Hello all, I’m new to this site but I joined because I wanted a sounding board. I’m facing a crucial crossroads in my life and I have to make a decision that won’t make me miserable. This is going to be long so I apologize ahead of time.

I’ve been with my boyfriend for five years now. He’s known me since I started  my PhD and he’s been there through my mother’s death, my graduation, visa troubles and so on and so forth. We have or I thought we had and incredibly strong and enduring relationship. Because of my visa situation though I had to read through all of our past texts and I realized he was a lot more interested in me in the beginning. At this point he still sends little kissy faces and he does send texts and so forth, but he’s not nearly as present and involved as he used to be. I know that sounds like a very little thing but it’s one of a lot of little things. I continually ask him to do things with me and he won’t. I’m not a party person but I don’t mind having a barbecue with the neighbors and such but he’ll cancel those without telling me and then say it was because I didn’t want to go. I asked him to learn a couples dance I like to do and he wouldn’t. We used to have breakfast together on the weekend and now he doesn’t want to do that. I’m a late riser but I’ve asked him to wake me up so I can cook for him and he won’t do it. If I go to bed early so I wake up naturally he will often tell me he’s going to go golfing or just doesn’t want a big breakfast because it’s fattening or something. We used to Skype with his parents together but for about a year or more he’s set up his computer so that when he calls them he has headphones on and so …. I can’t hear them and can’t speak to them. They’re his parents so I haven’t complained, but his mother did complain that I wasn’t joining the conversation anymore. But she complained to me with the assumption that it was my fault rather than him. We’ve been on a lot of trips together which I do like, but whenever we go with family it’s always his family never mine and it’s always where he wants to go and what he wants to do. We did go to a wedding on my side of the family, but after two days with one of my relatives he decided he couldn’t stand it anymore and insisted we stay with his friends instead. It was like pulling teeth to get him to let me see my grandmother and cousins and he made it completely clear he didn’t want to be there.

We took a trip this summer once again with his family. We were with his parents and some cousins of his. Whenever I tried to walk with him his cousins got between us. Whenever I tried to speak to him they interrupted me. I even at one point just kept talking through one of the interruptions and my boyfriend told ME to stop interrupting his cousin. After that I just stopped speaking entirely. He then accused me of being recalcitrant. If I tried to do something with him they insisted on coming with. When we went to the beach they even tried to tell me what I should wear and how precisely I should do things like dig for cockles (they aren’t any better or more experienced at any of this than I and at one point what they were insisting was that on a cold and windy day I wear shorts). At one point we were all out together at some outdoor market and while I was looking at something they all including my boyfriend just walked away and left me there alone. I decided the better part of valor at that point was to enjoy the market on my own. So I did. And then when they found me they accused me of wandering off. It could have been a mistake but with everything else and with my boyfriend’s complete failure to stand up for me I just can’t see it that way. This trip also intersected both of our birthdays. For a long time I’ve wanted to go out with my girlfriends for my birthday and I’ve told him this. But every time he insists we should celebrate my birthday with his family and while I’m happy we are actually celebrating it I would like it to be on my terms and with my family and friends rather than just his.

The thing that really hurts me and the reason that – despite the length of our relationship and the fact that all told it has been a good even enviable relationship – I’m thinking of leaving him is that he doesn’t seem to take me seriously. I haven’t been able to legally work due to my visa issues for awhile. Before that I had a not lucrative job but a really amazing one. It’s the sort of job you read about in thrillers or see in movies. I lost it because my visa ran out. At roughly the same time I graduated. I was excited to attend my graduation and everyone except my boyfriend made a huge deal out of it because …. it was a huge deal. I will say, my boyfriend made a gift of the hotel stay and the transportation which I do appreciate deeply, but the entire time he was saying how silly it was to have a ceremony. I wrote five hundred pages of science to get that degree. I wanted to celebrate it. That was the moment where I could turn my life around. I could use that and the job I once had to start an amazing scientific career. But all this was conditional on the legality of me working. He had long promised that we’d start planning our wedding after graduation and work visas are easier to acquire when married. I’ve heard nothing from him about marriage. He’s complained that I don’t have a job and that I need his help getting a visa, but he basically makes fun of me every time I show him what I’m doing in the interim or how I plan to salvage this. In the latest debacle we were actually separated at the border and this time he has stood up for me much more than he did the last time so that gives me some hope. But I just keep on remembering my first application how I kept on asking him for the information and materials I needed from him and he kept on just playing his video games and refusing to sit down with me for the ten minutes I needed from him. Then when I finally got it done he accused me of procrastinating. As it turned out the office in question mishandled our case and since I’ve explained that to him and since I got an actual lawyer to explain it to him he’s been more sympathetic and helpful but if he had just helped me when I first asked perhaps we could have avoided all this.

His mom is usually much nicer than the following will imply but being his mother she’s entirely on his side. According to her I’ve been pulling away from my boyfriend since my mother’s death. I won’t rule out that my mom’s death has caused me to pull back. I loved my mother dearly and it absolutely kills me that I’ve seen more of my boyfriend’s family than her in the past five years. Certainly that could be creating some malcontent on my part. She also was somewhat dismissive of my need to work. Which is weird because she’s a feminist. I NEED to work. Not being able to work has been eroding my soul. Knowing that my career will suffer hurts me deeply. And I didn’t starve myself half to death and spend 80 hours weekly studying writing and doing lab work to sit at home and wait for my dearest hubby. But she is saying that I shouldn’t put so much stock in it because it will further separate me from her son and she seems to believe I’ll quit work once we have children. I was shocked to hear her say such things and I kinda feel the walls falling in on me. I felt trapped before – like a tiger in a cage – now I feel buried alive.

I have a choice then. I can end my relationship, return to my home country and live my life alone or I can insist my boyfriend marries me and live my life with him. I would prefer the latter. But I cannot give up any more of myself and he and his mother seem insistent that I do. I tried to tell his mother that I’d rather be a person living alone than a phantom haunting a family, but either she did not understand what I meant or she thinks the problems with my boyfriend are simply my own problems. Some of them certainly are and where I am wrong I will change or at least try. But I’m not getting the same from my boyfriend. I want to marry because we love each other, but it feels like he might only love an uncomplicated image of me rather than me myself. If that’s the case I love him but I don’t want him.

What do I do? Do I insist? Do I leave? Do I put my foot down? Keep in mind even though I’m angry and a bit scared here, we do have or had a good relationship. I’m representing all of our recent problems, so this hasn’t given voice to our strengths and the great things that we have done together. He does remain thoughtful and kind and he does do special things for me even now. And he does like *some* of my friends even if he doesn’t understand them. But when I see “our” future in his eyes it’s really just him with me as a satellite. And that I don’t want. I don’t seriously envision us splitting up, but I have died enough already. I have to choose now. Is there possibly a third option I can’t see? Can I find a method of getting him to understand this?? I’m bad with confrontation and I feel like we’re going to have to fight this out. He’s stubborn and does not take criticism well. If he counts our relationship in dollars spent he’s going to see me as deeply indebted to him. I have to be a person though. I’m so smart, yet this eludes me. There’s no book or research to fix this. This is an area where I need help from people who aren’t going to immediately side with me or him. His mother’s lovely but she’s his mother and she wants what he wants. My friends are great, but they’re going to fiercely defend me in all things. Please help me sort this out.