I don't expect much to come from this...

My boyfriend and I have been together forever. Therein, lies the problem. I am 21 years old, he is 20. We met when I was 16, been dating since shortly after and living together 2 years (although we might as well have been before that, anyways).

He is a great person, I can't say otherwise. He is artistic and kind, accepting of me and my idiosyncrasies and usually my impulses. He was raised with ethics and morals, which for the most part he follows (even if twisted, a bit).

That out there and known, I am unhappy. And I'm confused.

I am a student midwife, and it's hard. I work in a coffeeshop as well, though not a real lot at around 20 hours a week. He doesn't work at all, he makes money selling dvds on Ebay, and he's a filmmaker and is working on a film. Partially I think maybe I am jealous he doesn't work and gets to stay home all the time, while I work outside the home and barely have enough time to study (I'm way behind in my course).

Our paths are (at the moment) not on track. I want to homestead and buy a house and garden and have homebirthed babies. He just wants to work on movies.

He supports choices I'd make as a parent, which is extremely important to me, because my choices aren't necessarily mainstream (longterm breastfeeding, cosleeping, especially homebirth and refusing circumsision). I think his acceptance of that is one of the huge reasons we are together.

We barely have sex at all anymore (twice a month?) and it's usually waaay less than stellar. When we first were together we had sex TONS, and it was awesome. I can chalk that up to being together for a long time, but really.. I think our chemistry just up and walked off.

I have started searching elsewhere, mostly to see what's available to me. I would not say at all I'm anything near a loser, on the contary I would say I'm a very well rounded interesting person. But I've barely been in a relationship besides him, and he's never had a girlfriend besides me. Loyalty is extremely important to me, and I feel guily for even looking at other people, but it's driving me insane.

Should I talk to him about having an open relationship? Should I just break it off all together potentially losing him forever (we have discussed marriage)..will this pass? I'm losing my ability to reason and use logic and it frightens me but sometimes I just feel so lonely, and I'd rather be alone by myself than alone with someone.

I don't expect many replies, I don't expect many people to read this. I just needed it out of my head.

 

Instead of asking him for an open relationship why not work on yours? I realize that you are frustrated, and because of that logic tends to be skewed by anger, hurt, etc.

Have you tried talking to him about any of this? To me it does sound like you are bored, tired of him staying home while you work, and generally blah about your relationship. It happens to most people in relationships, but many work through the blahs.

There is no easy answer.....sorry.....because on one hand you started living the "married" life when you should have been out having fun.....on the other hand many relationships go through rocky patches and survive, often stronger because you work through the tough times. Sorry, its late and I am tired so it is hard to explain what I am thinking.

I say sit down and have a heart to heart talk.....print out what you wrote here and use it as a outline of what to say if you need to. If after the talk you still feel empty then walk away, as an open relationship needs a strong foundation to work. It takes both of you to make the relationship work.....

Just my thoughts....and I wish you the best.

 

Yeah, exactly..

Tell him exactly how you feel and see what he thinks, and then just take it from there. If you want to try and fix your relationship you two need to communicate.

 

All long term relationships ebb and flow. Thats just part of it. Being with someone a decade is not like the first year of a new relationship. You could easily find the exciting chemistry with someone else but it wears off with time as well. You just have to decide what you want.

 

First, are you staying with him because he's a good guy and agrees with your preferences, or are you staying with him because you love him? This may sound stupid, but I've known too many people who have stayed in relationships for far too long just because they were afraid they'd never find someone else who would be good to them, and that's a shitty reason to stay in a relationship.

On the other hand, as others have said, long term relationships do ebb and flow, so sometimes you may still be in love but things don't seem to going right... Either way, listen to your heart, not your head on this one.

No offense, but that is really young. When I think of how much I've changed since I was your age, muchless since I was 16.... Wow. Something you need to figure out is whether you and this guy can grow together -- which sometimes takes work, regardless of the ages of the partners when they get together.

Have you talked to him about this? My fiance and I are both in grad school. We both spend a LOT of time reading for classes, writing papers, prepping for classes that we TA, etc. While we don't have that split of one person getting to stay home all the time, it can be really hard to maintain our connection when we're both struggling to keep our heads above water on our coursework.

Talk to him about this. Something that helped me and my fiance was to set up regular dates. Pick a night when you don't have class the next day and just spend time together, whether you go for a romantic dinner or just a nice long hike in the woods (aka something that doesn't cost money!). If you just say you want to hang out, it's easy to hang out without really connecting. Be honest with him about how you're feeling so that you can both really focus on working on this relationship. That is, if you want to make it work.

Can he not drive in to town to work on his movies and come home to the house you two own in the evenings and stay home with the kids when he doesn't have a movie shoot going? I mean, from just this, it doesn't sound like your paths are that terribly incompatible, though they aren't identical.

Been there, done that. The whole "chemistry" magically being there thing is a myth. You have to work to make it stay. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a nymphomaniac or a liar. You two have not done a good job of maintaining your emotional intimacy lately. Frankly, that is 100% the key to sexual chemistry between me and my fiance -- when we're both to busy to maintain our emotional intimacy, the sex goes to hell, but when we take the time to reconnect emotionally, all of a sudden the chemistry is back like it never left!

Please stop that now. Make your decision based on you and your partner, not whether the grass looks greener over in that other field over there. Far too many people respond this way, then run off go greener pastures, only to find out that without work, that new pasture turns into a big field of thorny weeds too... So they run off again, repeating a vicious cycle. Decide whether you want to put the work needed into this relationship or not based on your feelings toward this mate and only this mate.

 

Good advice on this thread. I've been in your boyfriend's situation in my last relationship. Now I realize the reason me and ex-girlfriend didn't have a better sex life was poor communication.


Something jumped out at me, you said you're looking at other people. You need to TELL him that before even considering suggesting an open relationship. That is important and he deserves to know. It may be tough, but you're not going to resolve anything until you openly tell him what you're feeling.

Oh, it feels great to be able to tell your partner, "I'm attracted to this other person!" You're not doing anything so you shouldn't feel guilty in saying it. But if you hold that inside, you're going to end up doing something to feel guilty about. That is what I've learned from my 3 year relationship anyway. Lots of long term relationships grow stale, and I think poor communication is the cause.

If he just sits there mummified after you tell him, then he is definetely not telling you enough of what he feels either. Believe me, I was that mummified boyfriend in the past, and I don't plan to ever be in that position again.

 

Well, I should have mentioned that we do discuss this openly for the most part. He knows I am unsatisfied. However, when I try to explain some things he gets VERY defensive. Especially about the job, I've tried to explain that it would be helpful if he could work at least while I'm in school, but he just gets angry and tells me it's not fair because he does not want a job. He also does not have his license so if he needs to go somewhere, I take him, often changing my schedule for it.

He knows I'm looking elsewhere too, but it doesn't make me feel any better about it. I think it just makes me feel worse. I'm not looking to cheat on him, it's complex for me because I am looking for something like a family I could not have an affair, cause that is not what I'm looking for. I know I would need to be single for a while, and find it slowly because starting out with someone I want to have children with while attached to someone else is not the way to go.

I don't know how much I love him, honestly. I think I used to but then it got hard when I started working and he didn't, and I still drive him everywhere. I tried to talk to him about it, but he gets angry. At first he said he would go to therapy for his anxiety and then get a job... he went to therapy and didn't get a job. Then he said he would get a job after he returned from Connecticut for Christmas... now he says he doesn't want one at all.

I think we stay together, mostly, because we've been together for so long. Blah. How do I know this isn't just a blah period though, we haven't had one like this before. Infact, I don't think we've really had a blah period before.

 

it's "not fair" to you either because I doubt you want to be working this much when it results in you being behind in your education.

It's "not fair" for one person to be wholly economically supporting two unless that's what the two agreed to.

If he gets defensive, usually it's the approach that's used taht results in defensive behaviour. Ie "you need to ..." will make someone feel as though they've been attacked. "I feel like we need to change, let's think of some ways to address these problems taht we both have been dealing with" might be a bit more helpful. If he's still a defensive nitwit, then write it all out in a letter so that you don't have to deal with him defending his behaviour before hearing all of the problems and all of how you feel. Letters are, in my book, an awesome way of saying what you need to say without major interruption from the other party.

 

Okay, he doesn't have to work if he doesn't want to, but he needs to carry his weight in other areas...Is he? It doesn't sound like it if you are behind in classes and are changing your schedule for his needs. and Are you worried he won't get a new gf if you split? I wasn't sure what you meant by loyalty? You need to think of you...I don't mean that in a callous way, just that he is an adult who is responsible ultimately for his own behaviours. Stop carrying him. By that I don't necessarily mean dump him but let him stand on his own two feet.

 

In your first post, you mentioned that he earns money by selling stuff on ebay. I've heard of some people making decent money at this, so thought that he was managing to bring in his share of the money, even if he does so from home. If this is not the case, then that changes my opinion...

If this is not an equal partnership, you should get out. Yeah, there will be periods where you support him more and times when he supports you more, but these should even out in the big picture. If you're busting your ass while he makes no more than a token contribution, then it really comes down to him getting off his ass or you leaving...