Don't listen to anyone's conclusions about your relationship, because no one here can know what it's really like. Only you can know whether she's a keeper or not, whether she's reasonably expressing reasonable suggestions or whether she is pushing and manipulating you. Only you know how far she has gone already
buying into your dreams and making them into common dreams and thus what is reasonable for you to do to meet her halfway, or how far she hasn't gone.
If she's listening to you and your ideas about boats and has moved on from cats and mobos, that might be a good sign. It's been said in the other thread that it's a very common and probably normal desire among
women to want to move into a house which is
not the house where her new man lived another life before her, and maybe with other
women, but rather into a house which the couple chose together. If that's part of what's going on here, there's probably nothing wrong with that.
The Alden 44 is an absolutely gorgeous boat -- one of the prettiest things afloat, I think. I had a boat from the same yard. But I think this would be a fairly -- um, challenging boat as a comfortable
liveaboard for a couple. There's no real master
cabin so there's really just one living space below.
Living aboard as a couple is really a different challenge to sailing solo -- a boat which is good for one might really not be suitable for the other.
If I were you, I would look at
center cockpit boats with aft master cabins -- something like a
Hylas 47, maybe? Also
sold as a Stevens 47, this is a beautiful Sparkman & Stevens design with a very spacious, comfortable
interior, with a nice aft master
cabin. With a
center cockpit boat, you also get an after
deck which is an ideal place for sunbathing
And not just sunbathing -- the after
deck gives you real outdoor space; means you're not confined to the
cockpit which makes a huge difference.
This is a very heavy (16 tons), sturdy boat with a long fin
keel, so is not going to be all that fast. But most of them were
cutter rigged and so this will be a great package for long-distance cruising -- safe and comfortable in any kind of
weather.