Tl;dr at the bottom!
My gf (22f) and I (22m) have been together for just over 3 years now. We have been dating since our freshman year of college. She’s the only girl I’ve ever been with in anyway at all. She had casual flings and one relationship before me but nothing super serious.
Over the past couple of months I have gotten a feeling of partially wishing that I had gotten to explore a bit more before getting into my current relationship. My gf has even told me (half jokingly) that she kind of expects me to break things off with her one day because I’ll want to explore being with other people. I initially thought that was crazy but that thought has stuck with me and may be something I want to explore.
Because of all of that, I’m having this weird feeling where when my gf and I talk (we’ve been LDR for the last month) I feel good about wanting to be with her because she genuinely is an amazing person that cares about me and is so kind. And when we talk or are together I still feel those feelings. But when were apart that’s when I start feel those thoughts about wanting to experience other people and having doubts in general. I’m not sure why that is.
I don’t want to make any stupid decisions because we do have a good relationship, and our families get along well and we have the same friends.
I guess my main question is why are these feelings coming and going based on when we talk? What could that mean? I’ve never experienced anything like this before so I just feel so lost. Thank you!
Tl;dr – been in relationship for 3 years and she’s the only one I’ve ever been with. Starting to have thoughts about exploring, but they go away when my gf and I talk but they come back afterwards.
2 comments
That’s interesting. I’ve had this same problem before and we ended up breaking up for other reasons. For me, I think I enjoyed the present with her but deep down I knew I didn’t like her that much, so it was very hard to make plans and wanting to stick with her forever. I’m curious to see what other people say.
I’m kinda going through the same thing now actually. We’ve been together 18 years, 2 kids, house etc. 14 years ago she was having doubts, feeling lost but didn’t communicate her issues and just forced us into a LDR, she went overseas to “find herself” for 5 months and I just kinda had to wait it out if I wanted to be with her. It hurt and traumatised me being blindsided that she wanted to ditch me to party overseas and not actually work on the relationship. She came back, we moved in together, some really sus behaviour came up around “experiences” she had. Hinting at same sex exploration, threesomes etc while she was away (we were still exclusive during the trip) where I confronted her after seeing some things that indicated her doing that and she erupted at me, swearing, redirecting, just really guilty behaviour. What did I do? I bottled it all up and pushed it aside because I was a co-dependent, trauma bonded, avoidantly attached weakling. Now it’s all come back up years later and I have to parse through all of this past shit to find out where we went wrong, why I put up with it all, and growing into a fully realised human in order to heal my CPTSD.
We are fine when we are together, but when I’m at work, I’m just mad at her and myself for so much. There’s so much resentment and distrust there now because I didn’t deal with my shit back then. So many red flags that I was blind to, its infuriating. I’m putting in the work to heal and grow but man it’s so much harder to do now, and harder to exist in this moment with her when the ghosts of the past are always knocking, reminding me and retraumatising me thinking of all of the signs I didn’t see and there’s nothing I can do now.
Please, be honest with her, provide a safe space for her to voice what she really wants (she may be projecting her fears/desires onto you, and it’s her not wanting to miss out on being with others) and also be honest with her and yourself. Don’t let things sit there unsaid if you feel you will resent her later. Make sure it’s real love you are feeling and not Limerance. Limerance is the love of an idealised version of your partner, and long distance relationships can very easily fall into this territory because they are diet-relationships. You could be in love with the idea of what your lives could be if you were in a normal relationship. You aren’t physically together, you are both spending more quality time and your lives with others and they are a tiny fraction of it now instead of being front and centre like they should be. You aren’t living your life with them, you are living your life around them. Don’t spend your life being unsure of everything, you will blink and it will be gone.