Hello,

i am posting this in hopes that it will help me decide what I want to do moving forward without involving my family or friends first. Background: I have been dating my boyfriend for  6 years – we are high school sweethearts, I am now 23. I’ve gone through periods before where I wasn’t sexually attracted to him anymore, but that subsided quickly. Now that I have graduated college, I am looking to move forward with my life and become a real adult (career and move into my own house). It’s not that my boyfriend isn’t there emotionally, but he can’t get himself there physically. I’m worried for our future because he isn’t working hard enough towards it. This feeling of not working hard enough for it stems from him not doing well in college, not having a plan moving forward, no job lined up, no experience, etc. I used to support him and say that we would work through it together, but he’s almost lazy in a way, now it’s taking a toll on me. People always say that women leave a relationship emotionally before leaving it physically, which I think is very true in my case. I find myself doing things alone (preferably), spending more time in my hobbies, hanging out with my friends, more than I want to hang out with him. At this point, it feels like pulling teeth to get him to do anything that I’d like to do. I know if I bring him to something I want to do, he will pout the entire time and want to go home. I know he doesn’t mean it, but this leads me to believe that he would rather just stay in private with me and not public.

I am terrified to end things. This is the only relationship I have ever known and he was my best friend. I say was because it doesn’t feel that way anymore. We’ve grown apart, we don’t have the same interests, and I don’t think we are moving at the same pace in life. If I don’t leave now, I think I will be unhappy for the rest of my life. I feel so selfish because I haven’t led him to believe that I am happy. I feel terrible if I just tell him it’s over without ever giving him any signs. I just don’t think I’m there emotionally anymore. I’m not sure how I am going to go about terminating our relationship or how long it will take, but I know it needs to happen soon or this will just be a vicious cycle of me being kind of happy and then miserable once I realize how alone I am.

If anyone ends up reading this, thank you for listening to me rant. Because I am not strong enough to tell my friends and family quite yet.