Tough Situation with High School Sweetheart
I have been with the same girl for 6 years, since I was 14 and she was 13. I am currently 20, and she is 19. We have had a hell of a ride. The things that she has done for me have always been amazing, and the emotions incontrovertible. It was a picture perfect high school career, I Valedictorian and she Salutatorian, she Student Council president, I Honor Society president, and we have jumped through all kinds of obstacles together, chiefly managing to go to the same university. We maintained a healthy relationship throughout our freshman year, but we are changing. The person I was has changed drastically since I was in 8th grade, and we've always sort of grown together. However, our interests are in somewhat different directions now. She's active in her sorority, I am trying to graduate with two degrees and go to medical school. We've both started working, and see each other less and less. Our families are going through strange and difficult transitions, my father works in a city 8 hours away and her father recently left her family. I have always felt a sense of "lockdown" ever since I slipped up and liked another girl once back in high school, but we made it past that. We have worked out all kinds of issues, except my uneasiness with the "inevitability" that we would get married. I always felt like marriage was something so far away from me. I say I don't even want to think about it, she says she doesn't understand why I act like/hope that it does.
Basically, our current dilemma dwells on the fact that I am worried that I will have regretted not knowing or experiencing anyone else for my entire life, and she is worried that if I don't "get that feeling out of my system now" I will pull a "her dad" and try to do it later in life. Perhaps she is right? However, she is scared that if we took a break, and I left to date other people that we'd never come back. And she's also right, there is no guarantee there either. Having put the incredible physical and emotional investment into each other that we have over all these years, for it to end so suddenly is very difficult to conceive. I can't imagine who/how/what I would be without that support system that we have, and I am so scared that "in the real world" I would always compare future relationships to her and regret it beyond belief.
We have always satisfied each other in most everything, except lately we pick at each other over stupid things, and she is always looking for evidence that our relationship will end, and I always look for some sign that she is going to make a mistake as well. The way that she talks about other people now bothers me now when it never did before, and she always makes it a point to make friends with guys that are gay. Whatever that means.
Do I have a commitment problem? Am I selfish? I can't help some attractions to other people, there times that I honestly think people are beautiful, and it motivates me in a strange way. Like I need to better my health to impress them, like the rest of my guy friends. I don't feel this way with my partner at all, I feel like a married person whose settled. But without a basis of comparison, I am afraid I will always live in could-have-beens. But we work so well, is this a product of the time we've invested into each other, or a culmination of genuine feelings?
Should I just keep biting my tongue, or act on these feelings in some way? We have tried to talk through all of this, but it is painful. I am studying abroad this summer for several weeks, the longest we'll ever have been away from each other. Her solution is that I am allowed to do whatever I want with whoever I want and that she can do whatever she wants, but when I come back I have to have an answer. But the thing is, the answer that she is looking for is essentially if I am willing to spend the rest of my life with her. I know that I definitely am not ready for that, but I don't want to lose her to someone else either.
Lastly, what happens if we did do this and then we ultimately wind up coming back to each other anyway? We would always question each others real experiences away from each other.
Overall, I know that I love her. I do understand that our ideals of what we were always looking for in a partner aren't realistic, and may not equate to a functional and beneficial relationship. I may have always dreamed of some artistic, independent, ridiculously intelligent, bombshell, but what I have is a successful, albeit traditional, goofy, pretty girl that chases after me trying to catch such ideals. But I live in fear of losing what we have constantly wondering what's on the other side, and due to our recent life changes, I am alone a significant amount of the time. I feel like what I have is secure, but I feel like if become single again, I could change. I would feel the sense of urgency to work out, to go out with my friends, get out of my apartment, I don't know, something.
