Feeling uncertain about my relationship with a younger man
I (32F) am dating a man 7 years younger than me (25M) and feeling uneasy about our future.
We’ve been together 3 years & the age gap has never really been a problem. We have so many common interests, he’s incredibly mature for his age, is an amazing communicator & partner, & is the love of my life.
However, recently he has been struggling with the fact that he doesn’t feel ready for kids or marriage. A lot of my friends (& his) are getting married & settling down/having kids, & he feels a lot of pressure to do the same, even though I’ve never put this pressure on him. I do want to have kids, but I’m not ready for them yet nor in a rush to have them. He is feeling super hesitant about the future because he doesn’t want to put me in a situation where he’s still not ready for kids in 5-6 years which puts me at 37-38, which is on the later side of my personal ‘having kids’ window. I am open to having kids later, but he’s scared he won’t be ready when I am & doesn’t want that to cause our relationship to fail & then me end up being 38 & single.
We’ve decided to take a break to give ourselves a chance to truly think through the compromises we both will have to make if we decide to stay together & take the next step.
Have any of you been in a similar situation? Did you stay together? Did it work out? Personally I want to take the leap because he is the one for me & I want to spend the rest of my life with him. He is blossoming in his career & has so much ahead of him, & I also don’t want him to feel like I am holding him back or impacting his freedom/future in any way down the line.
tl;dr my boyfriend is unsure if he will want to have kids & with me being 7yrs older, my biological clock is ticking & if we stay together he will become a dad at a younger age than he’d ideally like