I've been dating someone for about 1.5 years. Things are really good. I enjoy their company and I've invested a lot into the relationship, I feel like they have too. They are close with their family who lives out of state. They are also a private person. In many ways I am similar so I do understand wanting to keep my life private from others. They see their family for every holiday and spend a fair amount of random weekends and time over the summer with their family too.

Their family doesn't know I exist. Not that they have a friend named dumbquestions, if we are doing something together and family calls then they edit me out completely of whatever we are doing-- "I'm watching ____ show," "I'm going on a hike," etc. I literally am scrubbed from the story.

Its hurtful. I feel like they are ashamed of me. We've talked about it a little bit, I told them I don't exist to the people who are important to them. I believe them when they say they love me. I've met all of their closest friends, even some very special and important friends who are close with their family. But for whatever reason, despite their family being important to them they don't want them knowing about me. I told them tonight that I'm bothered by this and we will discuss it later this week.

I can't be in a deep, meaningful relationship with someone who excludes me from their narrative. Who erases me from their life. I do think there is some type of trauma there, but ultimately, if they cannot work through it I need to take a step back and be sure that I'm not giving more than I'm getting. I think I'm pretty great and I don't know what about me could be so shameful or why they aren't so proud of me and our relationship that it doesn't matter.

The other major issue is that because I don't exist, we will never spend any holidays together because they always spend the holidays with their family. I just can't imagine how we can have a relationship where we don't spend the holidays together or never go on vacations with them (or each other) because they never told their family about me and have no intention of doing so.

I don't want to force them to do something they are not comfortable with, but I also need to put my time and effort into a relationship with a person who wants what I do, who thinks I'm special and wants the important people in their life to know me, because I'm important to them. I need to understand why they don't want to tell them about me.