Can we make this work?!?

[Sungrl]

I am having a hard time even deciding where to start... I am 29 years old and have never been married, and have no kids. All I have ever wanted in life is to get married and have a family. About 2 years ago, I met and fell in love with a man 7 years older than me who has been married (has been divorced for 10 years) and has a 13 year old daughter. I have never been with a man whom I have so much in common with, enjoy his company so much, have so much fun with, and have such passion and romance with. He is my best friend. During the time since I have been with this man, we have had a few problems. We split up last December and spent 4 months apart and dated other people (neither of us seriously). A lot of our problems in the past were around communication, fears, and general relationship baggage we both had. Spending time apart allowed us both to work through a lot of these issues, and since reuniting a few months ago, things have been wonderful and much improved. We have both realized how much we love each other and that we want to spend our lives together. We have talked seriously about marriage and having children of our own and share the same vision of life together. I love my boyfriend very much and would love to spend my life with him. I am having trouble figuring out if I am doing the right thing though; I am following my heart rather than my head here and that's new for me. My friends and family seem to want me to move on and find someone with less baggage, etc... but as I said I love this man and want to be with him. Can we make this work?!?!

 

My first concern is that my boyfriend has money problems. He works for himself and always seems to have problems managing his money. His income is not consistent from month to month, but he does usually make a decent amount of money. He has bad credit, and real problems with cash flow. I have a successful career, make very good money, have excellent credit, and I have always been very good with money.

 

The second issue is that because my boyfriend works for himself, he works A LOT. There is very little time where he doesn't have to do some form of work. He also prefers to work nights, and often stays up until dawn and sleeps until 1 in the afternoon. I work a regular 9-5 job in an office.

 

The third concern is that not only has my guy got a 13 year old daughter whom he has 2 days out of every week, but the woman whom he dated while we were apart is expecting his baby in 2 weeks!!! It was an accidental pregnancy, there is nothing that can be done about it now, but my boyfriend intends to do the right thing and support this child and be it's father. He does not love this woman and says it does not change how he feels about me, or the plans we have made for life together. I am very jealous and sad about this. They have not worked out any details yet, but he imagines he would spend as much time with this new child as he does with his daughter now, or at least almost as much time.

 

I love this man and want this life we had been talking about together, but these things concern me - especially this woman and this baby. The news was very upsetting to me (as well as him) and I don't know how to deal with it. This is not the way I envisioned my life to be, and I am afraid. I feel jealous about this baby, and worried that while he says he still wants a family with me, he will be unable to handle all of it emotionally... not to mention the financial obligations of two children. My guy keeps telling me that he feels we can make anything work, he would even be willing to go to counseling....but I am afraid of making a bad decision I will later regret, simply because I love this man so very much. Thoughts???

[moimeme]

I have never been with a man whom I have so much in common with, enjoy his company so much, have so much fun with, and have such passion and romance with. He is my best friend.

 

You are not going to find someone like this very many times in your lifetime. No marriage is perfect but if you love each other enough, you will find ways to work around any and all problems. It is foolish to expect a life without problems; you already know what some of your problems will be and he has already said he'd see a counsellor to solve them. Tell your head to take a hike; your heart knows what it knows. Grab him quick. I suspect if you let him go, you'll regret it for a very long time.