masaki1085

You should not get so down on yourself. I can actually relate to this story, because I am going through very similar situations with my girlfriend. And I am a very pretty antisocial person. I met my girlfriend at the beginning of our college career and I really have not made a circle of friends at college outside of my girlfriend and her friends. So, I have to think about the consequences. I have not broken up with her, yet. However, if I do, I will likely feel pretty alone, and I will not have many in my environment to call upon in my hour of need. Remember, though. An unhealthy relationship is one in which you define your life by. If you feel you life is being defined by this one relationship, you are digging yourself an early grave, especially if the relationship goes sour. You must be confident in your ability to be alone, before you can share your life with another. It is one of the paradoxes of life. Take the time to do things you have not done before. Work out at a gym. Join a club. Become involved with things around your community. Go back to school. The first step in being social is to take steps to place yourself in a social environment. But you must do this for you to grow, and not for the purpose of picking up women. Your life is to be all about you. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

Thanks again for the quick responses. I know the last post was pretty lengthy. Another large concern of mine, which is why I am feeling the way I do, is that largely I have not felt happy in the past couple months. I suppose that's normal with all I described above. But one thing that concerns me, and kind of scares me, is how I feel about her currently. Many people have responded to me mentioning that it does not sound like I no longer love her. This might be true, but this is a confusing part, because I am not sure if I feel love for her, at least in the same way that it existed towards the beginning of our relationship. Towards the beginnings of our relationship, we shared many more things in common, such as common beliefs and values. Obviously, the things I mentioned in my last post were not happening. As the years passed, it feels as if we have both changed in opposing directions. We have never really grown together (which is why I have been feeling that going on dates should be more important in our relationship). The election especially polarized our differences because we hung around people who shared our particular political beliefs when not with each other. My dilemma is that I feel that we have become so different. So when I go through my head about the pros and cons of our relationship, I have a hard time coming up with a pro. I will think, "I am mad at this and I am mad at that, but I love her....but why do I love her?" My roommate, a good friend of mine, made a comment to me the other night that in the past months of being in school, about 95% of the things I said about her were complaints about our relationship. Are these signs? That I cannot find pros? My current girlfriend is actually my first girlfriend. She was the first girl that I was intimate with (and vice versa with her). There are a lot of "firsts" in this relationship, and I am afraid the love that exists between us is more about attachment than anything else. But I'm not sure.

Where to begin... hmm.. (this is going to be a long post) First I want to address your point you make about my sex life. One of the problems I think in my relationship is that we have sex too much, and we do not engage in any other kinds of activities. We do not do anything. When we hang out, usually I will go over to her house, hang out with her and her roommates for a couple of minutes, and then she suggests she and I go to her room. If we are alone, she will try and "seduce" me all of the time. We seem to never go out on dates, like go out to a restaurant or a movie. It is always straight to the bedroom. I have communicated how I felt about this once or twice. Many times, because we live in the same college town, she will hang out with her friends and I will set my own plans, and then she will still expect me to spend the night with her; and gets very upset if I choose not to. I have brought these issues to her attention on several occasions, and every single time it is interpreted as me calling her "obsessed with sex" or a "wh**e." (These are her words, not mine). Nothing has ever been resolved with this matter. The double standards and my give and not receive role in our relationship has been happening for a long period of time, even before the incident I described in my prior post, which caused these break-up feelings to come to fruitation. To give an example, I will often visit and sleep over in her home, but she will not come visit me or spend the night in my home, and she will make excuses, like my bed is too small, or her car is blocked in. This scenario occurred last year when we both lived on campus. She lived in an on-campus apartment, while I lived in a dormitory, and I always made the walk over to her living quarters, similar to how I will always make the drive to her current residence. The language on the phone is never "let us get together." It is always, "when are you coming over?" As I mentioned before, we never do anything like go out anymore. If I hoped to grab dinner with her, she will have already eaten with her roommates. If she has not eaten, she will ask if I bring her something to eat; however, she will not get up and go out with me. Then there is our interests. She is heavily involved with dance, while I am heavily involved with karate and art. I will take an active role in her dancing interest, by going to her performances and every once so often her classes. She will never come visit me in the art studio or come visit my karate classes every once in a while. I have asked her once or twice to visit me in where I pursue my life's interests, and she will often be disinterested. Or she will consider me selfish for wanting these things. And perhaps it is selfish, but the reason I show my interest in her activities is because I care about her and the things that are meaningful in her life. I feel hurt when she does not take the effort to show interest in things that are meaningful in mine. Now the above are example of minor things. Here are the major things. Often during school we will get into brief periods where we are both ultra busy. She is a Dance Minor, and is heavily involved with performances at our college. Usually the week before a performance is stressful because she will have to be in rehearsals every day on top of finishing her school work. There will be little time for us to get together, which I am totally understanding of, and the brief time of not being able to spend time with each other is not a big deal. I do not make a big deal about it, even though I may miss seeing her and I may be upset with her for not making time for us. To me, it is more important that her work gets done first. On the other hand, I am an art major, so there will be often times that I will have to spend long hours in the studio to get assignments done, often resulting in my being busy, and the reverse scenario occurs; I will not be able to see her. And usually during these times is when she finds something to be mad at me about, which is usually something inconsequential or is about my being busy and not being able to get together with her. I have communicated to her about this problem in the past, and it keeps occurring. It will either happen through an argument or through her simply guilting me into feeling I've done something wrong by trying to get my school work done. And then there is politics. We differ politically, which was never a large issue until this past election. This is how the incident several weeks ago came up that sparked my feelings of wanting to break up. We both feel pretty strong about our opposing political views. Throughout the course of the election, we often teased each other with our groups of friends, often to extremes of poor taste. For example, during Halloween (a big party time at my college) she was handing out condoms that said "F**k Bush, Vote Kerry." She handed these to my friends and I, and I should not say we were totally offended on a personal level, but we did not really care for the gesture either. ISo in the same teasing spirit, I teased her back, and I did this by showing her a video that I shot while fooling around shooting an art project, where my friends made a gesture directed towards her while criticizing democratic political beliefs. And she took this message EXTREMELY personally, saying that I was totally undermining everything that she's ever believed in. Now, I admitted fault to the video because it may have taken the teasing to a more personal level. This was something I should not have done to someone I am in love with. However, the video incident also makes me think that there is a double standard in this as well. She would have no problem with going off about how much she disagreed and hated certain republicans, and believe me, she does all of the time. And I sit and take it, and honestly, I don't care because I feel that many times politics can just be ridiculous. On the other hand, if I were to badmouth what I thought of the democratic campaign and their beliefs, I would catch hell for it. Soon after the incident above, after we had talked about how we felt regarding our political problems, we got into a discussion about the Bible. She knows that I grew up believing in the Bible as my holy text. To an extent, she did as well, but she questions its authenticity. When making a point, she said in front of me in verbatim, "The Bible is bulls**t." Now I am not the most religious man on the face of the earth, but I did get offended by this comment. And when I told her that I was offended, she did not really want to accept that I was offended, insisting that "you really do not believe in that, do you?" Now it is not to say that I do not respect her opinion over the matter. I do. However, the way of expressing her feelings towards something I hold more dear than her could have been way more respectful of my beliefs. In the end, she felt it was "my choice" for being offended at what she said. If this is true, was it "her choice" that she got offended by the video I showed her? The above is just examples of the "nitty gritty." I hope they are clear enough to understand, because it is getting pretty late as I write this. Believe me, I have considered that I may not have been as communicative with her about these things. Typically she is more talkative than me, and I tend to be a very shy person. The problem is I am made to feel as if I am wrong about the things I feel above when I do communicate with her, which is what makes it more difficult to communicate. I have also considered the notion that I have already communicated with her how I have felt, and I have done this for years, and now I'm tired of having the communication go nowhere. Anyways, this was a pretty big post, wasn't it? I hope it makes sense (if it doesn't, just ask me to clarify certain things). I also just wanted to express my appreciation for everyone who has responded to my initial post. Thanks for taking the time to read and respond.

This is a post I made on another advice forum, and I wanted to get as much advice as I can from a diverse amount of people. thereforeeee I am posting here as well. I have been thinking for a couple weeks about breaking up with my girlfriend of 3 years, and I think I have made the decision to go through with it. There are some problems, though, and any advice would be wonderfully appreciated. Here's my story: We both attend the same college, and we both live within 5 minutes of each other in our hometown. The semester just ended at our college, and she has gone home already; I stay here for a couple more days because of my job. Our schedules will be crazy throughout our winter breaks. From the 23rd through the 26th I will be out of state again visiting my family for Christmas. And then, while she is home for the entire 4 weeks of our winter break, I have to come back right after New Years (in about 2 weeks) to continue working my job at school. Right before I move back to school, she and I are attending a wedding on New Years Eve. Essentially, the problem is that we will hardly be seeing each other over the break, because of that two week period we will be apart. And when we do see each other, it will be over the holiday season (not the most ideal time to end a relationship). But, it also gets more complicated than this. For Christmas, she wants me to make for her a little book of "sexual favor" vouchers, to spice up the romance in our relationship (to make it interesting and exciting). The way I feel right now, I really do not want to make this for her. Not only is it because I feel the way I do, but it is also a disservice to her if say I do give her this gift and then break up with her shortly after. In a nutshell, I wanted to wait to break up with her following the winter break, when we begin our spring semester. This is because I do not wish to leave for her an emotional scar attached to the holiday season, and also because I do not want to break up with her over the phone when we are separated for those first weeks in January. However, the problem of getting her the gift mentioned above, which she is really hoping for, is that it leads to a false notion that everything in our relationship is fine. Just to provide some background information about why I wish to break up, a couple weeks ago we got into a huge argument; mostly concerning politics (because we both have different political values and beliefs). We resolved the argument, but more and more I have been thinking about how different our morals and values are (and how they have changed in opposite directions through our relationship). There is also many double standards in our relationship, where I feel like I am giving and am never receiving, which I have communicated with her, but she never accepts it and makes my issues with her my own problems. I feel like I am taking a more active role in her life, but she never seems to want much of a role in mine. (If this area needs to explained further for better understanding, let me know, but I am not trying to get too deep into the nitty gritty). All in all, I'm just not happy anymore. I know this is lengthy and complicated. I would appreciate any advice anyone has to offer. Thanks so much!