Long term "boyfriend - girlfriend" relationships sustainable over many years?

[elbows]

…sorry about that…

We lived together and worked in the same place. (strike two)

We travelled together for several months at a time. (strike three, ding, ding, ding!)

Turns out all the people giving me this advice have now seen the inside of a divorce court themselves.

And after a certain amount of time it begins to seem you already know the formula that works.

After 20 yrs I often refer to him as my husband, but it took a lot of years for me to grow comfortable with it.

I discovered when we were travelling the husband lie slipped off my tongue quite easily. Besides in many 3rd world countries then cohabitation was still technically illegal. But once we were back home I’d correct anybody who dared to say this, even if they were trying to be funny. I was very particular. It wore off after about 15 yrs.

I guess it’s just different for everybody.

[MandaJo]

It seems to me that people are talking about two very different things–long term co-habitating and long term dating. The former is not at all uncommon, but the latter, when people consider themselves to be in a monogamous relationship but only see each other a few times a week/ maintain and actually live in separate residences and have no plans to ever move towards co-habitation–is quite a bit more rare. I’m thinking of people that are together for years but never become a social “couple”, own no property jointly, do not have children together, are not each other’s life-insurance beneficiaries, do not argue about where “they” are going to spend Christmas, and don’t know each other’s checkbook balance because neither person really wants to, and they see their relationship as real and complete as it is, not as a transitional phase to a “real” relationship. As I said earlier, some people are just really independent and no relationship really defines them. That’s awesome, provided they can resist the social message that says that it is abnormal or unhealthy.

This is a long way from the co-habitating for fifty years, books and CDs all mixed up, Grand children playing on the floor, shared-mortgage all paid off model. When responding to the OP, I think it is useful to keep these two models separate–it seems to me, at least, that they are considerably more different from each other than long-term co-habitating is different from traditional marriage.

[CanvasShoes]

@astro

Would you doper ladies be happy with a man just willing to be a boyfriend five years out?

Well, for a while I was. But I did want a commitment, and though he kept trying, he just kept getting that “not ready” vibe. I wasn’t willing to be a booty call, so I left the state, moved to TX and tried to start over.

Turns out, the industry in which my career exists, is not present in Texas. So, needing to pay bills and all, I called my old companies back, and was rehired and am returning to AK in 10 days, after a 9 month sabbatical.

The former boyfriend is still there, and there are still feelings between us, but I’m done with my days of being willing to wait on him for a commitment. Which (suprising to me), appears to have sent him into a tailspin of “what?? you mean it won’t be ‘us’ anymore”?

Me: umm nope, I’m not gonna play the waiting game.
Him: Hmm, Now I need to think on what I’m going to do

I’m thinking “NOW you gotta think on it”??

Oh, and this is after a relationship that started as a 2 and a half year just friendship, and went from there to bf/gf for the next 7, with a few short breaks during those 7, while we “saw other people”.

Kind of a complicated thing, and it’s always been a very close and “best friends cutting up in the back of the classroom” relationship. Who knows what will happen, but from now on, my PERSONAL answer to your question is “no, not just No, but HELL no”.

I know that other people (as others have posted) make that sortof “sleeping bag stashed behind the couch” thing work, but it’s not for me.

[FilmGeek]

I’ve been dating Ardred for 2.5 years and we’ve been living together pretty much all of that time. We met at work, :eek:, I started staying at his place the next week. I got my own place a few months later and he moved back in with his parents, so he was living with me pretty much full time. We’ve been on a lease together for a year and change.

We’ve broached the subject of marriage. A lot of my thoughts about it have come from the gay marriage controversy*, with the talk of legitimizing relationships and committing to each other in front of friends and family. Not much will change when we get married, as we’re not changing our last names, and our finances will probably stay pretty separate for a while, as he just declared bankruptcy and I’m planning on opening a business in the next few years. We’re not having kids, but we have adopted pets together.

Part of me wants a ring, too.
*I first typed “contravesty”. heh.

[Eva_Luna]

@clairobscur

It might be unusual in the USA, but it’s very common here (and in other european countries). A lot of people who have been living together for a long time only marry for practical reasons, for instance when they beget children or want to buy a house together, or such things.

::chuckle::

I’m the last person to moralize on the life choices of consenting adults, but we’ve had to have quite a number of chats with clients (usually European, most often Dutch or German) about a simple fact of unmarried cohabitation: even if you have been together for 15 years and have six kids together, that does not equate to marriage for U.S. immigration purposes. (There are provisions for protracted visitor visa extensions for long-term partners of long-term work visa applicants, whether same gender or opposite gender. But if the primary applicant moves on to the green card stage, there is no provision for a green card for an unmarried partner - he/she must qualify on an independent basis, or the two have to get legally married).

The reactions of people when they learn this are all over the map; some are enraged, some have the partner apply for a visa on a separate basis (as a student, or sometimes for his/her own separate work visa), and some simply accept it and formalize their union. But the funniest had to be the Dutch guy, who in filling out our standard questionnaire for a work visa, crossed out the line for “spouse” and wrote in “non-spouse.”

[JRDelirious]

@Manda JO

…when people consider themselves to be in a monogamous relationship but only see each other a few times a week/ maintain and actually live in separate residences […] own no property jointly, do not have children together, are not each other’s life-insurance beneficiaries, do not argue about where “they” are going to spend Christmas, and don’t know each other’s checkbook balance because neither person really wants to…

Yes, it is important to make the distinction. That scenario is what I think of when the OP question is posed.

I have a dear close female friend who not only practices this (she’s in the umptyth year of such an arrangement) but makes it a point that she is NOT going to “demand a more permanent commitment” and that she will abide no such demand from the other party. She says she just can’t handle the idea of being obligated but I think it’s just she’d rather remain able to just leave her laundry piled up in the middle of the living room

[AngelicGemma]

If my boyfriend doesn’t propose after about 3 years, I may have to do it myself. (Just kidding. That is his job)

[Kalhoun]

@astro

I was reading this thread "So I died last night… ", and wondered how long girlfriend - boyfriend relationsips can typically extend themselves across time before one partner or the other demands a more permanent committment? I know it depends on the couple’s situation to large degree, but relationships of 5 years plus are (IMO) somewhat unusual for younger couples without concrete marriage plans in the offing.

Have times changed? Are multi-year boyfriend-girlfriend relationships typically sustainable across extended periods of time without concrete committments to marriage?

Would you doper ladies be happy with a man just willing to be a boyfriend five years out?

We went nine years living together before we married.

[Kalhoun]

@astro

I was reading this thread "So I died last night… ", and wondered how long girlfriend - boyfriend relationsips can typically extend themselves across time before one partner or the other demands a more permanent committment? I know it depends on the couple’s situation to large degree, but relationships of 5 years plus are (IMO) somewhat unusual for younger couples without concrete marriage plans in the offing.

Have times changed? Are multi-year boyfriend-girlfriend relationships typically sustainable across extended periods of time without concrete committments to marriage?

Would you doper ladies be happy with a man just willing to be a boyfriend five years out?

We went nine years living together before we married. I was the one that pushed for marriage. After all that time sharing expenses, including the mortgage, I felt I needed more than roommate status.

[Maastricht]

Hmm…this is one of those threads where there is a real cultural difference between USA on the one hand and Europe (and apparently Canada, which looks more and more Dutch, the more I learn about it) on the other hand.

Which means I have to do some cultural “translating” when reading the posts from Americans. And I might translate wrong.

I have the typical Dutch non-married marriage (thanks to **clair-obscur ** and **Eva Luna ** I now know it is typical, instead of original and daring. Sigh…that another illusion out the window). My SO and I have lived together for 13 years now, without any form of legal documentation. It just isn’t necessary. No kids, dual incomes, no joint property. Both our names are on the rental-contract, though. We do want to grow old together, and feel married, just as much or more then traditionally married couples, for much of the same reasons Boscibo described.

I think the model astro describes in the OP is not the European common law marriage, or even the Living-Apart-Together relationship between independent souls MandaJo described.
What astro describes, is a relationship that, by American cultural laws, “should” go on to the next stage, and one partner wants it to move on to the next stage, but the other partner won’'t allow it to.
IMHO, that’s the essence of the “problem” an unequal division of power. In relationships, the one who witholds commitment sadly has more power then the one who *wants * commitment. Usually, the commited partner gets fed up with this and breaks off the relationship herself, thereby sometimes reversing the situation.

I wouldn’t want a relationship with that kind of powerstruggles. So to the OP I say: no, I wouldn’t want even a one-year relationship without some form of commitment. That’s what commitment means, to me: an mutual admission we both want this relationship, just as much. The shape of that commitment doesn’t matter, as long as I feel the power is evenly distributed.

[light_strand]

My now husband and I dated for 17 years before we married. We wouldn’t have married at all except for the fact that he got called up by the Marine Corps for this “damn fool war”. I wouldn’t marry him prior to leaving (I think that’s a bad omen) but when he got back we married so that when he gets called up again, we’ll be all set, and I won’t have to be creeped out.

However, neither of us are particularly pleased that we had to marry so that the US government would bother informing me if anything happened to him. So we got married in Vegas, by Elvis, on Feb 29 so we won’t have regular anniversaries.

We did have a cool engagement though. It went something like this:
Me (on phone): We should probably get married
Him: Yeah, we should do that.
Me: How about Elvis
Him: OK

That’s it. Romantics until the very end. I love him dearly and wouldn’t give him up for the world. Marriage is a state of mind as far as I’m concerned.

[Fuji_Kitakyusho]

Married vs. not married: what’s the difference?

[Cazzle]

Not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but…

My brother’s in-laws married when their oldest child was 15 or 16. Don’t think they could keep the peace long enough to arrange and go through with a wedding before that. Rather a stormy relationship.

My friend met her boyfriend while they were still in High School. As all she ever wanted was to be married and have children, it’s no surprise that they were engaged a year out of high school. After that, they moved in together and off to the big city. She was miserable there, but he couldn’t get work here so they bought a house back in their hometown and she moved into it. He started living in a caravan (trailer) in the city during the week and would come home on Friday nights, go back to the city on Monday morning. She kept at him to set a date for their wedding but he refused, saying that he would not marry her until she learnt to save money. Eight years passed. She was getting pretty frantic - having hooked up with a guy willing to get engaged right out of high school, she thought the whole marriage/motherhood thing was not far off but instead she found herself engaged to a man who absolutely refused to commit. Anyway, she solved that problem by falling pregnant. He immediately agreed to marry her and they have now been together 12 years, married for three. He still keeps his own personal bank account and she has no access to it, and no idea how much is in it. He gives her a token amount to run the household on and banks the majority of his paycheck into his own savings. In most ways, he still acts like a single man instead of a responsible father and husband, refusing to buy new clothes for their kids and instead splurging on motorbikes and off road vehicles for himself. At least they now live together, as he managed to find a job locally at last.