Our anniversary took place on Sunday and that fact made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, and then three days later I was again thinking about splitting up.

I know this strikes you as a sign of being bipolar, but let me explain.

Before our anniversary celebration, which we decided to begin on Saturday night at midnight, we went shortly to a party of a friend of mine, who was overjoyed to see Boo, and invited him over. Thing is, she should have probably refrained from using the phrase “I know you haven’t been up to much, what with your sister dying, blah blah blah” (yes, blah blah blah is a literal quote) because I didn’t have to look at him to know what the reaction would be.

Needless to say, the midnight celebration didn’t quite look the way I expected it to. There wasn’t much joy and/or champagne, but there was a lot of dead sister talk mixed with a bit of “your friends can be so unpleasant sometimes” talk. We did, though, finally progress to actual anniversary, around 2am, and that was the fun bit.

On Sunday we went to the gym together, because that’s how we homo-homies roll, and I started talking to him about what needs to be done to my bathroom to improve its current (not very good) outlook. And then Boo said: “Well, another thing we could do is look at buying a new place together instead of improving the old one.”

I thought about the idea for the next two days more or less non-stop. And… I like it. For the first time in my life I really feel like settling down. Like living together, getting married, etc. But then, I thought, I have never stayed with Boo longer than a few days; and every time I more or less put my normal life on hold. I don’t sit in front of the computer, don’t read much, don’t listen to my music but his most of the time, don’t do cleaning… that’s all lovely and fine but it’s not what actual life together is like. So I thought, I’ll suggest that we first need to live together for a few weeks at his place, since it’s larger than mine, and if we don’t kill each other off, we can take a further step.

“Oh, no, that’s not going to happen,” said Boo semi-cheerfully. “This place isn’t big enough for both of us. We both need space. When you’re my age, you’re going to realise that. It’s just unrealistic.”

And that was it. Patronising, quick, dismissive. Within a minute I have realised that he’s been single for too long to actually give it up. Hell, so have I, to be honest, and that’s why before I give it up I want to give it a test drive. There is no way in hell I sell my house and move in with him to a 400 thousand euro place without first finding out whether we can actually survive without killing each other on a daily basis, rather than on a more or less “every day is like Sunday” basis. It has nothing to do with age (especially as I also want my space if we live together). It has all to do with the fact that I worked far too long to get where I am to risk losing it now. And moving from living in separate apartments to the degree where I don’t even have a shelf at his place (nor he in mine, but we spend 80% time at his) straight to buying a house together strikes me as extremely risky.

So it’s probably not going to happen, I thought then. We’re not going to move in together. I won’t change my mind, so unless he changes his, this is the farthest we are going to get. And thing is, I *am* feeling ready to settle — and I am tired of traveling up and down and never being at my own apartment and never having time to clean up or even finally arrange books on my bookshelf a year after having moved in.

Perhaps he has just lived too long on his own to now really be able to give it up? On one hand, he loves me, and I love him too, on the other, perhaps he doesn’t love me quite enough yet? Perhaps I should just wait longer? Perhaps I am wasting my time? Perhaps I will one day discover I am 39 and still biking up and down twice a week to meet a guy 13 years senior who isn’t quite ready to really, really share his life with anyone else? Perhaps I’m stupid?

It’s odd to feel like this a few days after an anniversary that should have left me giddy in excitement (and did, for two days), but I can’t help thinking that perhaps, after all, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.