If You Find Somebody to Love in this World, You Better Hang on Tooth and Nail

It's time for my monthly vow to put some distance between myself and The Only Living Boy in New York. I never keep this vow, and I'm not sure what it will take to make me keep it, but I make it every month or so.

Yesterday, we were having some more serious than usual discussions about a small life crisis he's experiencing over feeling like he needs to have a better grip on where he's headed. He asked me what I thought his ten-year plan should be, and I made him a semi-joking list of things he should do including, "Stop pretending that you're not in love with me when you obviously are so we can make out already." I put the jokes aside (or the non-jokes disguised thinly as jokes) when I realized he was genuinely going through something, and I told him that he's smart enough to succeed at anything he wants to do, so he needs to ask himself what's going to make him happy, and he seemed moved by that compliment. Then somehow today, we got on the topic of getting married (to each other) and having kids, and I said I didn't want to have any kids. He asked me if I was serious about that, and I said I was (and am) but that if I met the right person and it was important to him, I would be open to reconsidering. I told him that I don't want my entire life to be defined by being a mother and that I didn't want my kids dumped off on me the way my dad dumped my brother and me on my mom. And he said, "I guess we are all shaped, to a large extent, by our childhood. And you deserve no less from your future husband than someone who is going to be a true partner in every sense of the word."

I really care about this person, and the more time I spend talking to him, the more invested I become. Yet I can't seem to disengage. The Only Living Boy in New York is the person I want to talk to about everything, and I think he wants to talk to me about everything too, but he's not actually available to me. Since I'm not Carrie Bradshaw and I don't see love as a war of attrition, I don't think that waiting it out is going to produce a different result or magically make him available when he isn't, but I just can't seem to let go.