Apologies in advance for long post – I want to give as much info as I could – TLDR in bold fonts!
I (36F) have been thinking about breaking up with by boyfriend (46M) of 4.5 years. 3 years into the relationship, I have thought seriously about breaking up with him once, but it was resolved through communication. Whenever we have quarrels – which is not very often – the feeling of wanting to breakup with him would be really intense. But in the past 2 weeks or so, I can't stop thinking about what it would be if I just call it quits. I have been losing sleep over it.
My main questions are: how do I know if the negative feelings I've been having is not a case of negativity bias (our natural tendency to be bothered too much by negative things as opposed to positive)? And how do I know my negative feelings towards him is not a reflection of my own issues?
I will sum up the issues I have with him below. These are not issues that just appeared out of nowhere, these traits of him have existed from the day I knew him. I had thought that I will just grow to get used to (or even love/appreciate) them but they have slowly become so grating to the point that I can't help but feel irritated by him:
- He's judgmental – some might say, in a good way. He's the type of person who would boycott Israel/Russia for their war crimes, and berate Spotify for destroying the music industry. I am much more apathetic/relativist about such issues. On the one hand, I appreciate him for being such a principled person (and for that reason, I know he will never cheats on me), on the other hand, it annoys me that he's so black & white about things and often times, I feel that he'd never understand me (and I, him). Yet, he works at one of the big tech companies and is very much part of the capitalistic system and that makes me feel like he's a hypocrite. The way he always makes a point of mentioning that he's "supporting local" and "would never travel to Israel as long as they are committing war crimes" – things that really don't require much effort to do – also makes me respect him less. But to what extent is this my twisted perception?
- His energy level is so different from mine. I'm an extreme introvert. He says he is an introvert too but sometimes I have a hard time believing him because he enjoys chatting/interacting with people WAY more than I do. He also is a little hyper-active and FILLS his days with activities, whereas I just want to stay-in all day. When we first started dating, I found this aspect of him to be quite exciting; I would join him in these activities, but slowly it has become more burdensome. To be fair, many times I do feel like he exerts a good influence on me in this respect. But other times I have a hard time pretending I enjoy doing things with him. It feels me with guilt and also tiny resentment.
- He also has what appears to be mild attention-deficit. This manifest in situation where he would ask me the same exact question twice, or thrice, in 5 hours or a week. He would also tell me the same exact thing twice, thrice, as if it were never told to me before. It honestly drives me nuts. It makes me feel like he is not paying attention to me. When texting, when I send multiple messages, one about me, another about him, he would often only reply to the message about him and totally overlook the message about me (occasionally he will realize and apologies for the oversight). It makes me feel that he is self-centered. But I also know that it is not the only way to interpret the situation, sometimes when he tells me things I'm not interested in, I tune out as well. How do I know if this is a reason to break up?
- There're perhaps more things that would come to mind but I will end on this one. We have our own apartments and I spend the night at his every weekend; in the 4.5 years that we have been together, he had not spend the night at mine once, because I have a cat who would sleep with me and he says he doesn't think he will sleep well for that reason (he's a light sleeper). I have raised this issue once to him 3rd year into relationship, when I was contemplating breaking up. I told him that the cat is very precious to me and the fact he is not even making an effort to TRY to learn to live with the little one makes me think that he is unwilling to make compromises. The thing is, I don't even know if I WANT to live together with him in the future (my previous relationship failed because we started living together and the romance died), but the fact that he has never stayed over at mine makes me feel that there's a lack of some crucial balance.
I'm grateful for any advice or input!!