he won't commit but won't let me go

He told me it isn’t “right” for us to spend the night together. We’d been together for a year, having those big conversations—marriage, buying a house, starting a family. Both of us wanted to get married; that was always clear. The details never came up. He’d said he hadn’t really thought about the wedding itself.

I was raised Baptist, but that was a long time ago. I’ve been an atheist for about ten years now. He’s Catholic. None of it seemed like a problem, not until that moment.

When he said it, I asked him what he meant. I pressed for more. He explained: it would only be right if we were married in the church. Not just married. Married in the church.

That isn’t something I want to do.

We’d been talking about our future, picturing a life together, planning. All of a sudden, there was this line I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know how important a church wedding was to him, or if there was space for compromise. I wanted to understand. I love him. But I didn’t know if there was middle ground, or what that would even look like.

So I started asking. I wanted to know if anyone else had figured this out—if this was something other couples had managed to work through. I wanted to understand what a church wedding meant to him, and why it mattered. I started looking for stories, for advice, for any sign that this wasn’t the end of our plans.

We haven’t changed anything about how we live, not yet. But now I’m searching for an answer, and I don’t know what comes next.