I [30M] attempted to break up with my GF [27F] of 7 years, but ultimately did not. Did I do the right thing?
We’ve pretty much been in a relationship for 7 years. During this time, I got a lifelong chronic illness that after spending $20k on doctors, there hasn’t been any real solutions. So I feel like crap all the time, sleep a lot, became sort of numb, started taking SSRI.
After starting the SSRI, we slowly started to stop having sex. I just couldn’t finish anymore and stay hard. Also, due to my condition, I would start to feel weird during sex and get a lot of anxiety. Eventually we just stopped. She always talked about how she wanted to have more sex and have me eat her out, but I don’t really like eating her out. I just sort of lost my libido.
She would always tell me how unhappy she is, how I don’t show her enough emotion or give her enough reassurance. Or how I sleep all day and she feels lonely because I’m not doing anything. She compared me to her dad who is an alcoholic and not a good father. On top of this, due to my condition I don’t think I want kids because of my conditions. I just feel like crap all the time and don’t think I can raise kids without feeling horrible all the time. She had told me previously that she wanted kids pretty soon and had a whole plan, and I started getting really stressed out.
Additionally, our life has become very cyclic. She comes to me about how unhappy she is, I say I will try and then it gets better a little bit and then we end up the same. For both of us. Like I told her how I dislike her stuff being all over the house and she cleaned it up and then next month, it’s all messy again.
This was all getting to me and I felt like she deserved better. I know women have a biological clock for kids and felt that she should have to time to find a guy that is more available for her, doesn’t have issues like mine and probably more compatibility. So I decided it would be best to break up.
Well, I told her we should break up and she started bawling. We started talking and I told her everything here. She apologized and said she says all those things to me because I’m her best friend and she felt like she can talk to me about anything, she doesn’t see herself with anyone else, and tells me those things so I can work on them. Also, she said she thought I had a very thick skin to listen to all over it because I don’t show emotions often. I started crying as well because I felt really bad. She said she would never give up on us and that if I am breaking up with her, I’m giving up on us.
She said that we have never TRULY tried to break out this cycle we’re in. Also, that she focuses on too much negative things and she said she’s sorry about it. And that our relationship isn’t bad and she doesn’t think I’m a bad boyfriend. This part sort of confused me because she’s says that but before she would complain a lot about it. She also said I should have communicated all of what I was thinking because I don’t communicate, which is true because I tend to shut down and stop talking when I get stressed and have thoughts that can potentially cause conflict.
Ultimately, I said we should keep trying because it did feel a lot better after talking to eachother. I was trying to think it through, where is 7 years of history just going to repeat itself into eternity, and we just are who we are or would it get better?
Did I make the right decision or am I just wasting our time? Is she actually happy with me or does she just not want to be alone?
TLDR: attempted to break up with GF because we both seemed unhappy and it a bad cycle of our relationship. She says she’s not unhappy at all. We were miscommunicating. We communicated and it seemed to be okay and that we should stay together and truly work on things to break out of this cycle we are in, is this good or bad?