My boyfriend (41M) and I (27F) have been together for almost 5 months. Due to some unfortunate circumstances, we moved in together before we were both really ready.

It's really a lovely relationship...except that he wants to spend more time with me than I do with him. I love him, but perhaps not enough? Not enough for it to outweigh my personal ambitions.

This is where I think the age gap is having an impact. He is a professor with several degrees, and he's ready for home life; he doesn't have more ambitions than making tenure and possibly becoming dean (so he's got ambitions, but they don't take up a lot of his time). I only have a Bachelor's degree but want a master's and maybe a PhD; I have a full-time, regular job (professor hours are haphazard and leaves him with a lot of home time); and I want to create a blog or two as a personal project.

He's just at a different stage in life than I am. He's achieved the goals of his that would have taken most of his time--working full-time while getting a PhD, for instance. I have not yet. But he wants the amount of time he could get with me if I WASN'T at this stage in my life.

Beyond that, I'm kind of a solitary person. I was raised in a home in which we didn't eat dinner together, didn't play games or watch movies together, saw each other just for holidays, really. My mother never spent any time with her boyfriend, she just wanted to do her own thing, and that negatively impacted their relationship. (It was a dysfunctional home.) To some extent, I think it makes sense to want and need my alone time, being young and ambitious. But at the same time, I don't want to turn out like my mother--selfish with my time.

What do I do? My heart isn't set in one direction--I don't fully want to be alone, but I don't fully want to be with him if it means feeling guilty all the time and him being lonely. I care about him, and I don't want to put him through that. And I've never wanted to love someone more than I've wanted to love him, but I fear that I don't enough, not enough to give up my time.

I'm thinking of trying to find things we could do together. He's a homebody, but when I'm home, I want to be in my room. Maybe we could take up a new hobby together. Get out of the house. When I'm out of the house, I'm focused on what I'm doing, I'm in the moment with the people surrounding me. That might be our only hope, honestly. Do a class together, or go to museums, or go to a bar, whatever.

I don't know. Penny for your thoughts?