Hey everybody -
So here's the issue. My girlfriend and I met in high school, we've been going out for almost four years, and we're both in college now. Our relationship is now, and always has been very serious, we talk about marriage and our future together all the time.
Now, if you've seen any of my other posts, I have a problem with OCD, specifically I get anxieties about things that I just can't shake sometimes. At some point just over a year ago, I got this worry - "what if I don't love her?" That really freaked me out, and unfortunately I've gone back and forth for a long time about it. It's a struggle for me questioning myself like this, because our relationship was once the one point of security in my life. I feel like this worry has had some negative effects on our relationship. I'm always questioning things, and I find that we're not really having fun together that often anymore. We spend time together often, but can never really think of anything interesting that we want to do.
There's always the question in the back of my mind, am I going to be happy with her for the rest of my life? I want to be, I really do, but it seems like a lot of the passion is gone in our relationship. The other day we were talking and she told me she was scared about our relationship, and I agreed, and we talked about how we are both feeling disconnected, and she's very emotional, so she was crying. I asked what I could do, and she said, sobbing at this point, "just love me". This absolutely broke my heart, I want to give her everything she deserves. She's had a tough childhood and is depressed a lot - I think that's part of it, it seems like every time we spend time together, I need to cheer her up and make her feel better, like half of our texts are me saying something along the lines of "Aww I'm sorry sweetheart". It's difficult to have fun when she's always upset about something. Furthermore, when she's in a bad mood, it usually finds its way to me and I become in a bad mood.
She can be very introverted because of her past, and because of that, often our conversations don't go beyond the mundane, I really wish conversation would just flow like it used to, but sometimes it just feels like we've already talked about everything on the planet.
I also feel like our physical attraction to one another is suffering from the "detached" feeling, it's pretty depressing.
I also feel like I'm being a jerk and a lot of this is my fault. Some little things she does can irritate me, and they're always something that not worth being irritated over. I know she loves me to death, and I feel that I don't return it as much as I could, because I'm always questioning myself. She could cuddle all day, and I just don't give that attention to her as often as I could.
Since we've talked about these issues, we've decided to approach them as a team. We figure that if we're happier as individuals, we'll be happier as a couple, which I totally believe. We're also both open to doing absolutely anything (therapy, classes, whatever) to save our relationship.
As I said before, I want to give her everything she deserves. I want to look into her eyes and see the flame that I used to see. I want to crave her attention again, to have wonderful, drawn out conversations again, to have her open up to me without me asking. I want to feel the passion in our love life again. Most importantly, I want to have a family with her without these doubts nagging me.
What does everybody think? I would love ideas on how we can have fun together again. Anybody experience the same thing? I'm really struggling with myself here (I'm very used to that...). Doubting my relationship is essentially doubting everything I am.
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