My bf and I have been together 2.5 years, lived together for 6 months, and have a cat together. For the most part we have a normal good relationship. Although we tend to get along fine and have rarely had fights, we just have fundamentally different personalities. I think this can be fine in many cases but unfortunately I’ve had to confront my feelings and I believe it’ll be best to break up as I don’t see myself being happy long term.
For the past few months, I have been building resentment for every small thing (not doing the dishes, leaving pee on the toilet seat, not asking my opinion/input on things, leaving his clothes on the ground, etc). I have tried bringing these things up the past gently as to not “nag” him but I definitely could’ve been communicating my feelings better. I’m not great with confrontation and due to past arguments just getting nowhere and eventually just having to “agree to disagree”, I tend to not address things with him bc I assume he won’t care or understand why I’m upset.
The biggest issue tho is that we hold different values and see the world differently. To put it plainly, I’m more progressive and he’s more conservative. In general that’s fine. But we disagree on some things and tend to surround ourselves with people with similar views to our own which makes the other person uncomfortable. The environment his friends and family have had me very uneasy and he doesn’t like being around my friends bc he assumes he will offend them. From all of these things, I have felt very emotionally distant which has led to a severe decrease to physical intimacy. I’ve lately tried to talk to him more as to understand him better and hopefully try to regain our emotional connection but it hasn’t really helped. He doesn’t see an issue and almost acts as if it’s a me problem instead of an us problem.
Even though we’ve been together for so long and live together, I feel so alone and like I can’t be my full self with him. I’m finally accepting that this isn’t sustainable long term even if we love each other a lot. But I don’t know how to break up with someone while living together. I’m scared it will either make things incredibly messy and difficult or that he will convince me we’re fine and I’ll just stay bc it’s the easy thing to do. If you have left someone you live with and it not being bc of a specific obvious event/reason to break up, how did you do it?