Long Haul Rant (girlfriend, how to, love, single)

[Steel Paperclip]

[INDENT]Gah.

Look, I might as well start off by saying that I'm not actually after replies, since I know what the solution is anyway. And I'm being a coward about it. So answer if you want, but I'm not sure how much answering I'll do. Right, okay. Since I need to vent somewhere, here goes:

So I've been in a relationship for nearly 8 years. We get on great, we're close friends as much as partners and we look after each other. The trouble is, I'm getting cold feet and I don't want to get cold feet. Everything's fine, except that I'm feeling bored. Very bored. I feel like a I need a mix-up, to start again.

He's 7 years older than me and suffers from social anxiety. As a result, he's quite reserved. I'm also his first love, although he's not mine. The result of this is that I've loved and lost before, and although I'd undoubtedly feel awful if we split, I know beyond all doubt that I'd survive. It probably helps that I'm female, too. Moving on is easier that way, I think, because we find selecting a partner easier.

In chats over what each of us would do if we split, he has said more than once that that would be it for him. He'd go back to his native part of the country and that would be it for him. He didn't mean it as emotional blackmail - the context was wrong for that and he's not a blackmailer anyway. But it does make me feel like I'd be partially responsible for his misery if we did split. That's the bit I'm being a coward over because I know it's not my problem if he did. But I still feel it.

When we got together I was only 20, and I was much more naive about relationships then. I also needed to grow a lot as a person (okay, might be the same thing. But you know.). But as we've been together all this time I've felt myself grow a lot as a person. The power balance between us has shifted a lot, too. At the time I felt very much vulnerable, unprepared for the relationship to go wrong. I felt at the time I'd never survive if it imploded. Now, like I say, I know I'd cope.

That also meant that I did my best to be 'the perfect girlfriend', always putting him first. Although he did say to me, 'make sure you please yourself' on occasions, I mostly didn't, and have often gone with the flow with anything we've done. Now we're in a position where he's not mature enough in a relationship sense to realise that sometimes I need to be myself, someone separate from him. I've:-

- taken up writing, but he's so disinterested that it's effectively become a secret between us. I'd like to tell him how I'm doing, what my characters and stories are like and so on, but he's just not interested. So it feels like I'm keeping it from him because I'm a bit self-conscious myself and don't like to risk ridicule.
- tried setting us up to go to group debates which, I feel, would expand our circle of friends, but he wasn't interested and this was an evening thing, so it struck me that going home in the dark alone was a bad idea.
- recently tried getting in contact with a mutual gay friend who I used to get on with really well. I feel a touch of insecurity from him about this. Justin is a bit of a chick magnet and used to flirt with me, but I'd never do anything, I just miss the friendship.

I just feel that I've outgrown the relationship and part of me wants to leave it behind and move on. I'm starting to feel that we've less in common than we once did.

Other factors:

Our sex life has gone stale. Although we still have sex often, he only occasionally wants to experiment with different stuff and is very single-minded (ie., when I'm up for it he often isn't. But then, isn't this a common malaise of het relationships?). I feel more sexually confident now than I once did and would love to have more partners, varied experience and so on.

He's very into eco issues. Although I care about these things too, I feel I've had the enthusiasm to be activist about it drummed out of me by the amount he talks about it. I just want to live an ethical life myself while balancing it with the general hopelessness of the situation (ie., actually go on a foreign holiday once in a while rather than sticking quite so religiously to UK-only holidays).

I've always been very self-conscious about my taste in music. I know this sounds a bit odd, but I feel, and have long felt, that other people would ridicule me for my musical taste (even though it's probably not unusual). The idea of buying my own collection and letting others hear it actually fills me with dread. It's bizarre, I know, but it's true. Having a partner who's very enthusiastic about his own musical taste makes me feel more secure.

We used to go clubbing and drop pills when we went out, but he had to give up when he started getting the Terrible Tuesdays. Since I'm only really into sociable drugs - and to be sociable on them, at that - I felt there was no point in carrying on with them because he wasn't on them himself. He's encouraged me to keep taking them if I enjoy them so, but it's not the same on my own. And I know that I've got only a few years left (likely) of being able to take them without getting the midweek blues myself.

As part of our eco-conscious thing, we've been trying to work out how to be self-sufficient as we get older. He's been doing the research (and struggling with it) on self-building and similar issues in the UK (he doesn't want to go abroad, although I've suggested it. He feels this to be negative on my part, as it's 'giving up' on the UK as an option and would mean lots of travelling (read: larger carbon footprint). He likes this idea of self-sufficiency because he doesn't like the rat race, doesn't like being around other people very much (with the exception of me, he's said.) and because it would mean being able to be very eco-friendly. It's a nice idea and one I wouldn't mind eventually going for myself. But there's all this other stuff I feel I haven't done yet.

Thing is, I understand perfectly well that the answer to this is clear. I'm 28, I've still got many good years ahead of me, I'm bubbly, curious in so many ways and have so much to offer. But I'm afraid of letting him down because I know he'd go down with a very hard bump. [/INDENT]