Utopian2630

Its not that I am waiting for a 'perfect' time. Things happen that you cant always prepare for, so I dont think you can really predict when a 'perfect' time would be. All I really wanted to do was just pay off things like credit cards and consolidate my student loans so I didnt have those things hanging over me. So far I've done a good job of doing those things and I really would like to get married within the next couple years--we've just never discussed a time line. Every time she would ask me if I was planning on marrying her one day, I always said of course, because I do plan on marrying her some day. It just seems, with her milestone birthday coming up next month, she is seeing things a little differently. She has been having trouble at work the past month and has had a lot of pressures and carries a lot of burden from her family since loosing 2 very close family members. At times she has said she just needs a break from everything, so I wonder if things are just starting to unravel a bit for her. In the past, she has never vocalized things well, just waited until things were so bottled up she couldn't take it anymore which is why all of this is so shocking to me. Like I said, I am completely committed to making things work. I have given up an assignment which would require me to do a lot of traveling just so I could spend more time with her and work things through. In the process, I have also taken a job in a different industry with more stability--again just so we wouldnt have to struggle down the road. The question is....how do you communicate with someone who shuts themselves off whenever things get a little hard??