Just posting on here because I don't have many close friends I can share with this and I don't know what to do. My head is a complete mess. I have never felt more confused or overwhelmed in my life. I feel like typing this out might help me try and get my head straight and process how I'm feeling a bit better. I'm sorry it's such a fucking lore dump. There's TL;DR at the bottom but idk how helpful that is.
I've been with my girlfriend for 10 years, we're both now 29. We have gone through everything you can imagine together. We met through mutual friends and started a relationship fairly quickly. We were very heavily in love. We moved to London together and both attended university there, with me even living with her in her uni hall dorm room for a year.
Since COVID, there had definitely been cracks starting to show. The past few years had been particularly hard – in 2022, we moved out of our flat in London to live with my family and save money, which was fine at first, even exciting, but gradually got more difficult over time. I'm more introverted than she is, and I retreated into myself – I stopped drinking, got a work from home job, and didn't really socialise much except to go and rehearse and perform with my band.
With her being much more extroverted and into socialising, partying etc., this obviously became a source of conflict. I was worried about her more habitual drinking around the house, and I felt like I was also seeing her less – I was desperate to get more time together just chilling out at home and watching something on the TV. On the other hand, she wanted me to be more involved in her social life, and to loosen up on some of my neuroses and be more relaxed about life in general.
In early 2024, her estranged father very unexpectedly died, which was an incredibly difficult time. I was there for her and to be honest she did an incredible job dealing with what was undoubtedly a very confusing type of grief. However, she did start drinking significantly more, and there were times when I could feel us becoming more distant. We went on a trip to Japan together later that year which was amazing, one of the best times of either of our lives, and I had felt like it really helped her heal somewhat – I know life isn't as simple as that, but thing seemed to be good, and we pretty quickly booked another trip for this year.
2025 has been even worse. Quite early on in the year, one of her close friends died, which was horrific. We had many months of pretty low mood, with me struggling to motivate her to do anything or really even know what to do in the face of more grief and depression. I tried to just be there and let things be, but I'm a very neurotic "fix the problem" type of person, always looking for some kind of practical solution, so at times I definitely didn't help things.
Eventually, we had a fairly heavy talk around May where she first floated to me that she thought maybe we weren't right for each other. I had of course had similar thoughts in the past, but I also had chalked this up to being fairly normal in such a long relationship, and I had talked myself down from those doubts. However, neither of us wanted to break up, and we felt that many of our issues had stemmed from a big change in our living situation and a kind of stagnation on both of our part. We'd stayed living with my family (mum and 2 brothers) for far longer than we'd ever intended, and I was definitely not my best as I'd been pretty consistently depressed and anxious as a result of shutting myself away from the outside world. Meanwhile, she'd found herself in a toxic and stressful work environment, which meant she'd resorted to more drinking to cope.
We both agreed we wanted to stay together and that I would make more of an effort to be involved with her social life, she'd try to drink a bit less and we'd plan to move out within the next few months. I made the effort to be more outgoing and to be honest, felt 100 times better for it. However, there was more drama with her work, and I could feel that it was going to be very difficult for her to get a handle on the habitual drinking that was becoming an issue. Still, I felt like things got better fairly quickly, and in many ways I think we felt more connected to each other than we had in some time.
I had been looking at flats and found a really nice one that we viewed on Monday. Both of us loved it and we put an offer in that was quickly accepted, and we were expecting to be moving in two weeks. Last night, she called me from work, obviously distraught, saying she didn't think she could move. I went and met her and we talked very openly and honestly. She said that she still loved me very much, and didn't want to imagine a life without me – but she had a feeling that she couldn't ignore that something just wasn't right. I said that I understood, and to be honest, I'd had that feeling too. Maybe I'd just been better at suppressing it than she was.
We had an extremely brutally emotional night talking about everything, crying, venting, and also having very weird moments of calm where it kind of almost felt like nothing was happening. We couldn't bare to sleep in our room because literally everything in there is a trigger for some kind of memory, so we ended up sleeping downstairs in each other's arms – I know this is probably a bad idea but right now I don't care. It feels wrong to be apart.
She's gone to work this morning and I'm sitting here feeling so conflicted, and she says she feels the same. On one hand, I feel like she might be right that we aren't compatible anymore and that moving into this flat together might just make both of us miserable. But simultaneously I also feel like this is bullshit, that ending things would be a huge mistake, and that our issues our circumstantial and that we'd feel so much better finally getting out of my family home and into our own space. I feel horrendous, like I've stolen her life from her. Both of us really wanted to have children and I especially feel guilty about that, like I've completely scuppered her chances. I think she would be an amazing mother and I wanted to give that to her and have that experience.
I felt like we could do anything together. I love her so much more than anything in the world. I don't know what to do, this is probably the hardest thing I have ever experienced.
TL;DR: Together 10 years, both 29 now. Relationship started great but cracked after COVID and moving in with family – I became withdrawn, she drank/socialized more, we experienced big losses and life stresses. We tried to fix things and found a flat to move into. The night before moving, she said she loves me but something feels wrong. Now we’re both heartbroken and unsure if it’s over or just a rough patch.
Is there anything I can do to make my emotions and thoughts feel more clear, anything that the two of us can talk about tonight that will help sort through this mess? I'd be grateful for anyone sharing their perspective or a similar experience.