I \[29M\] met my gf \[27F\] during senior year of college, and we have been dating for 6 years now. We’ve started casually talking about marriage but no really serious conversations yet. I love everything about her. She is kind, funny, beautiful, and feels like home. However we are different people in one big aspect. I am very adventurous, spontaneous, and need lots of excitement and stimulation to feel fulfilled. She is more of a homebody and her tolerance for excitement and chaos is much less than mine. I didn’t view that as a bad thing when we began dating, but now it’s starting to cause me some emotional distress. As our lives have marched on, I have slowly lost the group of people surrounding me that loved the same things as me and kept me feeling like myself. I have met new people that also like my interests (winter sports, whitewater rafting trips, traveling abroad in a “roughing it” fashion, etc), but it isn’t quite the same. What I really want is to have an adventure partner who I share a close personal connection with rather than just a collection of transient adventure buddies that pop in and out of my life.
She does humor my interests and has gone so far as to purchase gear to participate in some of my hobbies. I am incredibly grateful for this and appreciate her for being so willing to play along. At the end of the day though, even when we’re out doing something adventurous together, it just doesn’t feel right to me. Sometimes I push her too far outside her comfort zone and feel guilty. We’ve talked about his and I have gotten much better about being selective about the things I pick for us to do together. But even since then, I can tell that despite enjoying the experience, she’s just as excited to get home and read a book later. I have no personal qualms with this, and absolutely respect her interests and her ability to pursue things she enjoys. This is more about my feelings, and that doing this stuff with her ultimately doesn’t fill my cup in the same way that doing it with my old friends used to. For some reason, knowing that the person I’m with isn’t as excited as I am by the activity at hand takes away from my experience.
I know that I can find other people to do these things with, but it still doesn’t feel right not having a partner that understands the things that drive me and bring me excitement for life. I’ve clicked through countless posts from people who have hobbies that are very different from their partners’ and make it work just fine. I guess for me, not having someone I love to share my excitement with is really getting to me. I know it’s not fair of me to expect her to like everything I like; I just wish she would be excited by the same general type of experiences I’m excited by, even if the specific details of our interests and hobbies don’t line up (eg her wanting to travel abroad vs me wanting to do a mountain backpacking trip would be the type of discussion I’d love to have with my partner, whereas currently her idea of adventure is staying at a hotel and relaxing on a beach for a few days, and this type of experience just doesn’t motivate or excite me). For weekend adventures, I like novel and exciting and not feeling tied down (eg camping or getting a cheap hotel so we aren’t limited by having to drive back), whereas she likes staying close enough to get back in time to make dinner and sleep in her own bed at the end of the day.
On top of this, I’ve begun to not recognize myself anymore. I’ve gained weight, and am just not as excited about life in general as I used to be. Part of me can’t help but think some of this change is due to not having people around to get excited about adventures with and keep me active. Again, not my partner’s responsibility, but I feel like she is standing in the way of me getting back to my old self because I have to plan these things around her instead of with her.
All of this being said, I still love her immensely. She has never been bad to me, she doesn’t play games or lie, isn’t manipulative, and we both share similar views and goals in terms of finances, kids, politics, etc. She is absolutely gorgeous, smart, social, responsible, stable, motivated, and has a great career that she loves. I honestly have not met another person that checks all of these boxes in the way that she does, and I feel that I’d be giving up the chance to be with an amazing person by ending the relationship. It just seems like our lifestyles aren’t lining up like I hoped they would and that’s a big compromise I’ll have to accept by staying with her. Especially thinking further down the line, I’d jump at the chance to live in a different country for a couple years, or take a 6 month sabbatical to backpack around Asia. She doesn’t look down on these things or view them as a waste of time/money, but she personally doesn’t view them as important to her and has other things that she would prioritize above them.
For a while I tried being okay with pursuing excitement on my own without her involvement, but I’d always wind up wishing she were with me to share the experience. Half the time I think I’m okay with making this compromise, but then I keep coming back to this feeling that there is a part of my life missing and that I wish I had a partner who could I could relate with in my desire to pursue excitement and see the world.
How should I proceed in this situation? Am I being a narcissist by wanting a partner to be excited about the same things as me, or is this just a manifestation of being with someone who can’t meet my needs? Again, I hate the idea of breaking up because she’s so amazing in every other aspect and I don’t think I’ll find someone else who can match those qualities (not to mention that I deeply love her and can’t imagine the heartache of breaking up with her). I’ve started going to therapy to really try to sort out my feelings on this, but I would like to hear from others who may have had similar personal experiences or have some new insight for me on this.
TLDR; GF and I have different desires and tolerances for adventure and excitement in our lives, and it’s making me question how feasible our relationship actually is in the long-term.
EDIT: paragraph spacing