30M, fiancé is 30F. We’ve been together around a decade. We’ve never had any stop/start moments either.
Recently I’ve started questioning whether we should actually get married. Not because of one event, but because it feels like we’re slowly drifting apart rather than building forward together.
On paper, she’s everything I thought I wanted. Intelligent, attractive, driven, socially confident. We’ve built a life together, a house, a pet, and a shared history since our early 20s.
But emotionally, I don’t feel secure anymore.
It also feels like something in me has shifted. My motivation and drive in general feel lower than they used to, and I can’t tell how much of that is life stress vs the relationship itself.
It really hit me when someone asked when the wedding is. I didn’t feel excited, I felt stuck.
We got engaged a couple of years ago. I put a lot of thought into it, involved her throughout, got her family’s blessing. At the time it felt like the natural next step. Since then, there’s been a slow build-up.
A few moments that keep sticking with me:
• I had a minor head injury and asked her to wake me as a typical first-aid precaution. She didn’t set an alarm and when asked about it in the morning as I couldn’t remember anything she said was tired so made the decision not to bother before bed.
• I’ve had rare episodes where I briefly lose consciousness. On the last occasion I’ve come round after 2 mins on the floor and realised she hasn’t even left the sofa to check if I was okay whilst I’m sprawled on the floor.
• After we got engaged, she later said she wasn’t sure she liked the ring anymore, specifically the size. Likely influenced by a conversation with her mum, despite being involved in choosing it. I feel like this one’s more a social pressure thing but it still hurt.
• Any time I bring up future plans, I get: “you know I have commitment issues” as if that’s a reason for the conversation to just end there, but this goes on over months and years.
Years ago she also floated the idea of an open relationship. We didn’t pursue it, but I think about it more now than I did at the time.
More practically, I also can’t shake a concern about drift. My job requires no time working away, but it isn’t fulfilling either and I keep wondering whether a more challenging job away would bring us closer or just accelerate the distance that already growing.
She also has a pattern of dropping people off quite suddenly over relatively small things. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s abrupt and final.
From the outside, everything probably looks stable house, routines, long relationship, no obvious crisis. But inside the relationship, it doesn’t feel emotionally steady.
And I don’t know if I’m overthinking a normal long-term transition… chapters the majority of couples go through.. or noticing something I’ve been avoiding for a while. When I think about the future now, I don’t just think about the wedding.
I think about whether we’re already slowly becoming two people moving in different directions, just without admitting it yet.
I’m trying to understand whether this is a relationship problem I should pour energy into working through… Or if I’m throwing good energy after someone who doesn’t truly want to match it.
I’ve been fully committed for years, and I’m not perfect either.
But I can’t tell anymore whether I’m staying because I believe in us… or because I’m afraid of accepting what’s already changed.
Has anyone experienced something like this where it looked fine on the surface but slowly drifted underneath? What happened in your case?