Back for more advice: feeling very yucky about relationship

[upstatemedic]

Hi Everybody-

 

It's been a looong time since I've posted here - probably upwards of a year - but in that year lots has happened and I'm in need of some more advice...

 

I posted originally because my then-fiancee and I were fighting a lot - not constantly, but consistantly and cyclically. Our fights were pretty bad, and we had intimacy problems on top of that, and so the relationship was giving me a lot of grief.

 

Well, we took care of the fighting thing. An issue, which is not important to my current problem, nearly tore us apart. We came extremely close to parting ways, because she couldn't deal with a very big part of my life. In the end, she changed her mind - she decided to embrace me as a whole, that she loved me enough that she would love all of me and not only the parts that didn't make her uncomfortable.

 

So the fighting has gotten much better - we've both taken an attitude of asking ourselves "how will this help our relationship?" before we respond to something or bring up an issue (at the advice of our counselor). The intimacy, as well, is no longer an issue - it just took caring.

 

So here we are. We get engaged in June 2003, and we break it off in June 2004. We decide that the spectre of getting married is just too much - that we're in over our heads - and we need to spend more time working on our relationship before we take it any further. We've hit bottom and started to bounce back, so to speak, but I'm having a lot of trouble.

 

My problem is that, during the year of our engagement, all the fighting and unhappiness really turned me off to her, and to our relationship. I lost my attractedness to her, sometimes to the point that I couldn't even kiss her because it felt so wrong. Those feelings have bounced around the zero-axis, and while they never dive into the negative realm of being forcible unattracted to her (read: disgusted) they never seem to bounce back up into the levels we had before I proposed.

 

For the last few weeks, I've been going through hell over this. She knows something is wrong, but I can't put my finger on how to correct it. I feel like we used to be very much in love - like she was the one I wanted to be with, and I can remember so many happy times that we spent together. But now I feel...well...nothing. I'm trying to determine whether I'm still putting in an effort because I really want this to work out, or if it's just because I'm avoiding the spectre of breaking up.

 

We are great friends - we're comfortable around each other, we do all sorts of crazy stuff, and we can talk about damn near anything. Our views compliment each other very well, and she's taken fairly well to some aspects of me/my life that might be hard to accept for someone else. So I guess I'm afraid of losing all that too, and not finding it in someone else.

 

I'm NOT looking for outright advice - dump her, stay with her, whatever - I know I need to own this decision myself and I don't want anybody to make it for me. I'm looking for interpretations of the situation.

 

THANK YOU!!! It's good to be back...

[Rockymountainhigh]

That sounds hard. I know that once you start feeling negative about someone it's hard to get back on track. Maybe you guys could take a vacation to a romantic place and forget about the yucky stuff.

[herewegoagain]

Wow - that is a tough one. I also lost the feeling of being attracted to my ex gf and i didn't really know what to do about it. Finally, it caught up to us, and she dumped me. Now, of course, I want her back.

 

So my advice to you is, if you make any decision about her, think about it carefully and make sure it is a decision you can live with.

[fmfisdead]

Yeah man, I've felt like this before too, it sucks, you wish it wasn't that way, but it just is, and there isn't much you can really do about it. I suggest you seriously think about all aspects, the pros and cons if you were to leave her, and if you were to stay toghether. If you fight for so long sometimes it just drives you to fall out of love, and I'm not sure, but this seems common amongst many married couples.

 

Its hard to say here man, just seriously weigh your options and think about this heavily, and I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that at all. good luck.