My boyfriend and I are both 31. I have one kid, he has none. We have known each other for 12 years. He has epilepsy, and it makes life very difficult for him due to where he’s living (he lives in Virginia, even though his seizures are predictable and he can feel them coming, they will not allow him to drive which understandably makes getting a job difficult). I know he would benefit from marrying me and moving out here to the Seattle area, there would of course be mutual benefits as well.
Here’s where it gets complicated. I love him dearly, but he is not the love of my life. I truly believe my person was my kid’s dad, but he was quite literally turned against me by my ex best friend (if you want details I have posted about them before on other subreddits) and now is dating her and basically is completely absent from my life now. I miss him with everything in me and I desperately wanted and still want to spend the rest of my life with him, but I know that will not happen and I have accepted it. I started dating my boyfriend after a year and a half of my kid’s dad and I being broken up with trying to move on and give my kid an actual family again. We dated briefly when we were 20 so this isn’t a new thing for us, I chose him because I knew we worked well together in general and because I still had affection and feelings for him. We broke up due to the long distance aspect originally, but now that we are older it’s not so much of an issue.
I think we would be a good match for a marriage, and while he is not the love of my life, I think we both have gone down paths that would make a peaceful, low conflict partnership beneficial. I simply no longer feel as though there NEEDS to be romance in a marriage partnership for it to be successful, and in fact I think a vast majority of the time it is an unnecessary complication, especially when children come into the mix. I would rather avoid subjecting my child to another situation where my own selfish desire for a romance between my husband and I leads to the destruction of our family. However, I know my boyfriend loves me more than I love him. I don’t know if he will be okay with the idea that this wouldn’t be “it” for me, but rather something I have chosen because I finally want to experience a peaceful lifestyle with someone I care about and can collaborate with on building that life together.
Has anyone in here initially gotten into a love based relationship that eventually evolved into something more out of convenience? What did that look like? How do you manage still being in love with someone else while married to another, outside of therapy (I’m already in therapy)? How do you set expectations in partnerships not based in romance? Is it relatively the same? Can you really get the kind of fulfillment out of a marriage of convenience that is often associated with love matches?