TLDR: My boyfriend (23M) and I (22F) spent a lot of time, energy, and money preparing to move and grow our relationship, things didn’t go as planned and we’re not moving until next year. I was and still am ready for what this would bring to our relationship and want to grow closer. I don’t want to pressure him but i still want more than our current situation. I need advice.. What can i do to help this?

Let me start this off by saying that I (22F) am very much in love with my boyfriend (23M) and wouldn’t trade him for anything in the world, he’s wonderful and I love the relationship we’ve built together so far.

Around January of this year my boyfriend and I started making steps towards finding a place of our own and preparing to move. We spent over $2000 buying pretty much everything except cleaning supplies and big furniture to put in our place, we sought advice to ready ourselves for moving in together and starting a new dynamic in our relationship, planned on how we would split costs and chores, we figured out what kind of place we wanted and planned on moving out around this time (June 2022).

This was all very exciting for me as I love my boyfriend and was incredibly excited to start this life with him. On top of this, making the move would allow me to escape my home environment which is very difficult for me to live in; so naturally I was more than prepared to make this move and do what was necessary to change these aspects of my life and i thought he was too.

That all changed when he broke the news to me that he wasn’t ready to move in the time frame we were originally thinking. This obviously was hard for me to hear but i understood his reasonings and wanted him to be as comfortable as possible before making this transition as this would be both of our first times leaving home. During this gray period of not knowing when we would move and settling back into our regular routines my boyfriend introduced the idea of moving states as this is something we’ve both been wanting for a while. I was totally up for moving states and this is what we’ve decided to do now which has moved our moving date back at least a year a now (spring 2023).

This is all fine, what’s bothering me is the dynamic in our relationship that i was ready to grow from. i switch between my house and his throughout the week to spend time with him and away from home but i can’t shake the feeling of wanting more out of our relationship. We spent so much time and energy preparing ourselves, being giddy about living together, and excited to grow from the situation we are in now; and that’s something i still want. It’s not like our relationship hasn’t grown in other ways, we’ve made great progress in our emotions, communication, understanding each other, thinking about our future, etc. I just feel like I was ready for a new life & environment with him and a new level of commitment in our relationship. Now that this isn’t a reality, i still feel like i want to grow our relationship and take on something that will bring us closer together. I know i have to be patient and the cards are still on the table, but it makes me sad we have to wait for that reality all over again and in the meantime our lives are staying the same. Does anyone have any advice? What can i do to help my feelings & this situation?

Any thoughts on this would help.

Quick Note: I’m currently in college and have been trying to find a full time job while going back to school in the fall. I’m going to try to move out on my own so i don’t have to continue living at my house in the meantime.