Hello everyone,
I would like to ask your opinion on my relationship, I believe it's going to be quite the long post so sorry in advance.
First I would like to do a bit of an overview of what I experienced so far: before getting together with my current gf I was in a relationship of almost 3 years with another girl. At the time I felt very much in love and it ended because we were sexually incompatible (I felt the need of sleeping together very often while she felt like sex was not an important thing to her). I used to think that my libido was super high and that we simply were not compatible in that sense, and it was a mutual choice to break up.
Fast forward to two years ago I met and fell deep in love with my current gf: she was, and still is, like a ray of sunshine. She has an energy that is hard to describe, but just by being in a room she can light it up in an instant. She's funny, a bit silly, and just wonderful to be around. As mentioned I was full on cooked and when we eventually got together my only thought was "How did I even manage to do that??"
Sexually, it was also like a breath of fresh air: I felt like I finally found someone with my same libido, that had my same needs, and that could finally understand what I was feeling before, it made me feel understood and that was an amazing feeling. She also told me about her previous relationship, and she pretty much was in my same position but with her ex-boyfriend, so we really were on the very same page.
I would say that for the first year or so I was in a deep honeymoon phase and everything just seemed to be perfect. At around the one year mark, since we are students, we both had to move into a new house and we decided to look for a place were we could both be together for one year, which we eventually did.
Here came what first made me "wobble" a bit: it's hard to describe, but I felt like at the very same moment we moved in together in that little apartment a bit of the magic disappeared. It's not because of the quirks and little things that come with sharing a place (even if we were in two different houses before we used to see/stay at each other's place for many nights on, we were pretty much always together and we already new these kinds of things), but by having just one house for the both of us made me feel "chained", which unsettled me. I figured that was just a temporary feeling that would have gone away soon, and it eventually did, but it made me understand that I do value my own space and I need to have my personal time (in the past relationship we were almost co-dependent and I didn't want to make the same mistake).
During that year I also discovered many things: for one that she has ADHD , and second that she needs my presence A LOT not to feel sad. As mentioned before we kind of shared everything, from school life to going for groceries or just going out, and if for whatever reason I had to go back to my hometown for even just a week she would fall in a deep pit of sadness until I came back. I also had to go overseas for an erasmus of 6 months around the end of last year, and she was destroyed at the idea that I would be away for so long.
During that time, for the above mentioned reasons, I somehow felt relieved to go away for that long. I still felt very much in love, but I also felt like this kind of "hard" distance was the only way I could get my space again. When I was away I missed her but I didn't feel like calling everyday or just keeping contact 24/7, because otherwise it would have felt the same as if I didn't go away, and in the end we did keep constant contact even if not daily.
By the end of the 6 months I was looking forward to meeting her again and being close together, and it was wonderful to come back and see her, but as soon as the shared life began again all that "chained" feeling came back down.
We shared an apartment again these last months and it all went pretty similar to before, and now I'm in the situation where again I have to go abroad for an internship and she will have to stay here.
Maybe I worded this text a bit funny and it is not clear enough, but I am really struggling to understand what I feel.
I talked about the sexual compatibility that we had at the beginning and how I used to have a super high libido, but in the last 6 months or so I feel like it has plummeted to the ground. I could have had sex 24/7 non-stop and now I rarely feel like sleeping together, and many times I have to reject her because I really am not feeling it (which makes me super sad, because I wish I did want to). Sometimes I try to do it either way to see if by doing it I will get the urge too, but in the end that just makes me miserable and even sadder. What's even stranger is that it's not like I don't feel sexual, I get hard many times when she's close by and during the day I can feel the need, but as soon as she asks for it I lose all interest of doing it.
Along with this, I feel like when we're together I wish I had my time apart, and when I am apart I wish I had her closer to me. It's as if her energy is too much when we are close and something I need when I am away, this also makes me so confused.
Lastly, sometimes I feel like I am a caretaker, which makes me sad. I have always been a caring person and in my relationship I always felt like I was the one giving 120% all the time, and I feel so bad that I am noticing that right now I am the one giving less, but I cannot find the force to put that effort to spring it back to 120% and I don't know why. She always refers to me when she's sad, angry, depressed and I simply feel like I cannot take all of that in, but at the same time I cannot just leave her without support (she is also going to therapy).
It's so hard for me to explain how I feel.
I feel like I'm becoming a worse boyfriend by the day, and even if I want to change this I cannot manage to.
I already know that many of you will say that it's time to end the relationship, but in all of this I still feel in love and I want to try and solve this. I would appreciate to hear some opinions or personal experiences from you, and hopefully learn something.
TL;DR: I (23M) am in a relationship of 2 years with my gf (23F) but with time I feel more and more chained and with the need of my space. If I'm away I long her but when I'm close I need space. I also lost almost all my libido and don't feel the need for sex anymore, even if I can still feel aroused normally.