End of relationship?

I had started writing this earlier, and it completely disappeared, I don't know what happened. So I am writing elsewhere and will copy and paste - if it is a duplicate, I am sorry!

I am new here, I have really enjoyed reading the posts.

I also would love others point of views on my relationship.

I am dearly in love with my boyfriend of 3 years. I'd marry him in a heartbeat. About 7 weeks ago and pretty much out of the blue, he told me that he wasn't feeling a "spark" and that he wanted to end the relationship. He said he'd felt that way much of the year, but that he thought I was worth it to try. My question? Why was I worth trying for 7 weeks and 1 day ago, but not now? Why didn't he tell me how he felt sooner? Keeping feelings inside is rarely beneficial - and sparks need to be made, they just don't happen. In the meantime, we brought in a stray cat, I moved a few more furniture pieces into the apartment, we did talk a little about the future, etc.

At the same time, if you saw us now, you'd not think we weren't dating. The evening he told me how he felt, he left for work a half hour or so later (gee, thanks!) and then when he came home I'd brought the blanket out to the couch - which I planned to sleep on and said "are you coming to bed"? (I did). We are still intimate sometimes - up to a couple of times a week - we spend much of our free time together, we'll sit on the couch holding hands or with his arm around me. He calls me on his way home from work. When I was out of town last month (and the phone calls would have cost way too much per minute), we spent several hours a night online talking to each other. He is hands down my best friend. We hug a lot, the other day when we went out to eat and were standing in line, he was in back of me and kept leaning into me. Our household roles are the same as they were a couple of months ago. He still often talks in a "we" sort of way - most recently saying that "we" should do what we did last year for the 4th of July and take a close relative of his with us. We did Thanksgiving with his family and will do Christmas as well. To be honest, our relationship is better than most marriages in many ways. Not in all ways - but this was his first long-term romantic relationship (my second, first was a 13 year marriage) and he is fairly set in his ways on some things. And as far as the difference between our relationship 7 weeks ago and now - I am the only one who says "I love you", we kiss on the cheeks unless being intimate and we don't generally hold hands out of the house (though he does sometimes put his arms around me when out and we do touch a lot).

Anyway, I want to do counseling. I bought some relationship workbooks that he said he'd work in and he has only done his on 3 different days (compared to 40 or so for me). I do plan to move out sometime probably in January, I just am not sure what to do. Do I cut him off a lot and hope that he realizes what a good thing he has? Do I spend time with him? I don't want to go, I do believe we have something very special and I don't want to screw that up in the process for good. I told him the only thing I really want for Christmas is him - either counseling, working in the workbooks, or both (which I'd prefer). That is it. He is a bit of a brick wall when it comes to talking about stuff like this - he can be the most wonderful, empathetic listener in the world. Except when it comes to us. Or anything else he is stubborn about. He doesn't always say what his on his mind - case in point, he knew that my last relationship was problematic because I wanted children (I won't go into why I wasn't having them). It took him a year and a half to tell me he didn't want them. I was floored - in the past, he'd occasionally said "if we had kids", and I asked him why he didn't say anything and he said "because you didn't ask". He fell for me extremely (very!) hard when we first met, so much so that it scared me and he even mentioned marriage. Now he says he isn't sure if he wants a long-term relationship/marriage with anyone. It is very strange, I honestly think he doesn't know what he wants and wish he'd explore that as well for himself. He also did something early in the relationship which deeply hurt me and asked me at that time to stay with him - I did. Now I'd love to have the same respect. After he told me he didn't want kids, I basically felt I had to choose between him and maybe someday having children. I am in my mid-thirties, so I am not sure I can have them or will have them at this point - so I chose him.

I do love him. If I thought things weren't really working, I'd cut the loss and mourn the relationship. He says he wants to be just friends now, but that isn't the way he acts towards me. Very often in the past he's liked a woman only to be told she didn't want to date him, just "friend" him. He seems to think that is the same thing as what I am going through - it's not. We have had a long term relationship, it is a lot easier to "friend" someone when you haven't. I have had to do it.

I went on longer than I planned, I am just frustrated. He is going to have this problem again in any long-term relationship if he just expects the romance and sparks to sustain themselves. I don't want him in a few years to realize what he had, and that I was the gold standard for his relationships (I am very low maintenance, I am not very materialistic, I show my love for him constantly and we do really get along well). I'd rather speed up that process, I don't want to be in another relationship when he realizes that maybe he did love me and didn't realize it. I do believe he loves me, though perhaps he isn't "sparking" the way he used to. I have read numerous relationship books recently and stuff he's said - it just is the way it happens in ALL relationships. If I'd not been so severely depressed in my marriage and was diagnosed and such, that might have worked and it was a LOT farther gone in many ways than this relationship. I don't expect perfection, and there is so much good in our relationship and it seems like it'd be so easy if he'd just open up to that just a tiny bit. I am not even asking for half way, just a little.

Anyway - thanks - I could go on longer, there is more to it (that is a good part of it, though!) . I am trying not to be clingy with him, and maybe the best thing would be to leave and let him see that I can be happy without him as well. I don't know.

Bfd,
I don't blame you for being confused about what to do. It sounds like you are getting alot of mixed messages. It's hard to say what's really going on with him. Do you think maybe he is afraid of real commitment like marriage? Alot of people freak out when thougths of marriage come into the pic.
If he was serious about you guys splitting up I would think he would've made a clean break of it instead of hanging around and being almost usual.
I feel for you. I think all you can do is to keep trying to talk to him and get him to tell you what he is thinking or whats going on. I have dealt with guys that dont like to or don't know how to open up. Actually I dont think I have ever been with anyone who did. I usually casually and sweetly prod my husband until I get something out of him and sometimes you have to go with the old reliable firm "you NEED to tell me". It is your life on hold and in the balance and you deserve and need a resonable explaination so you can either put your energy into working things out or start doing what you have to move on.
I hope the best for you and I hope everything works out. I really do understand alot of what your feeling.
Heidu

Thanks Heidu, I don't know if HE knows how he feels on commitment and such. I think we both could use counseling, definitely - when we first met, he told me he loved me VERY quickly (like two weeks after we started seeing each other, probably even earlier) and not long after told me that I was the first woman he ever thought he could marry. But now he isn't sure if he wants to be married, but I believe personally that this whole type of thing could happen again (fall for a woman quickly, eventually not "spark" with her) and then want to split up. I want him to work it out with me and not go on and have a pattern like this. He has lamented how most women considered him a friend, not someone to date - and here he has a woman who wants to be with him.

Last night we went out to get some dinner, and spent the evening holding hands, giving neck rubs, etc. and with his arm around me while watching TV. He hugged me when he got home, he always smacks me on the butt, and I just don't understand how someone can just think of someone as a friend and do that. I do know that a couple of times in the past (not a lot, but twice that I know of) he had a sexual relationship (not all the way with either woman) that he only considered friends. I don't personally consider that just friends. And with me, there is a lot more there - as far as frienship, affections, etc. If something is 90% good, and there are more pluses in being together than a apart, then I don't understand why he won't go to counseling. I feel like there is this key that I don't have that would unlock something inside of him to do that - and I just don't know what it is. There are things he keeps inside, I know he's been hurt a lot before and he is extraordinarily stubborn. I don't think he likes too much to be accountable to someone (though for someone who considers himself independent, he has taken really well to domesticity). But I wish he'd really focus on me - on what we have, which is a lot.

Reading your last post reminded me alot of my situation in alot of ways.
I basically forced my husband into counseling by telling him that I felt the only way our marriage would work is if we went to counseling, if not I didn't see a future and needed to move on. It worked, he wasnt' happy about it but he knew it was that or lose me. I don't know if that kind of ultimatum would work for you.
I am sorry I dont have more time to write now. I'll write more later!
Heidu

Sounds like he is having emotional identity problems. The things that describe him doing like holding you and smacking your rear end are the sparks of a relationship. I have in the past had troubles identifying where certain emotions were supposed to go so I placed them where ever I could. This often landed in appropriate emotions on my poor husband and kids. From what you have said I get the feeling that he has a problem, he doesn't know exactly what it is and your relationship has become the scapegoat. I have no good advice for you. I could tell you how my husband and I got past it but it wouldn't be very helpful since we ended up journeying through the pits of hell and I am sure you would rather do it differently then we did. It took a lot of therapy for me to straighten out my emotions. But I was REALLY sick. You guy just seems a little confused and needs time to work it out. I would let him know how you feel about what is going on. Let him know about your confusion and your desire to be with him. Let him know you are willing to wait for a little while if he is trying to work things out but not forever. It is not fair for you to be strung along. I am sure others will have much better advice then mine. I wish you well,
Zen

<font color=blue>that I would be good even if I did nothing, that I would be good even if I got the thumbs down, that I would be good if I got and stayed sick, that I would be good even if I gained 10 pounds-- Alanis Morissette

Thanks Zen and Heidu, I appreciate it. I have started plans to move, he doesn't want to go to counseling. I am not sure he believes he would ever need counseling, and I can't force him. I have let him know that I do love him, and I show him that all the time. He didn't negate that we might eventually get back together if we've been apart. But I also feel there is a lot more to it than he says. If I were to choose a reason, I'd say that he took a couple of things about me that he doesn't like and has been sitting and stewing on those. I know he thinks I am emotionally needy (I can be, but after reading Mars/Venus, I know that it is very common in women and I am not too "out there"). He also says that we are different. So what? We are very much the same as well. I think it is the differences that drew us together. Two nights ago we made love, so there isn't that there isn't any attraction. Though unlike him, I don't believe that someone can be just friends and have sexuality between them as well. He has had that in the past - where he only considered a woman a friend, but there was sexuality between them (not intercourse). I don't believe that you can be friends and be attracted and have sex. I just don't.

The other morning he also came out of the bedroom after I'd been gone a few minutes, wondering where I was and if I was coming back. That doesn't sound to me like someone who doesn't love me. I don't know what he wants, but he has had a very loving woman in me and while it will also be my loss, I think it will be a bigger one for him. I hope he realizes it sooner than later. I don't understand why someone won't go to to counseling if even just for themselves.

Now the question - once I move out (in just under a month) - how much communication should I have? Should I spend as much time as he wants with him, and try to be "friends"? Once one of us starts dating others, I don't see us as being friends at that time. I just want to know the best thing to do to possibly keep or respark a relationship. I do know that living a happy life would be very important - being more like the person he met, I guess. Though again, he'd eventually need to learn to communicate.

It's hard to say what you should do. If it were me I would move and let him contact you. Your not the one who wanted this and you want your realtionship to work. If you have told him that and that you love him then the rest is up to him. If he realizes what he lost and wants you back then he has some thing to make up to you and it should be his move.
Thats just my personal opinion. You have to do what you feeli is best for you. I am really sorry this is happening to you. You must hurt very much.
Heidu

I won't say what I would do because what I would do is totally pathalogical. No joke there. I am glad you are moving out though. He is not being fair to you.

On the sex with friends. I find this odd. My husband has expressed to me many times that sex is not just sex but something shared between people who love each other. This concept is difficult for me because of my sexual history. I just have to take his word for it.
Zen

<font color=blue>that I would be good even if I did nothing, that I would be good even if I got the thumbs down, that I would be good if I got and stayed sick, that I would be good even if I gained 10 pounds-- Alanis Morissette

I just wanted to update something from last night. We don't argue much, but we did get into it a bit (thankfully) - and eventually he used the words "not compatible". It was about our differences, and there are some. But most of what he listed last night were perceived differences, stuff he thought that bothered me that really didn't. Friends he thought I was bothered by (female) that I wasn't. It hurts me a lot that he just stopped talking to some friends and such because of me, when for the most part it wasn't a problem. He had said something earlier this year about me not wanting him to go to xx place (about a 5 hour drive) and it was like "we never even discussed it!" If we could continue like this - talking - it would help a lot. I don't know if we will, he isn't too good about talking seriously on a continuous basis.

When you assume, you make an *** out of you and me. Now isn't that a stupid statement. It should stop at make and *** out of you. Communication is vital in a healthy relationship. If you do things based soully on what you THINK the other person wants you totally limit everything. He needs a good kick in the behind. Tee Hee. I only say that because I am soooo guilty of not communicating in my relationship but in a different way. The end result is the same though. My husband does what your boyfriend does. Just assumes that I wouldn't want this or don't want to do that. It is so totally unfair and caused a ton of hurt. Now we are concentrating on learning how to communicate. Not easy to change after 1 1/2 decades of dysfunction. Ah well, it makes life interesting.
Zen<font color=purple>

The snow falls on no two trees alike, and the forms it assumes are as various as those of the twigs and leaves which recieve it...so one divine spirit decends alike on all, but bears a peculiar fruit in each--Henry David Thoreau

Thanks, I hope your relationships (everyone) do better. I know we need communication desparately.

If nothing else, this helps me take stock as well. But the one probably most irritating thing to me is that he doesn't tell me things unless he feels eventually he HAS to. Like....when I first met him, there was the girl he only considered a friend (supposedly, I don't know exactly what is in his mind). She came into town for a few months and he had his non-sex (sexual, not all the way) relationship with her, 3 times within a two week or so period. Had he told me at that time, that this was going on after the first incident, I'd either have left him or told him that he was going to have to choose. It'd have been bad, but not as bad as his not telling me until 3 or more months down the line when she forced him into it and I'd already fell in love with hiim. He was trying to keep her as a friend without telling me anything. I knew she liked him, I knew that she had tried numerous times to get him to date her, but I didn't know about the incidents until she threatened him that she was going to tell me.

There are other things - he didn't tell me he didn't want kids until a year and a half into the relationship (because I "didn't ask"). And maybe I should have seen this all coming, I remember a long time ago he said something along the lines of "what she doesn't know won't hurt her". That was when I first met him, how if we dated and broke up that maybe his next girlfriend wouldn't like so much him talking to me. That isn't right. I don't need to know every little thing, but I am sure much of my clinginess and insecurity I have stems from knowing that he feels that way. I don't think it is much to ask to not have things kept from me. I want him to be up front, period. If he'd told me when he first started feeling differently, then we could have worked on it from there. When you keep things inside, they just get worse. There is so much that I think needs to be discussed, I am just not sure he is willing to do it.

I just wish I knew a way to reach him where he'd listen. When I first met him, he was th emost amazing listener in the whole world. Now that it is us having problems, he kind of just shut down.

I just wanted to update everything. I am moving out on Saturday, we actually had a pretty nice Christmas - though he still has had problems expressing his real feelings a lot. What he hadn't mentioned until a few days ago was that a female friend was staying here for just over a week - he had dated her a very short while about 4 years ago and she pretty much screwed him over, followed by her staying for 4 months platonically (she is from overseas). I have never liked what she has done to him and others - a string of guys, treating them poorly and he knows this and his being friends with her (on and off) has been a thorn in my side. She is coming in today, actually - I didn't know that in time to move sooner, so she's going to a hotel for a couple of nights.

Anyway, there are a lot of thoughts - at this point, if anything ever happened with them (and he says it won't), then she'll eventually just dump him again and maybe she'll be completely out of the picture. But I did tell him today (after he'd done something nice for me) that I couldn't have any type of relationship not based on honesty, and that he'd have to be honest and not keep things from me anymore if we were together. We are talking about a few month break for now to see what happens, so we'll see. I won't date anyone else for at least 3 months, probably longer because I do think that this is worth fighting for still. And I don't believe currently he has any plans to do anything with his friend, we had sex a few nights ago and the one thing I do know is that he'd not have done that if he was even planning any involvement. But if he does, maybe that would get her out of his system (if she was there, he says she is not). (sigh).

I have learned over the months - FINALLY - some of the things that have bothered him. Some of it was losing his independence, he didn't expect me to be here forever. He felt like there were things that he couldn't do, which we never discussed. He feels I am too clingy - and truthfully, I can be - but I think in everything, I always was what I thought he wanted. I have a lot of facets to my personality and whatever I thought he needed was how I was, if that makes any sense. It isn't not being me, but just a different me than perhaps he needed. And it irritates me that he never said anything when the problems were very small. Stuff like making dinner - he said that he didn't necessarily want to be cooked for every night (like I want to spend a lot of time cooking if he doesn't want that!!) There is a lot more, but I wish he'd gone to counseling and such, the "feelings" he has have been based on issues that I knew nothing of, for the most part. We could have pretty easily dealt with those.

Anyway, thanks for listening again.