From living together to living apart

[losingmymind]

My girlfriend and I have been together for 3 years. We are both 30. We moved to a new city together about 16 months ago. Our relationship has suffered asince,. She says she feels "trapped" and needs space. She has stopped wanting to have sex. We've both been struggling with this for months. She thinks the fact that we are in a small apartment in a new city where we have only each other is making her feel this way. After realizing we were not making things any better, she suggested we get sperate apartments and I suggested we get couples counseling. We're currently doing both. Things seem a little better, but we haven;t officially moved yet and have had only one counseling session. We bnoth made deposits on new aprtments and found someone to take over our lease.

 

I am feeling incredibly depressed over this. Can any women offer some insight? I love this girl more than anything, and she canl;t seem to explain to me why she's feeling the way she's feeling.

[RayKay]

Did you live together before you moved? If not, it may be well, she is finding out this may not be what she wants (this relationship), or maybe it is so many changes (new city, new living arrangements) that are just all too much.

 

Unfortunately, I cannot read her mind either, and I do hope counselling helps bring it out..it sounds like she WANTS to get those feelings figured out. But of course, there are no guarantees either.

[losingmymind]

We did not live together back home. Ansd she has some serious hang-ups about marriage (even though I never even mention it) but why after 3 years? its not like she didn't know me. How do I play this?

[Phoenix69]

I have similar problems with my BF at times. We lived together for a year and a half. Then we broke up in March and have been living apart ever since. We got back together about two weeks after the break up and have not moved back in together since. It is at times rather uplifting to have the time and space to miss each other, but at other times (for me at least) I miss having someone to go to bed with every night and miss the daily contact you get when you are living with someone...

 

Perhaps this will be a good thing for your relationship and you may find you become closer because of the limited contact...

[losingmymind]

That is the theory. It seems to be working for you. I hope she misses me like that. I'm jjst so scared that it will never be back to the way it was

[Phoenix69]

It won't be like it was... It will move onto something different. Perhaps even better than it was...

[Momene]

I see this as a backward step and possibly closer to a split. I would have thought that in 16 months you would have met people from work or bumped into other people, so I'm sorry that I see little chance of improvement.