my boyfriend (M26) recently started talking seriously about buying a house in penang because he works there and has been living there alone for about a year, and that somehow led to him asking me (F23) all these questions about my future.
like how do u spend ur life in 2 years, how’s ur career gonna be, what kind of woman do u wanna be, can u live in penang like me? and i get it, i really do. if he’s thinking about marriage, obviously he needs to know whether our lives can actually fit together.
but after thinking about it, i realized what bothers me is that he’s asking me so much about what i’m going to have to change or give up, but has he actually wondered what i’m giving up for him? because if i move to penang, i’m jauh from my family. my family is literally my safety net and i’m extremely close to them.
in kl i have my mum, my family, my friends, people i know. in penang i basically have nobody. he would be the closest person i have there, literally the only person i could call family in that place. and i’m not saying this because i want a house or money or some fancy life. i genuinely don’t care about that. i’m asking what he gives me emotionally in return. can he love me properly enough that i feel safe and secure with him the way i feel safe with my family? can i trust that if i leave my family and build a new life with him, he’ll actually feel like home too?
because yes, i can learn to be independent. i can find a job, make friends, learn to live alone, manage money, build my own routine, all of that. but i don’t want to just survive in penang. i want to feel safe there. and when i ask him about these things, he says they’re non-issues, fixable, doable. and that honestly frustrates me because i’m not asking whether they’re doable.
i’m asking whether he’ll actually do the things that make me feel secure. if it’s all fixable, why not start fixing it now? why wait until i’m married and already far from my family before we figure out whether he can actually love me in the way i need?
we’ve been together for 5 years and he has only met my mum once. five years. and now we supposedly have around 2 years before marriage and i keep thinking, how exactly is he planning to make up to my family in that short amount of time? because he has talked shit about my family before, he has done me wrong, and my whole ass family knows about it.
they don’t even know we got back together because i literally have to hide him from them. i already know they’d be mad as fuck if they found out. so when he says “we still have 2 years,” i’m like… is 2 years actually enough? enough for what happened between him and my family to be repaired? enough for them to trust him again? enough for him to show them that he actually changed?
because my family’s idea of relationships is completely different from his. his mindset is basically “the only time my girl meets my family is when she’s gonna get married.” meanwhile my family doesn’t see it that way at all. they don’t care about relationship history or whether i make friends with males, they care about safety. they want to know who i’m with, who my friends are, where i am, whether i’m okay.
and all these years we’ve mostly done things his way because i kept agreeing and adapting. now he’s asking me to fit into his future, his city, his lifestyle, his timeline, and i’m thinking… okay, but now u only have 2 years to learn how to do things my way too.
not because i want to control him, but because if i’m going to become his wife, my family doesn’t magically stop being part of me just because i move states. i’m not asking him to buy me anything. i’m not asking him to make my life luxurious. i’m asking him to make me feel like i’m not making the biggest sacrifice of my life for someone who still sees my fears as “non-issues.”
i can learn to live in penang. i can learn to be independent. i can build a career. i can figure my life out. but how am i supposed to trust that the man i’m doing all of this for will actually become a safe place for me too? because i don’t need him to promise me he’ll love me perfectly forever. i just need him to show me now that when life gets hard, he’ll care enough to make me feel safe instead of telling me “we can fix it later.”
and honestly… i poured my heart out about all of this and i don’t even know if i’m asking for too much or if i’m just finally realizing that moving away from my family for someone is a MUCH bigger sacrifice than he seems to understand.