tl;dr: my fiancé has grown as a person who i support wholeheartedly, but it feels like it’s coming at the cost of our relationship, there isn’t anything on the surface that’s “wrong” with our relationship and yet the spark has died. Do I prepare for the breakup, or is it just an uncomfortable time?
Throwaway account just for anonymity. – I’ll try and keep it as short as possible. (I failed)
My Fiancé and I are in our mid 30s and have been together for just over 8 years. We’ve been through a lot together, We bought our first home two years ago after three horrible renting situations where we got rug pulled three separate times. We’ve been together most of our “adult” lives if you will. Recently though, things haven’t been great. First though, some context:
We’re both gamers, nerds in general, not drinkers, nor any recreational drugs. I drive, she doesn’t. Good group of friends though we see them rarely, Strong healthy relationship for the past eight years, barely argue, just two people that found a spark and it turned into a relationship (met online).
EDIT: I’ve already gone on for so long that more background about her and us would be better but, simply there’s too much to write, so for now lets just look at what changed recently.
3 months ago she left her job because of how miserable it was making her, I looked at our finances, said we could do it, but it would be tight. It’s the third time this has happened – Her leaving a job because it makes her miserable – but as I said, we’ve been through a lot and I love her so I’ve always done my best to support her, as she has me. She pushed me to make a big career change and supported the household once when I was out of a job many years ago. She’s had a rough run with jobs, I’ve fared better and generally earn more so you know, you do this for the people you love. She was crying begging me not to leave her that she’d do all the chores, arms round me clinging to me, etc. (She wouldn’t do them, and I knew it, as I do them 90% of the time) but in my heart, what mattered is that she was hurting and she needed help.
EXTRA CONTEXT: We’ve had some other painful stresses this year, she went from not wanting kids to really wanting to be a mum, financially it just wasn’t on the cards and she isn’t a career person whereas I am, This translates to I bring in most money and have the most “disposable” income. She had the “we’ll make it work” mentality, but childcare is disgustingly expensive and I know we couldn’t manage it. Add to the fact that we were planning a wedding, but then her leaving her job more or less stopped that dead in its tracks.
This is where the “not great bit” kicks in.
Unsurprisingly, she got fed up of being inside all the time, this was exacerbated by the fact that about two weeks into this no job scenario, our kitchen ceiling fell in and my car basically gave up on life. So this really hindered our ability to go places, and financially we weren’t in a position to go out and do “fun things” especially with us now needing house repairs, but more than that we started becoming very distant. She would always dig me if I called her by her real name and not “wifey” and she would always refer to me as “hubbs”. It stopped, just one day it totally stopped. There we no hugs, no kisses, no pet names, as you can imagine this also extended to physical intimacy as well. We could still talk and laugh but if you read our messages heard our conversations, it would be more like friends than people that had been engaged for 7 years. Things were different and you could feel it.
She started to do something I’d always pushed her to do, which is go out and do more things solo. For 7 years she’s always been very clingy with horrible separation anxiety, I’m talking we’re together 24/7 and If I went away for a night there would be tears and lots of “I miss you when are you coming home?” Again though, this was a comfortable norm with us, we could sit in the same room doing different things, and it was never an issue.
So, she begins going out meeting new people and I won’t lie it shocked me, and I even felt a little nervous, I went from being her comfort blanket to not being needed – which was jarring – but we talked about it and I re-learned how to be comfortable in my own company and shed my identity as being the person that she “needed” 24/7. A healthy and great step forward for her!
I put the distance between us to her just wanting to live life more – because of our saving for a house for 7 years we basically never went on holiday, and coupled with the fact I’m the one that does all the saving, it’s all on me financially. So, with her new job, new lifestyle I just chalked it up to a lobster moment for her, and I know that she’s still feeling pressure about wanting kids.
She became less and less interested in doing the stuff we normally do. I ask about watching stuff on TV? No, going to see a film? No. Gaming? No. Go out for food? “I’m easy”. She’s off to see her friends every weekend – to which they mainly sit around and game together, watch Netflix, and eat snacks.
I’ll expedite the last bits…
We get to a point where I’m in tears asking her what’s happened why she’s so distant with me, why we’ve become room mates, and why her growing and finding herself seems to have come at the cost of “us”. She said that it’s because she wants more from life, that she wasn’t happy with who she was and that she’s wanting to do and see more. She’s stressed with her new job, health stuff, and I believe her. I do.
While I wholly agree with her, it still didn’t explain why she would never hug me, kiss me, or when I initiated it, it was like a hug you’d give a colleague, or the kisses that well, just didn’t feel like there was anything behind them. I asked did she want to leave? Was it me? No, she said, it’s not me or “us”.
We’re now in a place where we’ve agreed something is off that we need to get back to being “us” but when I brought up that we’d “agreed that we want to stay together” she hit me with “well, we agreed that we want it to work”. The back and forth here felt less of a commitment to try and more of a “well, it may not happen. She said that she needs to work on herself before she can work on who she is as my fiancé – again, not totally inconceivable but still… She gave me a hug unprovoked one day and I damn near cried, and even though she felt how tightly I hugged her how I sobbed a little, she even said “I know you needed that i’m sorry”, and yet, it’s never happened again. I could go on, but I’ve already gone on for way too long.
Thanks for reading all this, and I’m really sorry for the length!
So I turn to you, strangers on the internet. Is my relationship of nearly a decade ending? I know some people are quick to be “it’s not me it’s them!” Genuinely though, we’ve been a happy couple for years. She left this afternoon to go to her friends and she walked out the door smiled at me and said “see you later!” I watched her leave and it just felt like I was seeing a friend off, the woman that promised we’d be together forever, we’d planned a wedding, discussed kids just seemed like a total stranger. She’s going through her own stuff, but as someone that has always supported her, has bailed her out of money troubles, that has watched her grow from a very timid shy person into a strong kick ass woman, we’ve shared everything over the past 8 years. I can honestly say that we’ve held hands through high high’s and low low’s and I honestly cannot tell you what more I could be doing or could have done. I feel like I’ve helped her to reach a place where she can finally be confident with herself and her life, only to be met with the fact that now she’s there, we might just be over, and for the life of me I cannot see why or where it went wrong.
I’m sorry this is long. I’m hurting, I’m hurting so badly, I know we’ve said we’ll try and “fix it” but it shouldn’t need fixing. Things were great, and then they just…weren’t. I don’t understand.
Please help.