Bear with me, I know this is long. :\

Okay, so I have a history of finding relationships where things move fast. I’m selective about serious partnerships because of this reason. Each person tended to be more fast moving and serious than the last.

My most recent relationship before this current one went from meeting to being proposed to in about 5 months or so. It started off long distance, and we started making plans to move in together by the third/fourth month, and the ring came into the equation during a visit shortly after.

After this level of speed and seriousness, I swore that I would take a step back and explore more of what’s out there. To refuse to get into anything serious. I specifically thought about exploring being polyamorous for this reason (this is important in a bit) And then I met my current boyfriend/partner online while traveling.

This was mid-February or so of this year. Turned out that he lived in my home city, and we talked about hanging out when I returned. We tried to be friends, but we ended up bonding emotionally during a very pivotal time in my life. He was there for me during the literal worst time, I’ve ever had up until this point (the decline and death of my best friend’s mom, who was like a second mother to me) and he was there and shared about losing his biological father in the same way. He knew how to navigate my inner turmoil so well as a result.

By the time I was returning home, in early April, he had asked if he could take me out on a date. I said yes.

He met me after my flight with flowers and was just super kind and things felt very natural transitioning from online to in person.

So, things took off from there at a very fast pace, although I did try to slow things down. We became official, but he knew I did not want to be monogamous, and that I was exploring being polyamorous. He told me he was okay with it, if we kept monogamy in mind for down the road if our connection continued to grow.

I said yes, as he was, up to this point, kind of making me rethink not being serious, so we landed on revisiting accordingly. He introduced me to friends and then family at this point, the highest of which he worried about was his mother. They’re an affluent family, and they helped bolster my boyfriend’s career to what it is now. She’s kind of a “hard ass” was the way he put it, but that she saw reason when needed.

She was a darling at the time, but something felt off.

In the meantime, we began coding together, and I made headway with friends of his and friends in general in the software development world. I had mentioned this application I had wanted to finish building (front end was done, some back end stuff functional) all the while being vague enough to avoid risking it – it ended up getting several of those friends invested in helping see it through together.

Time and money quickly started being exchanged during all of this. Utility patents pending, outsourcing, hiring part-time, even a few office spaces at time to focus and work together temporarily.

This quickly got out of hand. I … didn’t want things to head in this direction. I wanted it to be a slow build that felt intimate, and very selective about who took part in the moving pieces. I’m fairly budget conscious as I grew up poor and have spent most of my adult life struggling with money. I was very uncomfortable, very quickly.

So my boyfriend began talking about how much easier we’d have our joint effort if we made way towards combining ourselves in a legal domestic partnership as he didn’t want to be so quick to propose given my last relationship. I began trying to see a serious future with him but began feeling very anxious and troubled by the idea of, once again, packing up and moving with a partner. I had talked about needing therapy to figure out this innate trouble where I flee serious relationships the moment they become more of a thing. And so he agreed and began covering, out of pocket, my therapy.

Once again, I was a little uncomfortable with this, and told him as much. He assured me that if we made for a domestic partnership, his insurance would extend and cover me, so it wouldn’t be much longer he paid out of pocket. So, I agreed to therapy, and with it, I start seeing my old patterns and fear of emotional intensity and begin to understand them. I feel like I’m on the verge of being self-aware enough, and with their guided help, that I can move in with my partner and really give it my all. I had been doing so much work on myself during this, I honestly felt like I could do it.

So, at this point, my boyfriend decides to talk to his parents and our friends who have been at our sides during this whole crazy thing and tell them we’re moving in together. He announced it at a family barbecue and mostly everyone congratulated us, but my boyfriend’s mother was displeased, apparently.

She called for him, and so he excused himself from me and went over to talk to her. Out of the corner of my eye, I kept watch of them, as I’m a socially anxious dweeb. People were conversing and generally having a good time, but through their noise I could still manage to hear her scream out an amount of money before storming off.

My boyfriend returned red in the face and not very okay. He told me we would need to have a talk after the barbecue. I figured I could piece together that his mother disapproved of us moving in together or the domestic partnership. I prepared mentally for this.

As we were leaving, his mother speaks to us and seems detached but cordial enough. Something that stuck out to me, though, was her speaking about our little group dynamic with the application in the past tense, and that stood out to me.

Once we were in the car, I asked what happened.

My boyfriend becomes incredibly reluctant to speak about it now for some reason. I have to pry it out of him that his mother said she and her husband (BF’s step-dad) will remove him from his inheritance the moment any sort of paperwork was signed between us. That she knew I was only interested in him for money and that I had “milked” tens of thousands of dollars out of him and his friends and work colleagues, and we had nothing to show for it. That ultimately, because of my experience and having had so much help with my application, that it wasn’t even mine to begin with, and that if they do most of the work, they should just spin it off and leave me behind. That I was a nobody looking to become somebody off my boyfriend’s back.

My boyfriend is well off, but this seemed to shake him a bit. There were sentimental items of his biological father, that he was looking to get down the road. Things he considers priceless because of what they had together.

I immediately felt guilty and mentioned just how uncomfortable I was with the money and the help and the whole application thing becoming such a big deal. I didn’t want any of this. I don’t want his money, I struggled against wanting to move in together and share our finances. Admittedly, I got very defensive with the wrong person (him) and began to have a panic attack at how complicated everything had become. The very thing I didn’t want, initially.

This seem to shake my boyfriend further, and he began reassuring me that we would see it through. That therapy would help. And that with time his mother would see the reasoning. Then in some stupid sense of panic, he mentioned skipping filing for a domestic partnership and instead getting married. Like he had something to prove about our dynamic or something. But it wasn’t at all what I wanted to hear.

Since then, we’ve gotten back to working together and dating/relationship stuff, but no talks of moving in together. He’s still paying for my therapy. And it’s embarrassing to me, now how I know his mother likely views this. All I can think about is what she said about me, and how she threatened him with taking things of his father from him if he made a life move with me.

We are supposed to attend a family/friend gathering this next weekend, and I don’t feel up to going. Part of me thinks that if I mention how little I wanted from the start, and how I have no interest in taking anything from them, that she’ll change her views on me. Another part thinks she won’t understand, or won’t want to try to understand.

I’m considering just ending our romantic relationship before the gathering and keeping it professional but admittedly, that would be very hard for me, as he’s been a huge boom to my baseline for self-worth and discovery. Not to mention, most of my ‘friends’ from the work project were his to begin with, some dating back to high school. I know they’re going to side with him if anything were to happen and I’d lose them too on some level – and I can’t blame them. They’ve known me for a few months at this point.

I don’t know what to do. Everything has gotten so complicated. I don’t even know if this is salvageable, and what would it even become? And how would I let go of remembering how lowly his mother really thought of me. She fakes being cordial really well. It’s so confusing.

What should I do here? Do you think this is worth navigating or am I just risking more and more by continuing to build off something so shaky and unstable? I don’t think betting our future together on the idea that his mother will eventually ‘see the reasoning’ is smart or fair. I don’t want her to be cruel to him because of me.

Is this all too fast? Really dumb? Because I feel it's honestly been one of the best times of my life, and now, risking to become the worst. Am I not seeing clearly? A friend told me I'm probably still dealing with a traumatic time (witnessing and being there for a death) and so I might not be seeing clearly right now.

TL:DR: Fast moving relationship with my boyfriend got money involved when I was reluctant to have it so. We started building a company/application together, and while he was trying to help make things smoother, by us filing for a domestic partnership, his mother insulted me and insinuated I was only doing it for money in a very hurtful way. She also implied that my work on the app was meaningless and they had more of a right to it.