I’m sorry if it feels like I’m being purposely vague, people I know in RL are out here.
We’ve been together over 10 years but this nagging feeling has been haunting me for a while now that, this feeling that, I need to leave. It came on last spring after an incident in which I needed him to be there for me and he showed up, but he treated me like an inconvenience. Something broke in me that day. I’m not really the type of person who ask for help, and he knows that(apparently it’s what he loves about me as he’s told me as much in the past)so it took a long time for me to feel safe asking him to do things for me, and then I did and he kinda got shitty with me over it. My mental health took a turn for the worse after that due to the incident and a few other factors, and I fell into a deep depression and kinda lost myself to it.
I’m finding myself again, but the me that’s come out, doesn’t look at her relationship and see love anymore. Things weren’t perfect prior to that either, we were drifting apart, very little in common, small disagreements about our future, nearly dead bedroom, jealously issues on his end, small white lies from him in the beginning, stuff like pretending to be into the same things as me, secrets about his friend’s shitty behavior just small stupid things.
He’s not a bad man, he’s smart, driven, and can be incredibly sweet and considerate in his own way, we’ve built a nice little life together, and I’ve no doubt if I stay with this man he would hand me every material thing I’ve ever wanted, but I’ve never placed enough value in the material for me to feel like that’s any type of reason to stay. I know if I leave him, it’ll hurt him, and I still care about him. I feel terrible even thinking about this all, but I don’t feel like I’m in love with him anymore. For a while I considered that I could maybe just live like this, that way I’m not hurting anyone, just settle for him being a decent man, because I’ve seen what my single friends go though and I didn’t envy them.
Then to make matters more confusing in the midst of me trying to sort all this out in my head, I met someone else while out with friends and while there is absolutely nothing actually romantic going on with that person(we’ve become friendly on social media, but that’s it, because that’s not how I go about life) meeting them knocked me for a loop because I felt actual attraction for the first time in a LONG time, and then the more I found out about them they just embody so many of traits I used to look for in a partner, he’s into the things my partner pretended to be into and to be honest I kinda just think he’s the coolest human being I’ve ever met, but like I said there’s nothing going on there. I don’t think they even looked at me that way, but it did make me realize that there could be someone else out there that I could have actual happiness and I feel like if I’m to the point of wondering about happiness with other people am I to the point where I just need to leave?
TLDR: Drifting apart from partner, met someone else, while I’m not having an affair, I am coming to realize I could probably have a more meaningful connection with someone else and I feel like it’s the death nail in the coffin of my relationship.