Dear Steve and Shirley,
I've been in a relationship with a man for two years, and he treats me like a side chick. I can spend the night at his house, but I can't leave anything there. Meanwhile, he has toiletries at my house, and he’s left his Steelers blanket folded up neatly on my couch and asked me not to move it.
He's a dog lover, but he won’t allow my dog to set foot in his house. And my dog only weighs five pounds! I could understand if it were a Rottweiler, but it’s a tiny toy poodle.
On Sunday, his mom and dad called and said they were stopping by because they were in the area. He told me I should go before they got there. I get that it wouldn’t be ideal to meet them for the first time like that, but he could have been nicer about it—or at least said I could meet them another time.
He won’t come to any of my work events, and I have a lot of them. He said we need to decide where our relationship is going before he makes those kinds of moves. I don’t understand what that means.
He’s thirty-six and I’m thirty-two, and for the past two years we’ve been having most of our meals together, sleeping together, working out together, and even hanging out with my two sisters. I won’t let him meet my parents until I meet his, because I don’t know how to introduce him. If I say he’s my boyfriend, he might correct me in front of my daddy—and that would be embarrassing.
At our big ages, he should be ready to settle down. When I look back at how our relationship began, I didn’t ask the right questions. He never told me he was ready to settle down—we just started hanging out a lot and having great sex.
Have I let this go on for too long to start questioning him?