He Said He Was SURE—So Why Hasn't He Proposed?

I have never blogged.  I am an extremely private person.  But I am so frustrated and hurt by the status of my relationship with my boyfriend, aka, best friend that I need an outlet.  So I thought I would use this and see how it goes.

The past couple weeks I have been feeling myself pulling away from my man.  Plus, little things that didn't used to bother me are REALLY bothering me now.  So I am starting to look at our relationship and our history and acknowledge issues that I have chosen to ignore or shrug off as unimportant.

Two years ago we bought a home together.  A home I could have purchased on my own and would have if he had been honest with me and let me know he wasn't sure about getting married.  I made it very clear to him that I wanted to get married and only wanted him to co-purchase our home if he was SURE.  He assured me he was SURE.  Now, here we are two years later, no proposal, and I am getting more and more upset and frustrated with him.  I have two sons, 22 and 15.  Both of whom I have raised to embrace no sex before marriage (I know this seems ridiculous to some, but I don't want my sons to feel sleeping around and using women is ok), don't live with someone unless you are getting married to that person, etc.  My man knows this.  So now I have been "living" with my boyfriend who should have been my husband by now and I feel like I am a total hypocrite with my sons.

My man has helped me learn to open up and share my feelings, which has always been very difficult for me.  With his encouragement, I have opened up my heart to him and have shared my feelings about how things are, and you have no idea how hard that is for me.  I made it very clear that if he really does want to get married, I want to hear about it from him.  I want him to be excited about it and talk about it.  Show me he is serious and we are moving toward the same goal.  He tells me he still wants to get married and then that is it.  No comments about our future at all.  I feel like my life is in limbo and I am tired of waiting on him.  I feel like he is being dishonest about how he feels.  Maybe he is scared, or something about our relationship is bothering him.  I don't know.  But I do know that this is affecting me emotionally and I can feel myself pulling away and putting up my old walls.  I have thought about just asking him to leave.  But that thought just breaks my heart.  I seriously do not know what to do.

I have been with him for 3 1/2 years.  I love him with all my heart.  He is my very best friend in the world.  But I feel totally betrayed by him and that he disrespects my feelings.  I mean, how can he know how this is hurting me, but go on as if nothing is wrong?

On top of this, he is totally lazy.  I bust my ass around our home to keep it clean and take care of him and my son, on top of working full time.  He sits on his ass in front of the TV or his computer while I am working and does nothing.  If he does anything at all, it is because I have asked him to.  And ususally when I ask him to do something, he says he will do it and it doesn't happen for weeks.  That drives me crazy and it is a bad example for my son.  Don't get me wrong, he has a job too.  But he rarely lifts a finger around our home.  We both contribute financially to our family.  There are no complaints there at all.

I love to be with him, be close to him, snuggle with him, make love to him.  He makes me laugh all the time.  I feel really good when I am with him.  He is so smart and caring and loving, not to mention so damn sexy.  I love to talk to him because he has such great insight into alot of things.  His personality is engaging and makes you want to be around him.  So when I started to feel myself pull away from him and started to feel my emotional connection to him change, I started thinking, WTF!  I have to take responsibility for that part of it.  I have talked to him about things but there was no change and I just did nothing. 

When I think back to what made me fall in love with him, I realize that those things he used to do that melted my heart are almost non-existent.  He would call me out of the blue just to say I Love You.  He would write me love letters and poems.  He would talk to me one on one and tried very hard to get to know me and learned all the secrets about me that no one else knew.  That is really why this is so difficult for me now.  I don't know.  It feels like the proverbial bait and switch.  And I don't like to be played.  So I am feeling  so angry, hurt, betrayed, sad and hopeless right now.  I will NOT beg for him to propose to me and I am not desperate.  I do not want to be seen by him, or anyone else for that matter, in that light.

So, I guess the next step for me is to decide what to do.  Any suggestions?