I'm having doubts about my partner of 12 years
Throwaway account for privacy reasons.
I’m not looking for advice or for people to tell me if I should stay or leave. I just need somewhere to get these thoughts out of my head. My husband and I have been together since we were teenagers. And like any couple who’ve been together as long as we have, we’ve grown, adapted, and been through life’s toughest moments together. He is hands down my best friend. We love to travel together, he makes me laugh, he’s the first person I call about everything, and he’s always been supportive of my ambitions and receptive to my feelings. It’s always been important to me that we grow as individuals, not just as a couple, so we have healthy hobbies outside of each other. I've accomplished individual goals, and we’ve accomplished goals and grown as a couple as well.
Over the last few years, I’ve been wondering if I made a mistake by settling down so young. It’s not that I think there’s someone better for me. I’m a firm believer that there is no such thing as “the one” and that love is just adapting and understanding the one that you’re with. Offering them a person they can be vulnerable with and be themselves around. I guess I just think of the things I lost by settling down young. I lost the chance to be promiscuous, to find out what I like and don’t like in a partner, to get to dump someone, to be dumped by someone, to have a roommate, to live alone, to find myself as an individual. I watch shows like Broad City and feel envy at their ability to truly experiment, grow, and fail. As I’ve entered my 30’s, I’ve begun having my doubts. I think I’m becoming painfully aware of the fact that I’m losing my youth, and if I did want to start over, I should do it now. I have intrusive thoughts about just packing a bag and leaving for a big city and trying to make it on my own. And sometimes, unfairly to my husband, I ruminate on the things about him that I wish were different. I wish he liked reading more, I wish he were wittier, I wish he didn’t vape, I wish he were sexier or more passionate. I compare him to TV characters and other people’s partners. It’s awful. I know it’s not fair to him, that he’s only human, but I can’t help it. While our sex life is great once we get going, I find it difficult to instigate or be turned on by him, and he can tell which hurts his self-esteem.
I know logically that the grass is always greener on the other side. I’ve heard what dating can be like, and I know how fortunate I am to get to share my life with the person I love. When I think of our future, of us growing old together, I feel happy. I think this started when a family friend of mine decided to leave her husband (also a high school sweetheart) at 48. She’s so much happier, and all the things that drove her nuts about her husband never went away. Granted, my husband is a much better man than her husband was, but I just can’t escape this fear that one day I’ll have to start over anyway. And how much harder it will be if I’m pushing 50. We don’t have kids, but everything in our lives is tied to each other: our home, our finances, our families, our friends. I do have OCD tendencies, and I have a history of panicking over my health, the future, and if I’m “good enough”, so I just tell myself that I’m dealing with relationship anxiety and that it will pass. But I always have this thought in the back of my head, that one day I’ll be old, he’ll be gone, and I’ll be left with feelings of regret for not having given myself the freedom I yearned for when I was young. That thought scares me.