Bre Avery Zacharski
This 27-year-old woman has been with her 31-year-old boyfriend for a little less than four years now, and they moved in together a bit more than a year ago.
Her boyfriend is currently completing medical school and will most likely have to relocate to do his residency.
Looking at the locations her boyfriend has applied to, a move to the other side of the country is in order.
For more than a year, she has made it obvious to her boyfriend that she has no plans of relocating with him unless he proposes to her since she has known all along that his residency would expect him to find a new zip code.
As for her, her entire social network is based in New York, which is where they currently reside. Her parents live on the East Coast, and she sees them with a lot of regularity, and she does not have any siblings. Her clients for her job are also all on the East Coast.
This May is when her boyfriend will find out where he will be doing his residency, so there’s not an enormous window of time for him left to propose to her.
“Marriage is important to me, and I don’t see myself happy being a girlfriend forever,” she explained.
“However, the issue is that he doesn’t feel like we are entirely ready. I don’t fully disagree, either. The last year has been challenging since he’s been in clinic, but we have experienced a lot together and have come out the other side. My main concern is that it’s hard for me to give such a large part of my life (if not nearly my entire life/roots) to a boyfriend without a deeper level of commitment.”
“But I also understand the ramifications of jumping into something too early. A solution such as ‘we don’t have to get engaged now, but within X amount of time after we move and settle down’ also feels off. I’m not sure how to best proceed. We both would like the engagement to feel a bit more natural, but we both expressed that we’re not sure if we have that luxury.”
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