Help me keep the Love of my Life.Critical Point
Thanking you for taking the time in advance to read my situation.
I am 32 and she is 25, we work-live-travel together... a
We met online through a mutual friend's Facebook account. Ever since I saw her picture the first time I KNEW this was the girl I was going to marry(and still feel that way). When we met she had been single for a year and was not quite ready to start dating again. We took it real slow... to the point she thought I was gay for not making a move too soon. My reasoning had been to allow things to progress naturally and not pressure her as to not frighten her away.
Our personalities are similar at the heart of it but differ as they meet the outside world. We are both highly educated and true realists. Myself I am more of a critical thinker (engineer) and I tend to see things in black and white. When problems arise I always look for the root and try to solve it. I tend to be the solid rock for people to lean on, always solving everyone's problems whether relationship or financial. Now my problem is that my best friend and girlfriend are the same. We always talked about everything together as best friends and now I can't talk to her about this as best friend because I have to play the boyfriend role.
On her part she is an extremely beautiful person inside and out. She is very artistic, expressive and creative which I am not and which I admire and look up to. She is a fiercely independent woman. When I met her that really attracted me to her like no one before her. Myself confidence has always been high so when we met I had no problems with that. As the relationship progressed and I became attached her independence began to hurt as she needed much personal space and I just wanted to be closer; holding her hand and kissing her constantly... perhaps to the point she was suffocated. She said that I too often show affection, thus don’t give her the time to do it herself at her own rate.
About a year ago she finished school and also held a 40hr/wk job. She took the last year off and began working with me as well as travelling extensively with me. About a month ago she began having strong nervous reactions to the fact that she believes she lost herself in the past year and has just tagged along my life. She feels like a kept woman as I own the building we live in and basically everything in our lives is expensed or I pay for. She recently took over a loft in the building and started making it a creative studio to work on her clothing line, blog. Im hoping that this space will give her the independence she needs so badly and put her on the track to being herself again.
3 Days ago during her time of the month she had a total breakdown saying that as mentioned above she lost herself, she is unsure of her relationship, she is unsure of if I am right for her. It is hard for me to deal with the fact that she says she loves me but that she needs so much time to ``re-find herself and bring things back to where they were before``.
I know she truly loves me with all her heart but I always think she is not IN LOVE with me. I am not particularly romantic by nature but I am learning and willing to make the efforts to give her what she needs. I do however do many little things out of the blue, help her with whatever I can and always encourage her to push herself and accomplish whatever is at hand. Another issue we have is that in the intimacy department we have our own preferred speeds of doing things (slow-fast) which makes her feel used afterwards. She strongly disagrees with marriage seeing it as a legal more than emotional bond. She would be comfortable having kids (when the time is right.. shes only 25) or adopting and living together unmarried. Marriage for me is not important as long as I know we will always be together.
The first day of this I couldn’t eat, my head was a total mess and I felt ill all day. Day two (yesterday) was better for me but that was because I was slowly coming to terms we were going to break up and I started thinking about moving on (even though she never said that). Tonight I'm meeting an old friend who at the beginning of this relationship really set my mind clear about this type of women.
Ill keep you guys posted with as many updates as are worth posting.
Thank you for taking the time to try and fix the rest of my life—
Alex-