Member-only story
If They Wanted to, They Would: A Tale of Relationship Expectations, Ultimatums, and Unmet Promises
Nate and Carissa’s Story; One Year Later.

A year ago I posted a story about my friend Carissa and her on-again off-again boyfriend Nate. They were struggling to get on the same page in their relationship, and had broken up and then reunited when he promised he was ready at last to be with her, to make plans for the future, and to talk about marriage and children — things Carissa wanted badly and was ready for after three years of dating Nate, but which Nate still felt were in his far off distant future.
You can read the in-depth version here.
It’s been a full year since I wrote that and I’m sorry (for Carissa’s sake) that their relationship has been fraught with starts and stops.
She had wanted to pick up again where the relationship had left off — as if the stopwatch that was clocking their relationship had merely been paused, rather than reset to zero, or wound backward — so she had set getting engaged as a…