TD;LR : You’ve been with your girlfriend for 5 years and care about her deeply, but you’re starting to question the relationship.
The main issues are:
You’re very ambitious and want to travel/move overseas, while she prefers stability and wouldn’t follow.
Her anxiety and frequent small arguments are draining you.
She relies heavily on you socially and doesn’t have much independence.
You struggle to feel strong emotions when apart and aren’t sure if you love her in the same way she loves you.
You still think she’s an amazing person and can imagine a future together, but you’re worried about being held back and losing yourself. You’re torn between keeping a good relationship and pursuing the life you want.
I (22 M) have been with my girlfriend (22 F) for 5 years. We met during high school and were friends for about a year before we started dating.
We both are in university/college and I work full-time as well (university part-time) so I work about 48-60 hrs a week (Monday to Saturday) plus 15-20hrs of uni per week. So yes we can’t see each other every day but I spend every weekend with her and try to see her minimum once a week.
I don’t know if I want to be with her anymore for a couple reasons. I’m a very ambitious person and I want to do things such as move overseas, travel to unknown places and really experience life, whereas I know my girlfriend will stay where she feels comfortable and in control of her surroundings. I’ve talked to her about possibly moving overseas and she said she wouldn’t consider it as it was too hard and challenging. This can also be attributed to the fact that she has very bad anxiety which affects our relationship, as it tends to her blowing small things out of proportion- she’s said so herself - I myself am not an extremely emotional intelligent person but I really try my best and work hard to get better at it, even such, we have lots of micro-arguments about insignificant things (I know I sound like an idiot here), but the stress of this has really taken a toll on me and I just don’t know if I want to do it anymore. The last thing is that she sort of does whatever I do. I’ve got a big friendship group and I like to try and organise going out with them once a fortnight or so. Whereas she sort of struggles to keep her friends and doesn’t really hang out with them. She only really hangs out with my friends and there girlfriends which is fine, but I think it’s good to have you’re own friends as well that you can talk to and rely on. I think she just likes to hang out with me and she doesn’t care about her friends.
I don’t know if this is a me thing but I struggle to feel emotions sometimes, like when she is gone I won’t miss her at all. But that’s the same with everyone in my life. But I feel all the good emotions when I’m with her.
She’s a wonderful, kind, extraordinarily caring person who I still deeply love. She is genuinely the nicest human on this earth, the type of girl that flowers bloom when she walks past them. She loves me so much and I feel so underserving of her love because I don’t know if I feel the same way about her. I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her and I know if I brought this up with her it would break her heart. Both our families are very supportive of us as well. Every person I know has told me how lucky I am to have her by my side, I’m not the greatest looking but she is a genuine 10/10, think of Jay Z and Beyoncé. She is fun to be with and loves to play sport -and watch movies, which we bond over.
On one hand I could picture the rest of my life with this girl (I know we are young but we’ve already talked about it) and on the other hand I don’t want to be held back and not achieve everything I want to. I don’t want to throw away something good, and I don’t want to lose myself trying to pretend to be something I’m not.
I just want some advice on what to do in this situation, or if anyone has been in a similar situation and how the dealt with it.