Should I (M 28) leave my partner (F 30)?
November 9, 2019 10:20 AM   Subscribe

I've been with my partner for four years. Never really had a 'butterflies in the stomach' kind of feeling with her, but we're generally fairly compatible despite having completely different hobbies and interests. Ended up falling head over heals for an old family friend and starting an emotional affair. My partner discovered by reading messages. We've subsequently realised we'd both been very unhappy over the last 2 years, but seem to have identified many of the problems. I'm still not feeling 100% about the relationship though. Should I leave?

Sorry for the long post, but I feel its important to give some context.

We’ve been together for over 4 years, moved around a lot and spent lots of time living apart. We have no kids but live together in the same apartment. I followed my partner to a new city and have become very isolated from all of my friends and family. I met her very shortly after ending a previous relationship, which I now realise was too short of a time for me to have identified and dealt with what went wrong with the previous relationship. I didn't really have any infatuation phase with her, which may partly be because she wasn't really my 'type' (I don't mean physically) and that we had absolutely nothing in common. Things moved too quickly for me and I often found myself making commitments that I didn't feel comfortable with to avoid upsetting her. Over the years I have developed a love for my partner though, although I worry that I don't love her as much or in the same way as she loves me. We also managed to find a few interests/activities that we both like. My partner has often emotionally bullied me in to doing things by trying to make me feel guilty (although in fairness to herself this was unintentional, and she was wholly unaware of my difficulty with upsetting people). This has also meant I've not really felt able to be myself for much of our relationship. However, I'm quite clear about the things I do love about our relationship as well, of which there are many.

In the last few months I ended up reconnecting with an old family friend who I hadn't seen in 10 years and we both developed an immediate and powerful romantic connection for each other. It was something really powerful, like nothing I’ve ever felt- although I recognise that these feelings are different to love and it doesn't necessarily mean we would end up living happily ever after. My partner discovered about this emotional affair by reading messages on my phone. She also discovered that I had been lying about ceasing contact with her several months later by reading more messages. She also read messages exchanged with my mother where my mother encouraged me to leave her- and now hates her and does not want to have any kind of relationship with her in the future. Throughout this process, my overwhelming fear of upsetting my partner has meant I've done everything possible to make her feel better (including lying). I’m now getting better at being more honest and we’ve also identified many of the issues that led to me having the emotional affair in the first place and feel that we can probably work on those. We both realised that we’d been quite unhappy in the relationship for a couple of years. We are broadly compatible in many ways, often make each other laugh, regularly have interesting conversations and generally have satisfying sex (although we have struggled with this in the past). So aside from the issues that we have recognised and think we can work on, it's difficult to pin point anything majorly wrong with our relationship. I have now completely ceased all contact with the other woman- which I’m ashamed to admit has left me feeling completely heartbroken.

Despite this, I still find myself struggling to see a future together where we have children (we both want kids). Sometimes I think it's just trivial things that are holding me back. I'd love to be able to dance in the kitchen with my partner (something she hates- we also hate each others music) or go camping or swim in the sea together. It makes me sad to envision a future where I'll never share these things with my partner and never have camping vacations with the children etc. We actually struggle to even plan a vacation together where we'll both be satisfied. However, all the guidance I see says you shouldn't leave relationships just because you don't have shared hobbies and we are compatible in the broader sense. I sometimes feel like I love my partner but don't really like her as much because we have such different ways of being. I've also realised that this will now make it very difficult for me to spend time with my mother and my partner together- which will be really difficult when we have children (especially because I'm so close to my mother and the rest of the family). My partner currently doesn’t seem particularly happy with me interacting with anyone in my family (even phone calls). I'm also sad that I won't see the close friend I had the romantic affair with ever again- even just as friends. She's someone I've known for most of my life. I've also not been fully honest with my partner about the extent of the emotional affair- such as my friend sending me a very thoughtful and romantic present which I do not want to get rid of.

Several times over the last few months I have come close to breaking up with my partner- but each time this induces a panic in me about upsetting her. I’m worried that I will live to regret staying in the relationship and that it won't end well or that I am not experiencing life in its fullest or giving my partner the strength of love that she deserves. On the other hand, we are generally happy, I do love some things about her and there doesn't seem to be anything totally unsolvable in the relationship so maybe I am just not recognising what is in front of me and will regret it if I leave? I often feel like my gut is telling me to leave, but I don't see any reason to end things so instead just try to find ways to love my partner more- which actually does work to an extent. I guess that I am not feeling 100% committed or happy in the relationship right now. However, we have definitely made a lot of progress with dealing our problems.

Should I find a way to overcome my panic and leave my partner?
posted by sofastyle to Human Relations (26 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Yes! If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for her. Let her find someone who fully loves her.
posted by Knowyournuts at 10:26 AM on November 9, 2019 [38 favorites]


Yes! I know it’s not really helpful but many people have a significant relationship or 2 or 3 in their 20’s and 30’s before settling down with someone else. So- that is to say- you don’t need to continue a relationship because it was/is significant, nor should you.
posted by catspajammies at 10:29 AM on November 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


I would leave. You don't sound happy, and at 28/30 you're both still at reasonable/good ages to look for new partners to have kids with. It sounds like you've done a decent job making the best of an imperfect fit, but you could put those skills toward making the best of little mismatches in a relationship that's otherwise exciting to you instead.
posted by needs more cowbell at 10:32 AM on November 9, 2019 [8 favorites]


This sounds terrible. Why would you want to ruin both of your lives by continuing?
posted by HotToddy at 10:33 AM on November 9, 2019 [23 favorites]


Should I (M 28) leave my partner (F 30)?
I still find myself struggling to see a future together where we have children (we both want kids).
Given your partner's age, and the fact that she wants kids, it's really important that you break things off now, while she still has a chance to find someone, get to know them and still be able to biologically have a kid. There are two potential bad outcomes I can see if you don't - one, you keep dragging your feet, then break up, she misses her window to find someone and have a kid (it happens, it happens every day) or two, you have a kid together, your feelings continue to be ambivalent and you either break up (which will be a 100 times as messy with a kid involved) or you just drag yourselves through the motions for the "sake of the kid".

Bottom line: these are not the feelings you should be having for someone that you want to have a child with.
posted by peacheater at 10:35 AM on November 9, 2019 [35 favorites]


I’m worried that I will live to regret staying in the relationship...

Don't you already regret staying in the relationship? It's costing you your dear friend*, is threatening to interfere with the relationship with your mother, and all you can say is that it might someday become some more of — not all of! not even most of! — what you're hoping for.

If you could wake up tomorrow magically no longer in a relationship with her, wouldn't you feel relief? Then the anxiety and emotional hardship are worth pushing through to do it for real.

* Reasons having that emotional affair was a bad thing to do, by my count: you didn't break up with your partner first.
posted by teremala at 10:36 AM on November 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


You both deserve a hell yes relationship; this ain’t it.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:37 AM on November 9, 2019 [9 favorites]


Oh, god, please find a way to leave her and stick to it. I didn't appreciate a single thing about my ex trying to make himself love me for a year out of guilt and fear of confrontation. It just made it more hurtful and messier and more frustratingly avoidable. We had a great friendship! And I hope you get to keep a non-romantic relationship with her if you really enjoy her company so much! But we both needed and deserved a hell-yes relationship.

And please keep working on these things by yourself once you're out of the relationship, for your sake. You really deserve to have the things you want that make you happy and it's miserable to watch someone deny themselves that out of obligation.
posted by gaybobbie at 10:55 AM on November 9, 2019 [17 favorites]


You don't need a reason. You're allowed to leave a relationship with a perfectly decent person who is not, ultimately, the person you want to grow old with. It's okay if the other person is sad and angry. Those are their feelings and you can't control someone else's feelings. It's okay if you feel sad and lost and (somewhere inside) relieved. Eventually both of you may find others who are better matches, and you'll look back on this time and remember it was sad, but also necessary.
posted by tuesdayschild at 11:11 AM on November 9, 2019 [8 favorites]


you blame her for your choices to lie to her, over and over.

I often found myself making commitments that I didn't feel comfortable with to avoid upsetting her.


This is a good way to say it if you want to feel noble but misguided, like a stoic sufferer who sacrifices his own desires in order to be pleasing. Another way to say it is: I made promises I didn't intend to keep and I said things I knew were not true, to avoid the discomfort of telling the truth.

My partner has often emotionally bullied me in to doing things by trying to make me feel guilty (although in fairness to herself this was unintentional, and she was wholly unaware of my difficulty with upsetting people).

That's not bullying, then. words are flexible, but not that flexible.

but I don't see any reason to end things

human decency?

Should I find a way to overcome my panic and leave my partner?

You do not need to solve your panic problems before you can leave your partner. Leave her first, and then panic at leisure. If you decide that you must treat any anxieties and panic troubles you may have before you choose to improve your behavior, you will never do it. Leave her first, apologize on the way out, and then devote yourself to overcoming whatever needs overcoming.
posted by queenofbithynia at 11:18 AM on November 9, 2019 [59 favorites]


This isn't what a healthy relationship looks like. You two have fundamental differences that aren't compatible and how the differences were managed by the both of you hasn't been good. Please don't bring kids into this. Break it off completely and though you'll likely be tempted to jump back into the relationship with your old friend, try not to right away. Instead, go and do some therapy to undo some of your bad relationship habits and ideas. You've stayed in this dysfunctional relationship for too long and engaged in very bad coping techniques and examining why will help you tremendously. There's nothing noble about trying to make it work with someone who isn't a good match. You both deserve to be with people who cherish you completely and with whom you have healthy dynamics. Be extremely careful about birth control until you break up. Break up as soon as you can. Don't try to hold on through holidays, etc. Considering that she wants children, break up ASAP. It's not very ethical to waste her reproductive years when you know that the relationship can't be salvaged. You both deserve better than this and it's ok to realize this and act accordingly.
posted by quince at 12:00 PM on November 9, 2019 [5 favorites]


Oh God, please leave her. It isn’t fair to her or to you. You’re settling, 100%, and have been from the beginning. You’ve just never had the courage to admit it. This is not a healthy relationship and there is much, much better out there for both of you. And also, you don’t need a reason to leave her. Wanting to leave is enough.
posted by yawper at 12:08 PM on November 9, 2019 [12 favorites]


Yes, break up with your partner and go find a therapist and go to some codependents anonymous meetings or if your friends or relatives have addiction or alcohol problems, consider attending Al-Anon meetings. Your need to make other people happy or at least avoid making them miserable is making your life miserable and your partner’s life miserable.

Adults are people who can tolerate temporary discomfort in service of their own needs and sometimes the needs of other people. It’s not easy to be a grown-up; I’m still working on it. But it is a valuable goal. I wish you all the best in building a better life for yourself and giving your partner that same opportunity by facing the discomfort of breaking up now so that you can both enjoy better futures.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:26 PM on November 9, 2019 [5 favorites]


My husband and I are very different in some ways and there are many things I enjoy that he doesn’t- even the exact examples you give! He hates the beach and can’t swim, I really enjoy those things. He isn’t remotely up for camping but I think it’s fun to do once in awhile. I like to drink and do karaoke and he’s a teetotal homebody. None of these things have ever been a dealbreaker for me because I have a very full life outside of our marriage and most significantly, he’s an amazing partner and I’m totally in love with him. I feel so lucky to have built a cozy and satisfying home life with him to return to when I’m back from my beach vacations. The problem isn’t so much that your partner doesn’t want to go swim in the ocean with you, it’s that you don’t feel that intangible sense of “rightness” that comes from being with the person you’re meant to spend your life with. You need to break up.
posted by cakelite at 12:33 PM on November 9, 2019 [8 favorites]


Mod note: One comment deleted. Please keep the focus on constructively helping the OP with this. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:46 PM on November 9, 2019


People have pretty much covered the fact that a) you should break up with her, and b) fear of upsetting someone is never a reason to stay with them.

Let me add that there is a difference between different hobbies and different lifestyles. Disagreeing about what makes a fun vacation is not the end of the world, but these decisions about how to spend your time can add up, and how you spend your hours, days, and years is a big deal. Like cakelite, I am an extroverted beach-lover etc. married to an introverted indoor person. But we're both big readers and love the theater.

If you struggle to find compatible ways to spend much of your time--if you can never go on a vacation that satisfies you both and vacationing separately doesn't sound fun to you; if how she wants to spend a free evening exhausts you, and how you want to spend it makes her roll her eyes--that's not always a small thing. Your life is made up of all those moments, and how you spend them is how you spend your life. That's important and worth seeking compatibility on.
posted by gideonfrog at 3:14 PM on November 9, 2019 [6 favorites]


You should leave, because at your ages after 4 years if you have this much doubt about the future IMO there is no good reason to stay stagnant.

She also read messages exchanged with my mother where my mother encouraged me to leave her- and now hates her and does not want to have any kind of relationship with her in the future.

Does this mean that you told your mother about the emotional affair before your partner, and/or that you discussed wanting to leave your partner at length? If so, I am going to gently suggest that your partner had/has every right to feel very alienated and upset about their role in the larger family right now, and if you want your partners to be close to your family you need to be careful about not involving your family with romantic problems.
posted by nakedmolerats at 3:17 PM on November 9, 2019 [7 favorites]


I once made the mistake of telling a dear friend that love was work, and to expect things to be rocky for the first few years. Especially if they have started living together.

She took that advice and followed a man through one devastating breakup after another. I think it was 4 in total on the way to them getting married. Their marriage seems to be good now, but I regret giving her that advice.

Here's what I will say to you: My husband and I had a couple of rocky years as we both matured and now we love each other in a way that both sickens and charms people.

It was work. It's still work.

It just shouldn't be heartbreaking work based on panic.

Also, I don't recommend affairs of any kind. I've never had one, and neither has my husband, but the wreckage I have seen in my own family makes me think that it's very bad juju.
posted by Issithe at 4:59 PM on November 9, 2019 [4 favorites]


It feels like you think you need a "good" reason to break up. Nothing's really wrong with the relationship itself. You feel that your feelings are wrong for her (your gut telling you to leave, you're unhappy) and so you feel like you can change those, because after all, what's really wrong with the relationship? But how you feel is important. If you *want* to leave (and you do), that's a good enough reason to end the relationship. Cf. Dear Sugar "wanting to leave is enough" as mentioned above.

Are you in therapy? If not, find a good therapist, so that when the ensuing panic and anxiety occurs when you break up with her, you have support to deal with it. Also, when you do break up her, commit to being single for a while. A year at least. Don't reach out to your former friend. Spend the time on your own processing your last relationship and this one. You owe that to yourself and future partners.
posted by foxjacket at 4:59 PM on November 9, 2019 [1 favorite]


Sir, your wake-up call is ringing so loud it's making all the dogs on the block bark.

It sounds like you have been prone to passivity and people-pleasing (maybe all your life? all your adult life?), and this is often more or less what happens to passive people-pleasers when the psyche just can't take it anymore: you blow up your life, usually in a very messy way, usually with the primary target being either your romantic relationship or career/grad school, and it tends to happen between 28 and 32.

You have the opportunity right now to completely rebuild yourself as the adult you'll be for the next 20 years or so. You should not stay with someone just because you're afraid they'll be upset. You're going to have to upset a lot of people in your life, including a good 20 years or so of upsetting your kids and managing that like a grownup because you're the grownup, so you should go off and learn how to do that before putting yourself into those positions and relationships.

This relationship that you're in now? That well is poisoned. The relationship between her and your family is destroyed (this matters, it really does). You can't fix this, it's just out of your hands now. Clean break, be a grownup about it, try not to let your passivity put all the burden on her to unsnarl all the logistical hurdles.

You will always feel a little bad about how this went down, but you will very likely see within a few years that the dam was always going to break and be grateful you took action now instead of later when the stakes are immensely higher. (Also: she'll see that too, in time. You may have to accept that you will always be a bullet she dodged, that's not flattering but that doesn't mean it's not true.)

If you do this work now, you will find yourself in much more meaningful and satisfying relationships in the future.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:53 PM on November 9, 2019 [15 favorites]


YES, leave! Good lord, she's 30 and wants kids? Don't you dare waste her last childbearing decade with your namby-pambying. Let her go! I didn't even bother reading your whole question because it's very simple: if the woman is 30+ and wants kids, and the man's not sure after, say, a year, he should just get the hell out of her life. Quit using her as a backup plan. She only has a decade, and in that time she has to rebound from you (1 year), date & meet someone she actually likes (3 years), establish a relationship with him (2 years), get pregnant (1 year), gestate that baby (1 year), wait for her fertility to come back (1 year), and get pregnant again (1 year). In other words, it will likely take her 5-10 years to find someone nice and make 2 kids with him, and every year you waste is you harming her goals. Let her find actual happiness with a compatible partner while she's fertile; doing otherwise is selfish.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 6:18 PM on November 9, 2019 [16 favorites]


Yes you should definitely leave. Both of you deserve to be free to find someone who you are truly excited about. Lots of people are in long term relationships and also head over heels for their partner.
posted by thereader at 8:24 PM on November 9, 2019


Here in my mid-40s, I know a handful of folks who have recently divorced. All of us had relationship situations like you describe, where it was clear from the start that it wasn't quite right. Not wanting to leave isn't a good enough reason to stay. And you don't need to know if things would work out with the friend in order to make a decision either (there's a good chance that you'd start something with the old friend if you left you partner, and a high probably that the new relationship would later blow up because it's hard to start something in situations like you've described).

To make a long term relationship work, you should feel a lot of love and generosity towards your partner. That doesn't mean it's never work, but it means you shouldn't feel this much ambivalence.

Metafilter often recommends the book Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay. I think you'd find it quite helpful.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:45 PM on November 9, 2019 [3 favorites]


in addition to everything everyone said above, this:

you shouldn't leave relationships just because you don't have shared hobbies

What that means is that it's ok for you to have some recreational preferences where you don't overlap AS LONG AS YOU DO OVERLAP IN LOTS OF OTHER AREAS. It's ok for one of you to like playing D&D while the other reads a book; it's ok for one of you to enjoy some music the other doesn't; but it doesn't mean that you'll be happy sharing a life with someone who fundamentally enjoys a different lifestyle from you. Can't be done.

You've never been all that excited about your gf; she's estranging you from your mother; you don't enjoy your life together; and you don't have kids together whose interests need to be considered. The Internet encourages you to break up.
posted by fingersandtoes at 10:17 AM on November 10, 2019 [4 favorites]


Best answer: Hey OP, I just want to say, I've been where you are. There's a lot of posts above saying you should leave her so she can go have kids, and that's true, or OMG JUST LEAVE ALREADY, which you almost certainly should. But neither of those things would have helped me much when I was where you are.

Firstly: the hardest thing about ending a relationship that isn't working (and yours isn't my friend, I'm so sorry, but there are nowhere near enough positive things mentioned to outweigh all the sadness and loneliness in your post), is change. Change is SO HARD, and I say this as someone for whom a large part of my professional life is literally helping people cope with change. So firstly, you need to be brave, and you need to get ready for some hard things to get through. Losing a companion of four years is really hard, losing custody of not just some shared things but your shared people, shared memories. It is hard, but it will be worth it when you do this again with someone you love with your whole heart.

Secondly, be kind to yourself. I think you're doing your best. You want not to hurt this lady, but by staying in the relationship you are hurting both her and yourself, gradually wearing each other down to a point where you think "this is as good as it gets" and stuffing your sadness down until it bursts out in the form of an affair or something, and causes harm.

But you're trying to do your best - trying not to jump ship if you could make it work by putting the effort in but I am telling you, I was almost exactly where you are and there is nothing I could have done to make it work. I used to think of spending my life with that person, and worry about all the regrets I would have, but feel powerless to stop the train we were on.

You are NOT powerless, but you will probably need to work yourself up to this. I must now admit, that I did not. It took my ex partner meeting someone else, and breaking up with me. I'm not proud of that - we both knew it wasn't working, and it's silly that it took them meeting their now-spouse, for the change we needed to happen.

I also want to say, there is happiness out there for you. I thought my ex partner was the best fit I would ever find and that I was just being picky or had a commitment problem. But I'm now with someone who dances with me in our kitchen, who when I suggest an adventure says "YES!", who I have a kid with and who is an amazing to co-parent with.

Change is hard, but it will be worth it. Be strong, be kind to yourself and to her, and look only forwards.
posted by greenish at 3:41 AM on November 11, 2019 [3 favorites]


Read the book Lust and Wonder by Augusten Burroughs. It's a really good example of (a) why settling sucks, as he tried to settle for ten long years with a guy who didn't even really like him much or want to have sex with him, and (b) when he eventually bit the bullet and broke up, he got into the happiest relationship of his life.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:18 AM on November 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


« Older Casual fun family board games for new English...   |   Shipping car across state lines to unreliable... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.