I've been with this girlfriend for four years. I’m her first real love, but I’ve had relationships before. We went through a lot of long distance: 5,000 km apart for eight months, only seeing each other for three weeks in the middle, then I studied in another city in the same country for a year. There were obviously some very difficult moments, but we managed to hold on, believing that things would work out afterward.
For about a year and a half now, we’ve been seeing each other almost every weekend, and for several months we had been talking about moving in together.
But for the past three or four weeks, I feel like our relationship has changed. She sends me fewer messages during the day, doesn’t tell me about her days like she used to, and is quite silent when we’re together. It really struck me three weeks ago: we spent the day in a beautiful place, and she spent the afternoon choosing music for her instagram post instead of enjoying the moment.
She has clearly postponed discussions about choosing an apartment and has seemed uninterested, whereas she was very proactive just a few weeks ago.
Since then, I’ve noticed several bad signs. She started by removing photos of me from her public Instagram, regularly turning off her mobile location while pretending it’s a bug… Two weeks ago, she supposedly had gastroenteritis and couldn’t see me over the weekend. About a month ago, a guy flirted with her at a club, and she told me it felt good to feel attractive, but that didn’t worry me too much because she concluded that she had me and wasn’t interested.
She’s naturally calm and doesn’t really talk about her emotions—she keeps them to herself—and I would describe her as a serious person. It was very hard to get her to open up. She told me she was afraid that we might disagree too often, especially in front of others, and also that she was afraid of the routine we might fall into if we lived together. At the same time, she sees her sisters’ and parents’ relationships, where they clearly disagree on several topics without it turning into drama, so she knows that disagreements are normal.
I have trouble understanding her fears because, to me, disagreements are normal in a relationship as long as they don’t escalate, which isn’t the case for us. She also told me she was afraid that I might have stronger intimate needs than she does, because she feels she has less desire and she even talked about it with her sisters, who told her they feel the same way in their own relationships.
Maybe the relationship has been unbalanced for a few months, because she goes out more and has more activities than I do, and for the first time I feel like I need to see her more than she needs to see me.
We saw each other this weekend and had some good moments together, during which I felt her close to me, and others where I felt like I repulsed her. A simple disagreement seemed to create a real sense of rejection or even disgust in her.
Here are the last messages she sent me: ‘I’m asking myself a lot of questions, to be honest. This period is really not easy, and I need time to think because I know we’ve been through a lot together over the past four years.’ ‘I don’t want to end everything because I’m still very attached to you and there is love, but I don’t want us to suffer either.’ ‘I need to take time for myself. I think we need to take a break because I really need to find myself again.’
I don’t even know if I should reply, and if so, what to say. Maybe she doesn’t love me like she did at the beginning, but passion will fades to make way for lasting love… Maybe she wants to be desired by others, but then why was she talking about our marriage and our future children’s clothes just two days ago?
What should I do? I don’t want to come across as too needy, but at the same time I have all the willingness in the world to make this work again.