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F-18
I have been with my boyfriend for 3 years now. I was only 15 and he was the first person that showed real interest in me. He is the only person i have dated or loved. But now we live together in our own apartment i have been living with him for almost a year now but we have only had our own apartment for about 6 months.
Within the past few months i have begun questionioning the relationship. Only because i have never been with anyone else and am wishing i could have dated around awhile before sticking with someone. I have never kissed or done anything with anyone else and all i can think about is what it would be like. I really want to try and date around for awhile before i become considered an adult and finish college. I want to be able to be a teenager and maybe go to a party or two. My boyfriend has kept me from drinking and as sweet as he is i lost alot of my friends due to that and the fact that it seems like i can't hangout with others.
up until July i could say we had an amazing relationship and loved every minute but now that i look deeper into it just because we never fight & seem to always get along doesn't mean its great. I want to go out with friends...unfortunately it seems like i only get along with guys and he won't allow me to hangout with guys. I would like to end the relationship i think just so i can stop being a shell and be the pearl i should be(got that from Katy Perry's song Pearl) i feel like i could be so much more and this relationship is holding me back from doing what i truly want to do. I don't know if i can break it off because of the fact that it has been three years and i don't want to waste it all and end up missing what i had.
I have recently befriended a guy i work with and he thinks i am awesome and i am trying to be his friend and not have to shut him out whenever he wants to hangout and play video games with me. (yes im kinda a nerd like that lol) So i have been playing video games with him and have been feeling myself pulling farther and farther away from my boyfriend unitentionally. i don't go to bed when he does anymore i just join later in the night and i don't cuddle i just sleep on my half and have the hardest time getting to sleep because all i can think about is our relationship and if its going to work.
I don't know if i can throw away 3 years of love, I'm not sure what we would do with our apartment for the next 6 months because neither of us can afford it on our own, And we bought a puppy together six months ago and im not sure who would get him. I think the main reason i havent broken it off is because of those 3 things i don't know what i would do without my pupppy.
Also we rarely ever have sex or anything virtually close to it. I cannot get turned on by him it seems almost impossible at first we would always be kissing and having fun but now it seems like we could try forever and never get me anywhere near horny enough to actually have sex comfortably. I have to force myself to do it every now and then like once every couple months which is pretty terrible.
Sorry i wrote a book but i really really need some form of advice. Please no rude comments or anything.
I talked to him the other day about it but it still doesn't seem to be okay with him that i want to hangout with people and how im feeling he doesn't understand...and the guy from work is nothing more than a friend i have yet to hangout with him i have just played games w/him and talk...about nothing i shouldn't either its purely innocent.
It seems to me that your relationship is as cold as a bag of ice. That young love you had at age 15 is now matured to it's end unfortunately. I like to say there are different stages of love. Every love you have in your life will never compare to the next. Some people meet a person when they are 15 and they stay together forever and get married and have a family. But more than likely most people experience what you are experiencing right now. You feel trapped, like you can't breathe. You don't feel like you even know yourself and what you want anymore because you have been with him so long. You feel like you are being held back from being who you are and what you want to do with your life. Sometimes part of life is loving AND losing. We learn a lot more about ourselves by what we lose. If you have already thought about who gets what when you break up and you can not even feel psychically interested in him anymore than that is a major red flag. You may not fight and may get along great, but being intimate is one of the major things that defines a relationship between a friendship. And since he was the only person you have been with for 3 years and you are finally going out on your own, it is perfectly understandable to want to do things for yourself and discover who you are and what you want.
My first love I dated when I was 15 and we dated for a year or so. And then I had an epiphany like you did. I sat back and thought, "What do I want with MY life?" It seems like a simple question but in all honesty, it's a big question to swallow. Especially when you realize that the potential you see for yourself is being held back by someone you love. I realized that in the long run I knew that he would hold me back and that I wouldn't be able to be myself. I thought about the fact that if I stayed with him this whole time I would waste even more years with him when in the long run, I didn't see myself staying with him and being happy with who I was. I have been in this same predicament several times since I was 15. And every single time I left was because of one sole reason, "I didn't think I could be who I really wanted to be and I didn't want to waste years and years of my life with the wrong guy." It's hard to let go of someone you truly care about, and three years may seem like a long time, but sit back and think for a second. You are 18 years old. You have 50, 60, 70 years ahead of you! So 3 years is not that much when you consider the rest of your life.
The biggest struggle is finding out how to make yourself happy and how to discover who YOU really are. So many people begin dating someone and fall in love with them so much that they forget about themselves. Your whole relationship becomes just what the two of you do together, and you forget about what you want and who you are. But that comes with another fact I would like to point out as well: That sometimes you WILL have to sacrifice things when you are in a relationship. You will have to compromise. But when you know yourself well and you can prioritize what is the most important to you and what you are willing to compromise when you get into a great relationship again. It is all about balancing what makes you truly happy, and figuring out what things (guy friends, partying, etc.) are not worth sabotaging your relationship.
With that being said, I think the best thing for you, based on what you said and my from my own personal experiences, is that you need to move on from this relationship and discover what things make you truly happy. Find out who you are as a person. Find good friends (guy/girl) that will truly be there for you. And after you discover yourself and what you want out of your life, then focus on getting into a relationship again. No matter how well you know yourself, relationships will always be complicated. But knowing yourself first before being in one, will certainly help ALOT more! I hope I helped you and if you need anymore advice about this or anything else, feel free to message my inbox. :)
(Rating: 5) Thanks for you the advice it was very helpful! :)