What to do...

[michelle23]

I did have doubts bout my relationship for awhile for no reason. Im not sure if it was just a phase that everyone goes through or because i was grieving at the time and v unhappy.

Anyway one night i lay in bed and imagined coming home to an empty house and wondrering what my life would really be like with out him. I also did a lot of reserch on relationships-my head was all over the place and the thought of hurting him broke my heart but that night it just hit my like a ton of bricks and i realized hes my world and couldnt believe i ever even considered ending it. I felt a lot of guilt and anxiety for taking himm for granted and wondering is the grass greener and the thought of losing him started to give me nightmares and panick attacks. Over night i became obsessed with him-my sex drive went through the roof lol and so affectionate towards him. Sex was always regular and really good but my drive became higher than his when we were always equal before. I think i have him worn out.

But i dont no maybe you and she are just not meant to be?

[DayStandCnfused]

Did you ever feel this way with your last long term relationship?

There were times when I did, but I don't know if using the feelings I had back then as a barometer against any adversity in my current relationship is a good idea, just because I was younger and my eyes were less open back then, so to speak. It was also a dysfunctional relationship. She left me for other guys, I broke up her relationships because she thought she really wanted to be with me, we fought constantly, then college happened and she ****ed as many dudes as she possibly could while I justified her behavior to myself just to keep her in my life because I was scared to lose her, and on and on. The relationship I have with my current girlfriend is unlike anything I've experienced in my life, and I feel like there's no personal precedent upon which to base the decision I make, especially not the crazy on-and-off relationship I had before.

I'm going to share a new thought that I just had, and I'd be especially appreciative of any advice from married or divorced people out there who would be willing to offer it. Going back to my first post, in my list of pros and cons there are two potential regrets that I'm terrified of, one on each end of the spectrum:

1. I leave her, and realize later in life that I made a mistake and acted selfishly when I should have given our relationship a chance to evolve, despite my (maybe shallow) desire for other women and lack of desire for her romantically.
2. I stay with her, and realize only after more time and possible commitment to marriage between the two of us that my feelings for her will never deviate from what they are at this point in time.

Right now this is how I would forecast the endgame to each of those scenarios:

1. Even if I leave her and regret it for years, at some point we'll both find a way to move on. I mean christ, we're only in our twenties. I feel confident that even in the wake of a three-year-plus relationship turned devastating breakup, we would both find a way to learn from the pain of the breakup and find happiness elsewhere.

2. I decide to stay with her and write off my sexual wanderlust as hormones trying to ruin a good thing with a great woman. After enough time passes, if I don't ask her to marry me she might begin to question why we're really in the relationship, so out of fear I propose to her and we get engaged (this is a realistic scenario within the next five years) and later get married. Only after the engagement/marriage do I realize I've made a mistake, at which point I'm in almost the same position I'm now, the only difference being it's much more serious if I leave her, or worse, lose control and cheat on her as an engaged/married man.

I'm sure you can all see where my head is at right now. All these thoughts are still only a couple days old to me, and I should probably mention that I'm pretty drunk at the moment and I'm not rationalizing things with a clear mind. I'm still going to let these thoughts settle for at least a couple weeks before I make a real-life decision, but I wanted to put my ideas out there for scrutiny.

TLDR: I feel like I should break up with her, because it has a potential happy ending for both of us versus the potential nightmare of an engagement/marriage broken off by me after years of uncertainty.