I have it all, but my heart is not in it.

[luciole]

On the surface, it must seem like I'm a spoiled brat, bored and lacking a challenge. I have been in a two and a half year relationship with an amazing guy, the likes of which I never thought existed, let alone hoped to snatch. He is the textbook definition of the "perfect man", and he has dedicated his life to making me happy. We own our house, go on vacations, gaze at the heavens through our telescope, and throw great parties. He is remarkably intelligent, handsome, plays the sax, and makes his own spices. Most women I know would kill to have my life.

But, despite all that, my heart is just not in it. It's a classic case of "I love you, but I'm not in love with you". It seems that over the last year or so, my excitement level about this relationship has dwindled down to a near zero, although nothing has changed on the surface.

I'm starting to think that I may just not be cut out for this whole "domestic bliss" gig. I've always been more of a tumbleweed, seeking a constant change of scenery. I always THOUGHT that all I wanted was to be loved and cherished, but now that I have that, I keep looking out beyond.

My boyfriend K and I got together about a month after I broke up with F, someone I was insanely in love with. That previous relationship was a contstant emotional turmoil, a long-winded, long-distance affair. I had thought that F was The One, nothing ever felt so right in my life, but he was just not ready to commit. K saw me through the initial shock of that break up, we became close friends and confidants, and after a few weeks of fantastic dates I was hooked. For the next year and a half we lived happily. Life settled into a sort of comfy domestic routine and I didn't question it.

Around last Thanksgiving F resurfaced again. We started talking (online) casually at first, until he revealed that he's regretted letting me go and admitted to making the most terrible mistake of his life. And the more we talked the more candid he became, opening up for the first time about his own emotional struggles, the aftermath of our breakup. He seemed to be drowning in his own pain. It seems corny as I type it... I suppose these things always do in retrospect, but from there things got increasingly messier. I was torn between my current steady, normal life, and the rollercoaster that was F. My mind was in shambles, I could not believe the torrent of emotion that was released when this happened. I couldn't eat or sleep and started wasting away.

To make this story shorter... K found out about our conversations, about my doubts, etc. He told me that if I wasn't happy, he didn't want me. The man that seemed a given constant in my life suddenly became uncertain. It terrified me senseless. I made all kinds of apologies, swore off everything I had said to F, and vowed to focus only on us from now now.

I cut off ties with F, cold turkey, we haven't spoken in months.

Slowly, life got back to normal. To everyone around us, we are the IT couple, an object of admiration. Yet I feel a total lack of passion, in every respect of my life, restless, and filled with longing. I can't stop thinking about F. I want him back, not even as a lover, but just as a fixture in my life, a presense. Only he stimulates me emotionally and fills me with a zest for living. Only with him I feel connected. But I know a friendship with him is socially unacceptable.

And I keep questioning my future with K. I don't know if I can spend my life with someone I see as more of a dear friend and domestic partner than anything else. We share interests, and goals, have each others' respect. But I don't know if the almost-platonic love I feel for him will be enough to make my life complete.

This seems too sensitive of an issue to discuss in our social circle, so I was hoping strangers would offer me a clue.

Thanks for reading.

[confusedgrl23]

I think if your whole heart is not in it then you shouldnt be with K. Why bring him into something that you are not passionate about?

I say let him go and let him find someone who WILL appreciate and in love with him.

Seems like your heart is with F. Just my two cents.

[Hope75]

I agree with the previous poster. It sounds like you crave unpredictable instablility, and the excitement that goes along with that. What I wonder if you've thought about is whether or not you can have a healthy relationship with F, or if you are ready for the emotional rollercoaster that you will find if you go with F.

 

When a relationship becomes mature and more stable, the excitement tends to die down and you find yourself with the type of love that you are talking about, a deep mutual respect, strong friendship, and yes, sexual chemistry, but not likely as powerful as when you initially began dating, or the kind you may find with someone who breaks up and makes up just as often.

 

What would you expect from F? Do you want commitment and stability from him?

 

As for K, he sounds like one in a million. A good guy like that deserves someone who loves him back as much as he loves them, and doesn't dream about being with other men.

 

I think you really need to look deeply at your relationship with K and decide if you are misreading complacency for lack of love and whether or not you can and want to do anything to excite that relationship and really try, with your heart and soul in it. It sounds like you were scared to lose him, so something is there, and I hope it is more than just 'status' and your 'perfect' life with him.

 

If you take a long, hard look and find that you still want to be with F, than cut K loose and give him a chance to meet someone who will appreciate him for who he is.

 

Personally I have been in the type of relationship you describe with F, and am now in one like you describe with K, with more passion than you describe, and I choose that kind of deep love and respect and stability over that all over the place heartwrenching mess with F any day of the week.

 

I hope you make the right choice.

[luciole]

Hope,

Thank you for your very sensible response.

I don't want a romantic relationship with F anymore; he, like me, is restless and unstable, and it would never be healthy for either. Intellectually, I realize that. But I think about him ceaselessly because we had a connection that I never shared with anyone. It was so profound, it was almost surreal. I don't have it with K, or anyone else, and without it I feel like an awkward outsider, lonely and misunderstood, which is scary, when you're in a relationship. No amount of stability and security makes up for that feeling when someone "gets" you. F is the only one who understood my essense, and I would do anything to have that vibe back. It was just exhilirating, and filled me with a passion for life. I know K would not have stood in the way of me cultivating a friendship with F, but in screwing up I dug my own grave. I can't have them both anymore. But I can't stop longing and craving and missing.

[Hope75]

No amount of stability and security makes up for that feeling when someone "gets" you.

 

This is where our opinions differ, I think. For me at least, having that stability and security comes from someone "getting" me. I would not feel secure and comfortable in a relationship if I could not be myself and know that I would be loved and respected for it.

 

Sure, my bf thinks I'm a little weird at times, but he 'gets' me, and there is no better feeling than to be gotten and know that you have a future with someone and can trust in that, at least in my humble opinion.

 

So what do you think you are going to do?

[Lexicon85]

Hey,

 

I totally understand where you're coming from. However, you have to stop looking at it from the perspective of what's best for you, but what's best for the situation. If the man you're with is really so wonderful, and you don't appreciate him like so many other women would, you have to let him go. How can you live with yourself if you're keeping him to yourself without really loving him?

 

You need to make a decision. At some point, your feelings are within your control. Either accept that the part of you that loves instability will not be satisfied and let that desire go, and stay with your current man with peace... or accept that you will never be happy with your current man and let him go, however hard that is. I wish it were easier.

[DN]

Since you have already made an effort to reignite the relationship with k and failed, I think it is only fair to let him go so he can find someone who will love him and appreciate him - you seem to appreciate but not love.

 

He has already told you that he does not want you if you don't love him. Since you don't love him you owe him nothing less than the truth - anything else would be deceitful and dishonest.

 

I feel sorry for you because I think you will come to regret not making a greater effort - but he deserves the truth. Let him make some other woman happy. I hope you eventually find happiness yourself, but unfortunately I doubt it unless your outlook on life and relationships changes drastically.

[luciole]

Hope, I do feel secure and comfortable with K - I can be myself, but that doesn't mean he "gets" me. We just operate too differently. So, even if we can see the others' point of view, and respect our differences, we can never "vibe" like I did with F.

To Lexicon and DN - I DO love him, very much. I appreciate him and respect him. It's just a very friendly, even, comfortable emotion, and nothing about our relationship is challenging and exciting. He tells me that I am the best thing in his life and that he would rather have no one else, so I'm not exactly clinging to him out of selfishness. In fact, if there was doubt on his part, it would be MUCH easier to make a decision. But I respect him and our mutual life, the investment he's made over the course of this relationship, so I want to be absolutely certain about any decision before I make one. I don't want him to end up broken-hearted and me - a tangle of regrets, like it happened with F.

Either accept that the part of you that loves instability will not be satisfied and let that desire go, and stay with your current man with peace...

I wish I knew of a way to simply dispose of that desire. I don't want to lose K, but don't want to lead a tepid, comfortable life. And I don't know how to reconcile the two.

[Hope75]

I don't want to lose K, but don't want to lead a tepid, comfortable life. And I don't know how to reconcile the two.

 

Can you spice up life with K in any way? Make it more exciting? How about traveling together?

[DN]

You say you do love him, but this is what you said above:

And I keep questioning my future with K. I don't know if I can spend my life with someone I see as more of a dear friend and domestic partner than anything else. We share interests, and goals, have each others' respect. But I don't know if the almost-platonic love I feel for him will be enough to make my life complete.

 

Romantic love is very different from platonic love. Do you think he would be satisfied with platonic love? And while respect is essential for a good relationship it is not enough - you have to love him romantically, to want to put his best interests before yours, to want to spend the rest of your life with him and thinking only of him. And it very much appears that you do not.

 

And while you are undecided and waiting to be be certain - he is unaware that you are, for all intents and purposes, deceiving him into thinking all is well. He could be starting the process of mending his broken heart, healing, and finding someone who does know that she loves him and wants to deserve his love in return. That takes time and he should be given the opportunity to start as soon as possible if you are going to leave him

 

You have a decision to make: and the ethical thing is to make it quickly - because you should not only be thinking of what is in your best interests but also of what is best for him. Don't stay with him because it is comfortable - stay with him because you love him in a proper fashion. If you can't do that - then let him go.

[luciole]

you have to love him romantically, to want to put his best interests before yours, to want to spend the rest of your life with him and thinking only of him

 

DN, while I agree with you that the interest of your partner should be tantamount to your own in a relationship, I don't agree that you should live solely for the other person and think ONLY of them. After all, aren't healthy relationships give and take? K is aware that I have my doubts about what I want, we've talked about it, but he understands that it's my inherent nature. I know it's uncomfortable for a guy who has his mind all made up about what he wants, and a neat timeline of when he wants it - to deal with a fence sitter like myself, but he knows that's who he fell in love with in the first place.

 

Traveling together has been great (we both live to travel), and it's a welcome distraction from the routine. When we get back though, The adventure is over, it's business as usual, and I'm back in limbo.

That's why I'm beginning to think it may just be the wrong time in my life to be settling down (I'm in my early 20s), even if the situation is ideal.

I am just so desperately afraid of living with regret.

[DN]

I didn't say that you never consider your interests. All relationships should be managed by negotiation and compromise. But they should also be balanced and yours is not because you don't love him as you should.

 

It is disingenuous to say that's your nature and that's who he fell in love with because that is exactly what I mean by thinking of his best interests.

 

He also said:

He told me that if I wasn't happy, he didn't want me.

.

And you are not happy.

 

Relationships are all about risk. You risk getting hurt when you get involved with someone and, very often, when you break up with them as well. But if you stay with him out of fear of what may happen next you also risk destroying his happiness as the cost of allaying your anxieties.

 

It seems to me that you really need to decide if your boredom factor is really because of him and the relationship or because of something else within you that you need to address before you do anything rash. Maybe you should get some counselling to see if there is anything in your past that would make you react this way.

[luciole]

I already know what is it about me that makes me react this way: my past with F. And my inability to move on, to embrace what I have, and not focus on what I don't. I WANT to be happy with K, I know I won't find anybody else like him. My question is: how do I exorcise the ghost of my ex?

For a brief time after K found out about our conversations I continued to talk to F, explained the situation, and we tried to make sense of it together. It seemed that just those benign communications were enough to give me a boost. I didn't want anything more, but knowing that he was always on the other end of the line sustained me. But it was hurting my boyfriend, understandibly, and even though he never asked me to, I stopped talking to F. Since then his absense has become a presense in his own right - I crave our connection like a narcotic. That's what I came here seeking advice for.

[DN]

In your last post you are describing a symptom - not a cause.

 

Why do you crave that excitement? why do you want that connection? You don't want him but you want that boost. So there has to be something in you that is causing the disconnect between why you want that aspect of that relationship but you don't want him. There is a contradiction there and you need to find out why and what you can do about it.

 

It seems to be that it is not the ex as such that you want but something in the relationship that is missing in this one. Is that about you or is that about your boyfriend? Are you going to be able to settle for life without those things, is your boyfriend somehow able to provide them and change the way he deals with you - or is there some sort of compromise that can be reached?

 

Also, you said you tend to be a tumbleweed, going from relationship to relationship - so that is another thing, or maybe an aspect of the same thing, that you need to analyse.

 

It seems to me this is more about you than about your boyfriends, ex or current. And it is more important overall to find out why you are like this and if there is anything you can do to change it, than simple 'getting over the ex'. If you understand the first the other will follow.

[Hope75]

What exactly is it that you want? Do you want to go with F and risk almost certain heartbreak, just for the thrill? Do you want to spice up things with K and try and see that through?

[Lexicon85]

Have you been honest with your boyfriend? Tell him everything you're sad about. Tell him your confusion about whether to brake up with him. Let him make the decision.

 

What will most likely happen is he will respect your honesty, and do what he can to spice up the relationship. It happened with my bf. I was tired of the routine, and I finally burst and went to him about how I needed excitement. He told me he loved me, and it wasn't long before he started taking me on road trips, and out on dates... I trusted him to make me happy, and he did.

 

The other option is that he'll brake up with you. It's highly unlikely, but part of you seems to want that, anyway.

[luciole]

Ultimately, what I want is to have F's friendship back. He remains very important to me and not having him feels like there is a large gap in my life. It's been suggested that it's not the person himself that I miss, but the emotional upheaval and unpredictability he provides - I disagree. I miss the one-of-a-kind rapport I had with him, our very unique connection. I miss my friend. My whole self-imposed abstinence from contact with him sometimes feels ridiculous - obviously wanting something I can't have makes it only that much more desirable. Staying friends with your ex is not uncommon, but staying friends with an ex you had an emotional affair with - is. It was a matter of taking responsibility and "doing the right thing". But it's not easy to live with.

[DN]

I miss the one-of-a-kind rapport I had with him, our very unique connection. I miss my friend.

 

This the sort of connection you should have with your boyfriend. If you do not and go look for it with your ex, then an important component of your relationship is missing. And he deserves that you do not emotionally shortchange him. Cheating is not just physically cheating - there is also emotional cheating.

[luciole]

I'd also like to address this:

Also, you said you tend to be a tumbleweed, going from relationship to relationship

 

 

I didn't say I go from relationship to relationship, I said I need a change of scenery; meaning versatility and spontaneiety, breaks in routine. I didn't mean to imply that I have trouble staying with one person. I'm not bored because I'm in a serious monogamous relationship, I'm restless because I keep looking out beyond it, and wishing for a different sort of contact I can't have.

[confusedashell]

why cant you have it with your bf? Have you tried? You dont know, maybe he is feeling the same as you..that the spark is gone. Things are mundane? Maybe talk to him, honestly. I might hurt him at first but if you're meant to be, it'll only make you both stronger. He'll see that you are saying it because you do want to be with him and you do not want to end it all.

[Hope75]

I'd also like to address this:

Also, you said you tend to be a tumbleweed, going from relationship to relationship

 

 

I didn't say I go from relationship to relationship, I said I need a change of scenery; meaning versatility and spontaneiety, breaks in routine. I didn't mean to imply that I have trouble staying with one person. I'm not bored because I'm in a serious monogamous relationship, I'm restless because I keep looking out beyond it, and wishing for a different sort of contact I can't have.

 

It seems you are contradicting yourself here. From how you are describing what you want it seems at though that is exactly what you are saying.

 

If you are 'restless and looking out beyond' your present relationship, that seems to indicate boredom, and I believe you said in one of your earlier posts that you were bored, no?

 

"change of scenery, different sort of contact." you've basically said you don't feel these with your boyfriend, so what exactly do you mean by this? These statements generally imply a dissatisfaction with the present relationship and wanting to step outside it to explore further possibilities.

 

You are confusing me, so my guess is that you are confusing yourself as well.

 

You obviously want what you had with F, and since K is a different person, and it will never be the same, what is the question?

 

You seem to know that you cannot fairly maintain contact in a platonic way with someone you feel so strongly about as F, so it's either F or K. Which is it?

[luciole]

You're right about it being confusing, to myself included. I thought that by writing it out and seeing what others had to say I could make some sense of it. Not surprisingly, I'm still all over the place and others seem to be getting frustrated as well.

I already know all the should-s and shouldn't-s; knowing them doesn't give me an iota of peace though. I dont know what I'm realistically expecting in this situation, my whole problem seems sort of nebulous and hard to define, so it's probably only fair to stop trying to figure it out using a bunch of convoluted sentences. Emotions never happen according to plan anyway, at least mine don't. But I appreciate that people will take time out of their day to offer advice to perfect strangers.

[confusedashell]

just end it with your bf, dont see your ex and leave it a few weeks and see what happens. Tell your bf you need sometime to regroup. If he loves you, he'll wait around. Dont wiat tool long though or he could just think its finished from your end and start to move on or else he'll just think you aint being very nice and decide to drop you if you do want to come back. Get some distance and see if it helps. nothing else seems to do the trick for you.

[luciole]

I agree with you that time apart would be very helpful; however, I'm not in a situation where I can just walk out at my convenience. We live together, have joint finances and expenses, and share everything we own. To separate myself from that would involve a long and messy process. I can't just take a couple of months off from my life to collect my thoughts, though I often wish I could. I'm thinking about buying a plane ticket and flying somewhere random for a few days, to just be alone and think about everything. I've heard that can be helpful.