Hi everyone, I'm new here and I'm writing because I think I need to get some things off of my chest in an anonymous fashion. I am nervous writing about this but I'm not sure what else to do at the moment.
There's nothing terribly unique about my situation I'm sure, but I do feel like I want to talk about it with others just to try to sort things out in my mind. So here's the story, I'm a guy in his mid-twenties who's been with his girlfriend (early twenties) for almost four years. When we first started hooking up and prior to the relationship becoming "official" so to speak, I was very attracted to her. The attraction between the two of us was so intense that I thought for sure it was real love. Like so many others have experienced, that feeling faded over time. I can't honestly remember when it happened, but looking back now I can recognize that at some point I lost that "fire" that was in me, I just never really thought anything of it. Even back then I was no stranger to long-term relationships, and we had a good thing going so I never seriously considered breaking up an option… in my mind there was no reason to.
We have had a really great and comfortable few years together. We have many friends in common, we know each other's families very well and have great relationships with them, and pretty much everyone that knows us as a couple assumes we'll be married someday. We're very compatible and are great friends, relationship aside. But for the past year or so I have felt emotionally empty. I never knew what to attribute this feeling to… so many different things registered in my mind as potential culprits. I thought maybe it was the shittiness of my financial situation, the fact that I'm struggling as a musician right now (my life's passion), etc. My feelings have affected our love life in a big way, and I hate myself for it. Until recently I never even considered my relationship with my girlfriend as the source of my unhappiness.
There have been no major bumps in the road at all, we have shared so many amazing experiences together and I consider her my best friend. But despite this I've recently come to acknowledge that I think I've fallen out of love with her, or maybe I was never in love to begin with.
I need to back up just a little bit here and give some extra details that I think are relevant. I have never cheated on her, but I would be lying if I said I haven't fantasized about it. There have also been a couple occasions in the recent past where I have come close to making some very stupid drunken decisions, and I'm scared that someday I just won't be able to control myself. Not happy about that one, but I have to speak the truth.
I should also mention that she is very much in love with me, and I know that if I left her it would just destroy her. It's for this reason that I almost think I couldn't possibly go through with a breakup. My conscience is telling me that we've got a great relationship on our hands and it wouldn't be worth it to throw it away. I know there's a damn good chance that if I left her, I'd lose her as a friend… that would be so hard to deal with. But I'd also feel horrible staying in a relationship where I can't honestly return the love that she has for me.
So I'm trying to weigh my options. I've made a list of pros and cons that I'd like to throw out there, just to let you all know where my head's at with all this. I'm really reaaaally confused by these feelings that I'm having, and I'm pretty sure I'm just going to sit on them for a little while and let them settle before I confess any of this to my friends or act on my feelings. And I apologize for the long post, this is just a huge moment in my life and I really want to get it right.
The way I see it…
Pros of leaving
• I'll be free to try to find love elsewhere
• It wouldn't be fair to her or myself to stay in a relationship where only she is in love
• I would feel emotionally alive again. I've been feeling depressed for a while now, and I think after dealing with the effects of the breakup I would eventually feel much better and happier
Cons of leaving
• It would emotionally destroy her, and it'd kill me to do that to her. I don't know if she'd ever recover.
• I would almost definitely lose her as a friend, and she is my best friend
• If I regret my decision, there's no going back. She's already told me that she doesn't believe in retrying past relationships, so a breakup would be for good. If I realize afterwards that I made a mistake, I'd have to live with it for the rest of my life.
Pros of staying
• This really is a fun relationship, and like I said, I do love her as a best friend and enjoy her company very much. So faking it wouldn't honestly be impossible to deal with, at least I don't think it would be.
• She'd be happy, and that's all I want for her. Life would most likely roll along swimmingly, with the exception of my inner feelings that hopefully only I, and no one else, would need to manage.
• There would be no life-shattering breakup to have to deal with
Cons of staying
• There's a chance that I'll never experience being in love with a woman, and having that connection that I want so badly.
• I may regret staying, and it could become too much for me to handle at some point. I wouldn't want that to be the reason the relationship fell apart, or have to live with that empty feeling the rest of my life.
Well there you have it… I could talk about this all night but I think most of the real important stuff is there. I'm anxious to hear your opinions on all this. Thanks for listening :-)
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EDIT: Okay, so I continued thinking a lot about this after I posted and realized I misspoke about something, and left a couple details out.
I do love her company, some of the time. But this is not always true, and before I say this next part I want to make clear that I know it's normal to not want to always be around one another or have to experience one another's flaws, I get that. But I thought about it and came back to something I've had in my head for a long time, the fact that she and I have very different stances regarding how to deal with personal problems. No sense in me masking what I'm trying to say... basically she loves to complain about things on a daily basis, things I think are trivial and not worth being negative about. It might sound silly to some, but... I don't know. I just really want to be a person who isn't like that. Before our relationship I used to wake up happy to be alive, went through my day trying to see the good in everything and just having a generally positive disposition. I would refuse to let the little things in life get me down, and I felt so happy every day as a result. I'm not saying that she doesn't make me happy, or that I despise our relationship! But I feel much different as a consequence of our time together.
I know she probably thinks it's just blowing off steam and it's harmless, but I feel like being around her as she gives off negativity on an almost-daily basis is slowly turning me into someone I don't want to be, i.e. a more negative person, and it's taking it's toll on me. I recall confronting her about this exact thing about a year ago, and what I was asking her was to be less negative and come to me about the important things, the things she really needed my support for. It didn't work because after a while she felt that I was restricting her and that she wanted to be able to talk to me about anything. I thought it was reasonable and just figured I needed to grow some thick skin and adapt. Didn't think it was really a big deal until these past few days when I decided I need to figure out why I feel emotionally drained.
So for the TLDR'ers: One of my girlfriend's traits is that she loves to complain, and her negativity is turning me into a less positive person. I just don't know how to deal.