Dear Roe,
I am a gay man in my late 20s in a long-term relationship. I love my partner, I truly feel I have met my soulmate and best friend. My boyfriend is a few years older than me and this is where the (very few) sources of friction in our relationship tend to come from.
He is further along than me career-wise and financially, and he is interested in buying a house in the next two years or so. I can see why this is an important next step and I am saving money with the general aim of doing this with him at some stage. However, I feel my interests in life at the moment are not linked to home ownership.
I have always been a bit lost career-wise and feel a sense of regret having not lived abroad while a lot of my friends have. I don’t necessarily have a huge desire to uproot everything and do this now, but I could perhaps see myself taking a few months out to travel in the next year or so.
I have a fear of committing to any path as it closes another way of living, so I tend to just sit in stasis without making any decisions, but I feel like committing to home ownership in the short term will be me living someone else’s dream as opposed to my own. However, I don’t want to risk my relationship. I know I will want to buy a house at some stage, but I feel hesitant to set down roots too early without having properly experienced things. I’m just lost as to what I should do.
You need to start saying yes to things. Not necessarily home ownership or your partner’s vision of a life, but you need to start saying yes to things.
Right now, your modus operandi for life seems to be: “I’ll wait until circumstances are perfect, all doubts are erased and all other options eclipsed. I’ll wait until the outcome is certain and then I’ll commit to something.”
Alas, dear letter writer, that day will never come. Circumstances will never be perfect and other options will always be available to you. But you still need to make choices. Not because making choices commits you to one trajectory for the rest of your life, but because making choices and embarking down a path will give you information.
When you make choices, you will encounter new challenges and learn skills. You will gain experience and emotional growth that simply isn’t available when standing still. By making choices, you will learn about what you enjoy in life and what you value. Find out what experiences are fun and gorgeous for the occasional wild adventure, but also discover the ways of life that feel safe and fulfilling long-term. Armed with this information, you will then be in a position to combine it and build the life you want. You will learn who you are through the experiences you have. You’ll discover your own dreams.
‘Irish friend groups can be impenetrable – will I have the same issue when I move abroad?’
Most importantly, by choosing a path and embarking upon it, you will learn that you can cope. You will feel competent. You will feel more adult. You will become a person who has tried things and survived – and you will learn that you can always change your mind and start again. Starting again with life experience, lessons and self-knowledge under your belt is very different to starting with none of that.
There is no reward for keeping the copybook of your life shiny and new and blank. There is everything to gain from filling it up with life experiences and learning from it. And for someone who doesn’t seem sure of who they are or what they want, these lessons are invaluable. These lessons are your life. And you’re refusing to pick up the pen.
I want to remind you that embracing an experience – saying yes and committing to something – gave you your partner, your soulmate. You didn’t have to embrace love or commit to a relationship, and by choosing him you inevitably cut off some other possibilities – and it was worth it. But remember that your relationship didn’t happen all at once. You said yes to a meeting, a date, another date, a phone call – all small little yeses. Individually, they didn’t commit you to a life path, but they all gave you enough information to know you wanted to keep saying yes.
‘My husband cheated on me with sex workers, blew up our family, and is now living his best life’
Take that approach to your life. Start saying yes. To hobbies, to experiences, to courses, to a volunteer gig, to job applications. Start trying things. Starting taking steps forward and paying attention to how you feel. Start living your life.
My immediate instinct is that you should go travelling if you can. But don’t fall into the trap that I think you may often do, of believing that every decision has to be all or nothing, staying still or committing to a lifetime. Could you and your partner plan a month-long trip somewhere wonderful? To a place where you get to cross borders and swim in the ocean and see landscapes that take your breath away. To a place with towns that bustle with energy. You could plan some camping too.
Such a varied trip would throw up invaluable experiences and even help you and your partner learn more about each other. How would he cope when your quad bike runs out of gas at midnight on the side of a mountain on an island with no streetlights? (Trust me, you learn a lot about a person in such a scenario.) Along the way, you might be bitten by the travel bug, or realise you’re more of a city-break person. Either way, you’ll come back with an experience, a story – and lots of information for your copybook, about yourself and the shape you want your life to take.
My other immediate instinct is that you need to have this conversation with your partner. Tell them that while you do eventually want to own a home with them, you’re not ready yet. Explain that this is not because you’re unsure about them. It is because you want to have enough life experience under your belt so that buying a home feels like an active choice, not just a passive slide onto a traditional path. I suspect they will be understanding.
‘Can a relationship still work without butterflies?’
But be aware – if you’re asking your partner to put their life plans on hold for you, you have to make some plans yourself. You have to show them the time you are asking for is actually being used well. You have to take responsibility for your life. Because respectfully, if you are asking your partner to postpone what is important to them just so you can sit around not committing to anything, your life trajectories may not be compatible. It’s okay to ask for more time. It’s not okay to knowingly waste theirs.
But honestly, I don’t want you to knowingly waste your own time either. Not knowing what you want is okay. Not having found a career you love is okay. Not wanting to hop onboard the house-ownership ladder is okay. You’re in your 20s – you get to be unsure about what the future holds, that’s what this time is for. But stop sitting still waiting for answers to arrive, neatly packaged, all risks removed. They won’t.
You have to go out there and find them. Your most evolved self and your most fulfilling life isn’t going to just be delivered to you. You have to create it. You have to write your own story, making mistakes along the way, learning from the hard lessons, building your character as you go.
You don’t need to know the ending. You just need to pick up the pen. Good luck.