Wondering especially from anyone in longterm relationships or marriages. I don't mean like when you already KNEW knew you were in love with this person, and then it just got deeper and better over time. I mean like when you are pretty sure you love them, and have felt that, but for some reason you still don't know.
I think I'm in one of those situations where the goodness of the relationship is hard for me to really feel and enjoy so far because I'm used to difficulty. Not just compared to past relationships, of which I've had very few, but in life overall, where I've fought my way out of some serious challenges to get where I am now. I'm in the best place I've been in as an adult, which is sometimes confusing emotionally.
Still, I don't think it's exactly that peace and happiness with him (30M) makes me (31F) bored--we find lots to work on in the relationship, and we're ok with conflict and working it out. We are both ambitious and adventurous and share a ton of friends, and so we always have things we are looking forward to and creating together. So I don't feel bored, and I've always felt about him that he expands my life and that I could take him with me into any future.
I have never met a man who seems to me so deserving, and so genuinely good deep down. I've seen his flaws. We were friends for over a year before dating, and I met him through my longtime trustworthy male friends who have known him since kindergarten and college respectively--so he came with some nice background checks lol.
He says he is obsessed with me and has shown it since day one. His dream in life is literally to make as many people's lives better as possible, and he gets so much visible joy out of improving mine by providing materially and emotionally and however he can.
We are about to close a long chapter of essentially long distance, where his job is one of those famous for paying a lot but completely owning your life. Even when he's not working which is seldom, it is still mostly all he can think about, or it has mentally drained him. He is quitting as planned after doing a stint there long enough to pay off his school debt (which is famously expensive in this aforementioned career path).
He worked so so hard to make our relationship work and be as present as possible throughout this job. But it just means I have relatively limited information about how we are together on the ground, and sometimes don't feel connected, even if the way he navigated this time has been all green flags. I've told him about this feeling, that I don't know exactly how to feel and that I want to know more about how we are together. He always says he understands, appreciates me sticking with him through this time anyway, and he just can't wait for us to be together more.
Besides that unresolved feeling, which is just a matter of waiting and seeing, I don't have any serious doubts. Still, it's important to me to feel big love (which I know is different for different people and doesn't stay at all times), and to feel the way he expresses feeling about me. He talks about marriage and I am thinking about it too, so I'm just trying to take this all seriously.
I think it's natural to need prolonged closeness to feel a strong connection. So I think the lack of that is probably the main reason for my fears. I love so much about him, and I know I have felt all the right things with him before, things that made me not just want to stay for now but made me want to be with him forever (thats a big deal for me, because I have some avoidant tendencies historically). But it is easy to forget those feelings and hard to trust them when your brain takes over with worries, and when there's not a lot of in-person interaction to counteract it.
TLDR: do others have experience feeling happy but uncertain in a good relationship for a long time, and then only later falling deep deep in love?