I (M28) have been in a committed relationship with my girlfriend, Stacey (F27), for almost 3 years.
We both consider this to be our first serious relationship, and it has been the best experience of my life.
She’s wonderful in every sense of the word, and I love her greatly. Stacey feels the same way about me and often calls me her “dream guy”. That’s even how she introduced me to her family and all her friends. While we are deeply in love with each other, I have always kept the significant differences that we have in the back of my mind.
Stacey and I come from different cultural backgrounds, have different religious beliefs, and even differ in terms of political views and family life.
Though it pains me to admit it, I’ve always felt that we each hold these views far too strongly to ever have a successful life-long relationship. However, I’ve never expressed this opinion to Stacey.
Recently, Stacey has been talking about how some of her friends are starting to get engaged and married. She’s been mentioning things like “marriage” and “having kids” pretty frequently lately. This has been going on for a few weeks, and it honestly hurts me to hear her talk like that, considering my own viewpoints.
This situation became serious last night when we were talking in our apartment. She kept on saying things like “when we get married” and “growing old together”, among other things.
After we had dinner, she point-blank asked me if I had any location in mind for us to get married. I was uncomfortable and tried to shift the conversation to something else, but she kept on persisting.
I then said, “I’m not really thinking about marriage now.” I can’t remember her exact words, but she said something along the lines of how she’s secretly been thinking about it since our first date.
I then (probably very stupidly) said that I never thought we’d be getting married, considering all our differences. She looked surprised at this, but interpreted it as back then and not now.
When I confirmed I meant the present day, she looked devastated and shocked. She said that she could only imagine a future with me and that our whole relationship was imbalanced, since she clearly cared more about me than I did about her.
I said that I did care for her, but our differences were too great to realistically work long-term. She said some other things along the same line, but its kind of a blur now. She started crying at this and said she couldn’t even look at me anymore.
She then locked herself in our room. I tried to talk to her several times, but she didn’t respond, and I ended up sleeping on the couch. This morning, when I was headed to work, the door was still locked.
When I got back home, she was gone and had left me a post-it note saying that she’d be staying at a friend’s house for the next few days.
I told my younger sister Christa (F24) later, and she said that I was awful throughout the exchange. She was furious and said that I needed to apologize.
From my perspective, I only wanted to be honest with Stacey. AITA?