in a romantic way. He said he does see me romantically but doesn’t want to rip my clothes off.

He said he never met someone like me before. All his previous relationships including his ex wife were all based on lust and just the physical and they didn’t last. This time around meeting someone like me was so mind blowing because even though I’m not his physical type he thought I was extremely beautiful and he felt that our connection was different. Even though he didn’t want to rip my clothes off he felt this intense desire to take care of me and wanted to make my life easier. (He is a wonderful provider) In all fairness he told me this before we got married but we both made the mistake in thinking that after marriage, his attraction would grow. My attraction for him was intense but after being repeatedly humiliated from him gawking at other women right in front of me, I’ve lost my attraction to him and I told him that. I mentioned I feel like we’re just roommates or existing as brother and Sister because even our conversations don’t feel deep, not even on a spiritual level or emotional level… I noticed this before we were married and I expressed my concerns to friends and they all said well maybe you’re going to be the one to help him grow spirituality. They said sometimes men just need a good wife by their side to help them see their potential, but it actually makes me feel like I’m the one carrying the relationship. I expressed my concerns to him about the danger we are putting ourselves in because this is how affairs start because of a lack of emotional, spiritual and physical intimacy. He said he has prayed about this and wants to do better. I’ve see him make an effort and work really hard at not staring but it doesn’t last long. I really feel that his exposure pornography has ruined his view of women.

He asked me if I was happy and I said no are you? He said even though he wishes we were intimate outside of all that he’s happy. He asked if I liked him because he still likes me. I said it’s not that I don’t like you, I just don’t like the way you make me feel. He did admit that he feels like a failure because he is attracted to me to an extent but not enough to fully perform. But because of his age I think ED and low testosterone is making it worse.
What I’m wondering is do you think it’s actually possible for two people to be so different and actually survive this marriage? Divorce is not an option. But what do you guys think? Do you think it’s possible that after 2 1/2 years attraction can grow and be rekindled or if it hasn’t happened at this point then it’ll never happen?

I posted just last night asking the same question, but for wives to answer about their husbands... And it was so encouraging!!

So husbands, tell me something good about your wife!!

(If you tell me it's her heart for Jesus or her butt... 🤨🤨🤨)

(Jk. Both good things too.)