Being Held Back or Diverging Paths?

“I know they sometimes think that I hold you back.  You don’t think I hold you back, do you?”

I reassured Thabo that he didn’t and the decisions I make are my own.  But more and more often, it does feel that he holds me back in other ways.  It’s hard to explain; we’ve been together for almost eight years and they’ve been a great few years in terms of the relationship, and I do believe that he’s my soulmate forever.  But more often, probably over the past two years, certain aspects of our personalities have come head to head.  How we view things in life don’t always match (and I’m not talking about the usual differences and disagreements).  Certain more fundamental and basic views on – materialism, career, the value of happiness, living in the present, how much money is enough, how to express opinions to others, honesty versus rudeness, friends…the list goes on.  I get so shitty at him when he tries to correct me or aggressively express his views (it feels like being bullied).  How do I and can I resolve this?  Could I, he, or both of us changed so much in the past two years?  What does it means for “us”?

A very private thought I have which I’ve tried to avoid looking into too deeply until recently is:  is he the best person for me now?  And it’s that feeling of being suppressed (?) that makes me question this.  Maybe, I’ve been too independent in my beliefs and thoughts and find it difficult to accept an alternate view or opinion.  I don’t know.  I do know that these moments occur more frequently and piss me off more. 

Maybe it’s the real reason why marriage scares me so much even more than the stress of planning and having the limelight intentionally centred on me.   I don’t doubt that we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together but the the idea of saying, “I do,” makes me afraid that I’ll be “trapped”  into having to live with the feelings I’ve described above forever.  It’s a contradiction because either way we’re together.  I guess in my mind, marriage means I give permission and agree to having to live the rest of our lives with these differences that make me unhappy and sometimes angry. 

Our relationship looks doomed in writing.  But I usually write about things that make me unhappy.  I’m too busy living at other times.  I hope I don’t have to write about this again.