So confused, need help

My boyfriend and I have been dating for a year. I know he's the one and I'm ready to talk about moving in. However, he is all over the place. I never know how he's feeling. I know he wants the same thing but isn't ready yet. I've always had a plan of what my life would be like. I wanted to be married and considering a child soon by now. However that isn't the case and I'm having such a hard time trying to be OK with where I am and with the fact that my boyfriend isn't ready. I know his past relationship ended very badly and I want to give him time to get over things but I'm ready for more. I find myself starting silly fights and arguments just because I'm mad and unhappy that things aren't at the point I want them to be. I'm aware of how selfish and awful that it but I can't seem to control how I'm feeling. I need help!

You have basically answered your issue when you state your BF's previous relationship ended badly and you want to give him time to get over things. There's the problem, you're with a guy who really shouldn't be with anyone until he's completely over his hurt from the past. Your frustration is because you can't achieve your goals with him right now, but going by your post, he's nowhere close being the one to help you achieve them. If you know he isn't ready yet, then why bother being selfish and awful and hurting both of you? Are you really sure he is the one?..because if you were, you would be supporting and nurturing him without question. And one year is still very early days when it comes to a lifetime of commitment.

My own two-penneth-worth: It's not possible when a couple is truly, properly in love to be so out of synch. So goals is right. ON-PAPER goals. They're supposed to be EMOTIONAL goals that get borne BECAUSE of the relationship (like flowers following stems and leaves as a result of good nurturing). Here's how it works: The woman is [a] neutral or [b] reluctant about wanting a relationship. The man - he who [a] quite likes a challenge or [b] absolutely insists on challenges, in direct proportion to whichever, continually, increasingly, blows white-hot air and actions onto her until her defences melt followed by heart heating up and up until she yields and (if his mate-aquiring skills are adequate enough to take him beyond the chase and woo phases) *continues* to yield. Her fitting *responses*, meanwhile, keep his ardour regenerating and increasing as perpetuates this cycle. You falling in love with a fella is the result of him brainwashing you in a GOOD way, in other words. So if you possess feelings, mindsets and urges that he *lacks*, these have not come from his construction of your relationship but from you independently, meaning they can't be natural urges borne from love. Berbom. Like the age-old ditty illustrates: "You and he Sitting in a tree K-i-s-s-i-n-g. FIRST [i.e. next] comes love THEN comes marriage THEN comes the baby in the baby carriage" If he's been 'blowing' too insufficiently or too slowly because he wasn't ideally ready and able, then popular opinion says you either have to have patient faith OR call it a case of 'nearly but not quite' due to the bedrock of the above process as allows it to go naturally and healthily being Right Person, Right Place, RIGHT TIME. So no, you don't need help, you need to decide whether you deep down believe (from all the witnessable, collective evidence) that patience will at some reasonable point pay dividends or alternatively, whether there's another man out there belonging to your total soulmate pool who *is* as raring to go as you. But given it's only been one year then the jury's verdict would *seem* to be: UNJUSTIFIED IMPATIENCE. What you need help with is battling and controlling the nagging tick of your biological clock AND/OR whatever artificial social pressure you feel you're under and have to live up to. HOWEVER! My own experiences and witnessings have made me seriously doubt the *degree* of importance of RP, RP, RT because there are too many cases where meeting one of the cream of your soulmates instantly puts paid to any effects of any past traumas and heartbreaks. Finding The One (Best Of) is the instant panacea, in other words, with everything else that's gone before ceasing to matter a jot as well as moreover ceasing to affect and effect. You are REBORN. Sure, the Honeymoon Heroin High, once adapted to, still sees you and he start to dare to disagree and vie/negotiate for permanent power positions, etc., as well as react negatively together and against each other to outside influences not of your control (life's sh*t) as you emerge more out of the cosy rosy bubble back into the real, hum-drum world, but regardless, you and he overcome and surpass all such hurdles and know even at the time that nothing can or will actually split you apart. How you fight and make up tends to reflect this. Not only that but past lessons truly learned leave you and he in the first place automatically attracted ONLY to and by a Like, a counterpart - meaning even if you're both walking wounded, you just determinedly hobble up the rest of the recovery path *together*, with allowances being pre-understood thus mutual (meaning, never a serious obstacle). Again, you tend to be in complete synch (albeit with the man being used to, by virtue of his gender/nurturing, having to be the braver sex, being just one step ahead of you the whole way). It's a two-legged race. This not being the case is why you so commonly hear of the situation of (typically) the woman having complained at the time that her boyfriend "wasn't ready" or "was too scared" or "depressed" to commit, then ultimately finishing it with him or vice versa/mutually only to find to her utter chagrin that the ugger went and all too happily and practically instantly MARRIED her successor! Suddenly all those so-called true, valid, perfectly reasonable and understandable excuses he presented verbally or behaviourally against getting married to her have vanished - POOF! - into thin air. Gosh, how did THAT happen, how could that BE? Answer: when with you, the not-quite-perfect partner (or *seeming* not quite partner), no, marriage did NOT appeal, the thought of it DID 'scare'. Course. But when things change, so do feelings. And likewise when changes are improvements - SO DOES WILLINGNESS, LIKE MAGIC, APPEAR. So it's never the one thing, i.e. you're too impatient versus he's not ready, either/or. It's BOTH by whatever degree. So are you SURE-sure-sure your fight-picking, etc., is so without sense and selfish in the negative sense or are you in fact under your own radar seemingly very sensibly (albeit non-courageously) doing this: Trying to get yourself fired or make him dismiss himself from the relationship in order that you'll be freed to seemingly-sensibly find someone who'd rather stab his own eyeballs than allow you, the best thing that ever happened to him now and forever, to remain single (and as such, available to other male advances) for even one more day following full-on love having reached its critical quantum? Or do you have to take responsibility for that state of affairs, by which I mean: Did you originally make him feel unsafe, since when you've failed to make him feel safer? Did you, by having too obviously COME to the relationship with a life shopping list, render him feeling like a nothing-special-you'll-do supermarket item rather than your soulmate? Deep down, men need to feel their women wanting a baby was a development created by HIM and YOUR RELATIONSHIP, as in things change (you go from not in-love to in-love) and then FEELINGS change ("I suddenly want a baby... YOUR baby, no-one else's - because I love you so much!"), not your biological clock or anything else. *Him*...because at this point you super-love him (not just your unborn baby) and it's the only next-available love expression on the menu. Capiche? So in summary, is he not adequately The One but only because you made him DOUBT you (and he) were The One (= safe), meaning right from the word go he failed to have the CONFIDENCE to blow sufficient white-hot air/actions, meaning today you're NOT fully yielded thus now, instead, are trying to compensate for that prior procedural boo-boo by wanting to fast-track yourself and the relationship via NON-natural means as mimic the very pre-yielded and unflattering-to-him state of mind you ARRIVED in as gave him doubts in the first place (Catch 22)? It's 'we conveniently want the same things, let's go buy them' (unnatural) versus 'we want each other and whatever naturally results from being this much in love' (natural). Capiche? And the REASON I suspect this simple but elusive obstacle is all that lays behind his reticence, is because of you worrying you're being selfish. This makes me suspect that aside from this issue he's your idea of a diamond, meaning he does in all other ways treat you like you're genuinely loved by him. Correct? That's the difficulty with life - finding that perfect balance between natural and man-made or even more specifically in this case, deciding if waiting is unreasonable or reasonable. But just turn it around: Imagine if tomorrow you found out you [a] couldn't have a baby, not by ANY means or [b] wouldn't be capable for the next 10 years. Would you expect him to up and leave you and go marry someone else who could or could sooner? And if he did, how much would you then conclude he'd always truly loved you? Wouldn't you then view it as you having dodged the bullet called, sealing your relationship with a kiddie when the relationship wasn't even worth sealing? ..."love THEN marriage THEN baby"... Love is the bedrock, not the biological clock. Your solution, therefore, is to clarify your mind on that "him first, baby second" score and start to act accordingly until such reasonable time as he believes he's the cake and the baby the cherry, and see whether the correct pressure being increased along with incorrect pressure being removed does the trick. And by 'trick' I mean, making him newly want to take the relationship further/deeper (to marriage) rather than keeping it where it is, stuck fast and (like a building) merely maintained rather than extended whilst using the excuse of 'ow, my heart still hurts and my head's still in a muddle'. If it FAILS to do the trick, you'll then know for certain that the reason he really, truly isn't ready is because you're *not* soulmates, just other people's eventual soulmates seeking 'mere' practise runs (meaning, don't struggle/bicker, just fire with regret and await the inevitable new upgrade). Irrespective of anything, however, I do NOT recommend you move in together unmarried. As far as can be seen, it just removes the man's need to make it official. If the full Monty is wanted and the full Monty is there for the taking, then taken it will be. How old are you, anyway? You might have YEARS left, even IF you're so-called 'getting a bit too old'. Being truly in love usually defies those so-called rules of fact, anyway. (Okay - 100 penneth-worth, LOL)