relationships

Back again, posting into the void. This is kind of liberating, it's nice to know no one I actually know is likely to read this.

So, the Boy and I have been dating for nine months. And of course, he lives far away on another continent, so in that nine months, we've spent a total of six weeks together. I--I don't know. I feel like we've really got something special here. We work so well together, we fit. But I don't know how we can deal with taking the next step. Normally, the next step is going from dating to married. But we've never been in the same country for more than two weeks at a time, I just can't see it being a good idea to get married. Unless you spend time together, time where neither of you is visiting, time where both of you are living your own lives, following your own routines, and learning to make accomodations with each other, you can't tell if you drive each other crazy. What if I can't stand the way he, I don't know, never cleans the kitchen, or he hates the way I forget to pick up things like mail that I drop next to the door when I came in? Or on an even more basic level, what if, once we get past being on our best behavior with each other, we don't like each other that much? I think we will, I think we match really well, I think we get along really well and will continue regardless of our stupid little annoying habits, but I don't know, I can't tell. So, we need to live together first.

But that itself isn't a simple thing. I can't move for at least a year--I need to be on campus, I need to take classes and meet with my chair and discuss my work and generally prepare to write a dissertation. And he can't move here, not really. If he did, he would lose time in his career, because it's not the same here as it is there, and I can't ask him to do that. Even the year after next, when I can reasonably manage to spend significant chunks of time elsewhere, it's not simple to move there. I can't just say, 'I want to live with my boyfriend, see if we should get married' and get a visa, they don't give visas for things like that. I guess I could just go on a normal tourist visa, it does last six months, and then see what happens.

Does that make sense? Am I crazy to think this? Am I being too rational, too overthinky, should we just go full on and get married? We've kind of talked around this stuff, but we haven't had the full on conversation, I think because both of us are thinking the same sort of thing, and it's difficult to make a decision when there is more than a year before anything can actually change.