Hi Valora and Anita. Thank you both for your responses.

Valora, yes he did admit that he believes people get sick of each other in long term relationships and he thinks our differences with small things would eventually add up and we’d drive each other crazy. He seems to have a big need for control in his own way and wants his relationships to be perfect in many ways. He definitely does have an ideal in mind and I was not likely to change it or become it. He might find someone that better suits that idea, but it seems like so far no one has measured up. One of my friends did suggest that perhaps he has proposed to someone in the past and they turned him down. This could account for some of his hostility towards marriage. Also it could simply be that someone hurt him greatly and thus he is resigned to thinking he will never find anyone as good and ultimately compares anyone new to this person, or idea in his head of what they were like.

He seemed so enthusiastic about our relationship throughout that it is still hard to see that he felt this way the whole time.

Anita, I do agree he is depressed and I feel that a lot of that is clouding his thinking about this relationship with me. I do not agree that more patience and time might’ve changed the outcome. Despite what you may believe, I didn’t initiate this conversation and didn’t interrogate him, just asked him questions gently as he seemed to feel guilt and wanted to express the things he was feeling about us and a long-term potential. I did not go into a crying fit, I tried not to cry at all but it streamed out silently and slowly. In the end I don’t think he knew what to say so he left, and I became a little angry and sarcastic, because I was hurt, but I didn’t have the conversation hoping to end the relationship, I just liked that we were getting some truths out in the open.

If anything waiting longer would have likely ended in the same result and i would’ve been more hurt. He was already not having feelings for me and I couldn’t have changed that with time.