Q.I’ve been dating “Josh” for 4.5 years. We’ve been friends since we were kids and are both 25. We’ve lived together for the last year and a half. I love spending time with him and he genuinely feels like home to me. We’ve been through so much together (major family issues on his part and health issues for us both) and things have finally settled down.

Over the past few months, I’ve had a serious pang of insecurity about getting married. I brought this up to him at different times, but he didn’t take it seriously and just said he’s not planning to propose for a while. I don’t see the point of dating seriously if marriage isn’t on the horizon. This pang of insecurity started lingering before now (maybe a year?) but I just attributed it to being too young to get married. Now that I am officially at an age where I thought it would be appropriate to count down the months on ring-watch, it’s become more serious.