Hi, I’m so sorry but my therapist is out of town for a few months and I need help since I don’t have a lot of friends I can discuss this with.
I’ve been in a long distance relationship for about 2 years now, but lately it hasn’t been… fulfilling for me? It’s really hard to say that considering that she’s one of my favorite people in my life and I love her very dearly. We had been best friends 2 years prior to starting to the relationship, so I’ve known her 4 years total.
We’re very healthy, we take breaks when we need to, we have pet names for each other, we have good conversations, send each other gifts (sometimes) and always talk about moving in with each other in a few years, but I think we’re different people in what we want and how we view the relationship.
I’m the the kind of person that puts a lot of effort into the relationship, and is very loyal, very supportive and needing to spend time with her a lot—to which we only do in the evenings because she’s not comfortable with calling any earlier than 6pm my time. I like making gifts and being reciprocated for that, and I like being thought of and appreciated for everything I do for her, even while we’re long distance. And not to mention, she is someone that I wanted to be with from the very beginning, I wanted to be her partner.
Meanwhile, she forgot my birthday recently and kind of blows off a lot of important things, like Valentine’s Day. Christmas was fine, she sent me a gift but that was the latest gift I had received from her. She hangs out with other people whilst accidentally ignoring me or just forgetting to check her phone (mind you, this happens a lot), sometimes for hours at a time, and she gives a lot of mixed signals in the day about if she wants to talk that night or not (Ex. Her being super joyous in the morning but then later in the night she says she doesn’t feel good and doesn’t wanna talk). She doesn’t really express a lot of appreciation for me, something I genuinely crave, and sometimes she goes online talking to friends or playing games without even telling me good morning first. It’s weird because she does all of these things that I don’t necessarily like, but sometimes we’ll have a great time talking and laughing with each other for 4 hours straight some days.
I do take in consideration that she has ADHD and I try not to let anything she does get to me too bad.
But every time I bring up a conflict, she cries and says she can do better. That she can fix what’s wrong in the relationship. When we’ve had arguments, she was afraid I was going to break up with her, to which I assured her that I would never break up with her. Her getting upset, I would assume, means that she does care about me. I feel really guilty every time I think about ending the romantic relationship. I don’t want to hurt her, because I sincerely love her.
I don’t want to break her heart and make her cry if I do want to end up going back to being friends with her.
What do I do?