I don't know if I should stay in this relationship. My boyfriend and I have been together for the past few years and he says that I am the one he wants to be with forever but when we talk about marriage, he says it's nothing more than a piece of paper and it won't make him love me any more than he does now.
I think marriage is important and is more than just a piece of paper. I know his feelings come because his parents divorced and he never knew why they broke up other than his mother was really unhappy and had to get away. How can I convince him that we are not his parents?
The problem isn't you. He has, as you stated, an image in his mind of how marriage works and he believes that if you never marry, he'll never hurt that way. You cannot convince him it will be different because you're not a part of the problem. The best chance he has of reworking the image can be found in getting some professional assistance and even that will eventually lead to him speaking with his parents to get a more grown up perspective of what happened between them.
Whether you stay or go depends on if not getting married is a sacrifice instead of a compromise. There are those famous relationships: Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins; Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell that have everything except the marriage ceremony. If marriage is something you must have then you will have to leave the relationship if he is not willing to try and unload his marriage baggage.
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