TLDR: I (42M) have lost faith in my relationship with my partner of 18 years (42F). I don’t see a future anymore but even though I’ve brought up my desire to break up, my partner is unwilling to accept my decision and keeps pretending everything is fine. I want this to be resolved amicably but don’t seem to be able to and would love advice on how to move forward.
We’ve been together for close to 19 years, but the last 8 years have been difficult. We moved to the other side of the world 12 years ago and while this initially went well, it became clear after 3 years that we both had different views about whether to stay or move back to our home country. I wanted to stay, she wanted to move back. Our disagreements took a heavy toll on our relationship with many fights and her typically sleeping on the couch. I admit that our ability to communicate clearly was limited back then and I take responsibility for how things unfolded. She basically accuses me of not having been clear about my intentions to stay overseas and I have admitted to this. By late 2014 she went back to our home country and met someone else. They had a fling and I found out about it. I guess the average couple would have broken up then and there, but we never actually did. Instead, she remained there while I moved back to our home overseas and gave her space to explore what she wanted to do and find herself again (her words). Her fling didn’t work out and we maintained a long distance relationship for about 3 years while I supported her from overseas and would visit \~2 times a year. Since 2017 she’s been coming to our place overseas again as we tried to re-establish our relationship, but it’s never been the same. Family emergencies and her grandma being sick and requiring care caused her to be in our home country for many long periods. It’s taken 7 years for us to be intimate again and it only happened after I agreed to consider IVF to fall pregnant (we’ve both always wanted to be parents).
During the last few years I’ve constantly stretched myself and moved the goalposts about what I was willing to do to support my partner and our relationship, mainly because I still felt partially guilty and partially obliged to support my partner. About 9 months ago I reached a point where I looked back and realized how unhappy I was and that things would not necessarily get better moving forward. My main issues are our absence of physical intimacy, our fights about little things in the house and her lack of financial discipline (I’m the only financial provider and she will spend way too much on clothes and household items in my view). I’ve brought all of this up before and suggested different strategies to approach them but we never seemed to be able to resolve our disagreements.
I don’t want to continue on like this and I told her this in May. Even though I’ve kept my firm resolve to wanting to end the relationship, she’s dug in her heels and keeps insisting we work on our relationship. She’s overseas at the moment and attempts to call me daily, pretending everything is fine. When we talk about how I feel, she tells me I’m having a crisis, that I need to work on myself and be more optimistic and that things will get better. It feels as though my feelings and my desires are completely being invalidated. She still relies on me for financial support and I want to end things amicably and give her a ‘soft landing’ but the longer this takes, the more I’m afraid that the only way to end things is to do so in a much more unpleasant way. I’d love to hear from others about what I should or could do different.
4 comments
Stop making this a debate. You won’t get her to agree. Instead, inform her that you will continue to help her out financially for X amount of time, and after that, she will be on her own, so she needs to start preparing for that. Then don’t keep discussing it. Let her know your mind is made up. Don’t keep having regular conversations with her; it isn’t helping either of you. Let her know that now that you two broke up, you want to work on moving on.
Of course she doesn’t want to separate from her atm. You are dragging it out way too long. Call her it’s over, you cut her out of your life financially and emotionally and then you block everything of her that she can’t contact you anymore. It has to be done.
She’s overseas but still relying on you for financial support? How does that work? You’re actually paying for her to stay somewhere abroad?
I think you’re approaching this all wrong. This isn’t ‘how can I successfully negotiate an end to this relationship’ it’s ‘why can’t I make this decision and enforce it?’… Because this is not a negotiation. She doesn’t have to like what you’re saying, she just has to accept that it’s happening.
Bottom line is that you need to tell her it’s over and she has X days to move out and find work or whatever else. You cannot make her entire life your responsibility any more.
You sound really nice but she is using you. Just cut her off with whatever she needs baseline if the guilt would kill you but start having real boundaries or you will pay for it with your happiness.