Carolyn Hax: Boyfriend of nine years gets angry when marriage comes up

Q: My boyfriend and I have been dating for nearly nine years. We have a cat and three dogs, have lived together four years, and moved across the country to start a life together.

Recently, he has been distant and angry. He is never violent or cruel, but often gets overwhelmed and angry when I talk about the future. He claims he is feeling stuck in a dead-end job and doesn’t know what to do about it.

We have always talked about marriage and kids, but put it on the back burner to focus on our finances. Recently, I have been talking about it more, as many of our friends have gotten married and started having kids and it’s something I really want. He has gotten upset with me for bringing it up, even calling me selfish. Most recently, he said he isn’t sure he even wants kids anymore.

After every argument, he apologizes and says it’s not that he doesn’t want that life with me but that we can’t afford it. But every time it feels more like a weak excuse than the last time, like he’s trying to convince himself rather than me.

I am terrified this is the end of our relationship. I have never lived alone, come from a large family and deeply love our pets. He was in both of my brothers’ weddings, and untangling our lives feels nearly impossible. Is there no way forward? If this is the end, how do I even begin to navigate the dating scene again after nine years?

— Tangled

A: Give me a second here …

• Marriage.

• Kids.

• Keeping up with friends.

• Not living alone.

• Staying with deeply loved pets.

• Seal of both brothers’ approval.

• Nooooo, agh, agh, not the dating scene again!?!

OK, got it. That’s a list of what is important to you, pulled from your letter.

Now you tell me, where does this go: “Being with the man I love, trust and struggle to imagine my life without”?

I didn’t see it anywhere. Kind of a glaring omission.

Maybe you feel it so completely it went without saying. You were focused on the situational details, maybe, trying to get it all into an advice question.

But I have to ask whether YOU would ever want to be at the altar because your groom can’t bear to part with your dogs.

If your boyfriend is the person for you, then why aren’t you listening to him? Where’s the strategizing, TOGETHER, to turn around his dead-end-job status or, if there’s no change imminent, address his dead-end-job feelings. Because having each of you so stuck on your own anxiety that you can’t grasp the other’s is failing both of you.

So try showing respect for his “excuse.” Approach it as a valid block to his thriving and progress.

This path may still lead you on your separate way, since a difference in your approaches to life stress is often decisive — but even that is a more productive direction than back into the wall you’re both hitting.

If instead your letter was accidentally honest — meaning, you’re in this only for the security, paternity and pets — then consider your boyfriend’s “job” irritation may be an expression of deeper emotions.

Being loved for what he can give you, instead of who he is, creates a loneliness no marriage, pets or career upgrade can ease. He may not even fully identify that as what he’s feeling, or you as the source, beyond a systemic despair.

So be honest with yourself — then be honest with him. That’s how you get through this.

• Email Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, or chat with her online at 11 a.m. Central time each Friday at washingtonpost.com.

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