Talking At Me

So, this evening, despite the fact that I had a ton of stuff to do in preparation for my weekend, Robin told me that he'd been thinking about what he wants out of his future. It involves graduating college and getting a high-paying job, and eventually marriage and children. I'm ok with all of this, except he's nearly six years younger than me (which means the time-frame doesn't quite match up) and a Sri Lankan native. His plan includes sending wife and kids to Sri Lanka, while he stays here to work, so that kids can grow up in that language and culture. I'm having a really hard time seeing how monolingual American me fits in there.

But he must think there's room somewhere, or he wouldn't have brought it up at all, right? Like, maybe he has some idea that his plan isn't practical or realistic. Or maybe he'd be willing to change it because I can't play the role that he expects. I don't want to give up on something that may be everything I want, but I don't want to waste my already-dwindling time with this if it's got nowhere to go.

I mean, if he and I were to have children, I wouldn't be against them learning his native language and culture in the least bit, but I'm not capable of raising them in it, being not of it myself. Would I be too drastic if I make an attempt to start learning Sinhalese now? What does it mean if I'm even thinking about it? And then after all of that discussion, he said he didn't want to talk about it anymore because he thought it upset me. How can we not talk about it? Is it fair to me to hold on when he thinks I'm not going to be the other half of his plan? He's worried that I'm going to be 36 by the time he thinks he'll be ready to have kids. Frankly, I figured I'd have all of that by now. I must be doing something wrong.

I have too much on my plate to even think about this right now, but I can’t not think about this.