This is going to be long post.
TLDR: started out having a friend with benefits with a divorced woman with 2 kids. Never intended to be in a relationship. Been dating for over a year and I'm not sure I love her.
Just for some background.. I have never really been the type to be in a relationship. My current one is only the second real one I have ever had. I have a very big fear of commitment anyway, but especially after being with my first girlfriend who was manipulative, contradictory, and generally emotionally abusive. I still wasn't ready for a relationship when I met my current girlfriend.
We met at a big party late in the summer. When we met, I thought she was pretty hot. Not necessarily my "type" but undoubtedly very attractive (she actually models on the side). At this point in my life I was going through a dry spell and was feeling pretty down on myself, so meeting someone like her was exactly what I needed. We hit it off right away, and with the alcohol, one thing led to another and we ended up sleeping together.
For context, she has had a rough go of it ever since she was young. Let's just say she didn't lose her virginity willingly, she has been cheated on by most of her exes, and to cap it off, she got knocked up by and married to an emotionally and physically abusive, manipulative alcoholic who ended up having another kid with her. He never held a job more than a few months, so she was forced to provide for her and her family while also putting herself through nursing school. Fast forward 10 years, she is an amazing nurse and has raised two great kids while being abused by her husband the whole time. When we met at the party, she had literally just finally gotten her divorce.
After the party she gets my number, and we hang out a few more times in a "friends with benefits" type of way, which I am thrilled about since I wasn't getting any sex before that. This goes on for a few months. Then she invites me to a weekend trip to go hiking. It's kind of weird for me to be hanging out like that so early on, but I've never been so I figured what the hell (she was paying for the trip). We had a great time, had tons of sex, and honestly it was an amazing weekend. We keep hanging out every couple weeks or so, but the whole time, I always had it in my head that this was a temporary thing. I never, ever wanted to be in a relationship with a woman who had kids, especially so at my age. So I told her exactly that: that she has to understand that this situation had to end eventually. I had this conversation with her twice, but I guess she doesn't take no for an answer. For god's sake, I didn't even admit to her or anyone else that we were actually dating until like 8 months after we met and started hanging out. S now, over a year from when we met, we are a bona fide couple. We have went on vacations, the kids already know me, I have met her immediate and extended family, the works.
What makes things so confusing is that we get along so insanely well. We like the same music, have the same interests, and just generally connect on a level that I wasn't sure I could find. She gets along with my friends, my family, she supports me, takes care of me, and absolutely adores me. We never fight, I trust her and she trusts me. She's smart and funny and kind, she is ambitious and hard working, she never gets jealous, she gives me my space when I need it. We have great sex and we have it as many times as we can. She is legitimately my best friend, and she's everything I could've hoped for in a partner. So what could possibly be the problem? I ask myself that all the time.
But now for the conflict. Being that I am so inexperienced with relationships, this whole situation for me is entirely new and entirely terrifying. I am with a woman who has experienced a whole life already, and I am basically just starting mine. So here I am, having one girlfriend in the past, then immediately moving to a situation where I could instantly have a wife and 2 kids who aren't mine, which is a HUGE leap to take. And because of her history she has so much emotional baggage that she unintentionally unloads on me, and it makes me stressed in a way that I have never felt. The issues with her ex husband and problems with family and kids all boil to the surface and I don't know how to react to it. I know it's not fair to her and it's selfish, but I can't change how I feel. The reason I am even writing this post is because she just got done telling me how she thinks her ex husband is going to kill himself tonight and showed me the messages that made her think that. Like I mentioned before, she already has two kids, so what in the actual fuck is going to happen if he actually does off himself? I obviously hope to god, for his children's sake, that it's not what she thinks.
She keeps saying that she doesn't expect me to be their father, which is good to hear, but it's easy to say that right now because we live in different places. But then what? It's not like we can live separately forever. The thing that I have never told her is that I honestly don't like being with the kids. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like the kids, because I do and they are great kids, but it almost feels like they are just my little cousins or something; I don't feel any connection beyond that. Hanging out with them every now and again can be fun and funny, but deep down I know that I only truly enjoy our times together when it is just her and I. When the kids get involved, it's stressful and hectic, we can never really relax, and god damnit I'm just honestly not ready for shit like this. There is a very good reason I don't have a kid of my own yet, let alone 2. The fact of the matter is, eventually, our life will have to transition, fully, from the one I truly enjoy (just her and I) to the one that I don't. And that scares me to death.
I have thought, "maybe having kids with her would help", because I have always wanted kids of my own. And she has even told me that she is willing to have more. But let's honestly think about it.. I don't want to have my own kids until I am ready, and being that I am 24 and still feel like a kid, I imagine that time will come when I'm about 28-30. So how is that going to work? If we had two kids even a year apart, she would be trying to have a second baby when she's pushing 40 years old. That just doesn't seem likely to me, and having at least two kids of my own is something that is absolutely non-negotiable for me personally. I just fucking hate having to think about these things day in and day out, which I absolutely do.
The actual biggest issue is that I have never felt true love for another person outside of my family. I don't know what it should feel like, and I have no prior experience to know if what I feel now is real. The problem is that I think it would be easy to figure everything out if I new for a fact that I truly, deeply love her. All the bumps I wrote about before could be reconciled. And I believe I do love her, on some level, but I have never been able to tell myself that I am "in love" with this woman and wholeheartedly meant it. Sometimes it just feels like I'm going through the motions with our more intimate interactions. The fact of that matter is that I just don't know. I absolutely love her and would do anything for her, but sometimes it almost feels more like a best friend love rather than a soul mate love. My fucked up mind interprets that as "well, if you don't know you are in love with her by now, then it's probably not the case" which is an absolutely devastating thought.
I have thought so many times of breaking it off for these reasons, but I just haven't been able to do it. The main reason being that I enjoy being with her so much. Like I said we totally "click", have great sex, everything you could want. And when I think about a future without her, it makes me feel horrible. But I cannot for the life of me figure out if it's because I love her, or because I will miss having my best friend with me, and I will be alone again like I was before I met her. And on top of that when I think about ending it, I feel such enormous guilt for so many different reasons. Guilt because we actually do get along so well, guilt because she is head over heels in love with me, guilt because she has had so much pain in her past and I will be yet another person to abandon her, guilt that I will have confused her kids, guilt that it will embarrass her after she had talked about me so highly to everyone she meets. I just cannot imagine the thought of breaking her heart like that.
I have been at an internal war with myself ever since we started dating. She makes me so happy on the surface but these thoughts and the insane amounts of anxiety have been mentally and emotionally rotting me from the inside out. I just needed to get all this shit off my chest because I don't have anyone else to talk to about this.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read this far. Putting all my thoughts on paper is at least somewhat cathartic. But please someone out there try to help me figure out what these feelings mean and if I should stick it out or stay together.
Submitted November 28, 2018 at 04:21AM by PeachZebra https://ift.tt/2DNAbig
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