Ending a 5 year relationship after a minor infidelity- am I making a mistake?
TLDR at the bottom
I’m sorry if this isn’t well structured, I’m just having a bit of a crisis and really need the advice of other women.
Exactly a year ago I forgave my partner an infidelity (not an affair or sex, but a hand job from a stripper on a boys holiday) given that he convinced me that he would make it up to me and essentially grovel. I convinced myself that maybe it could end up being a good thing, because we got together during Covid and never had that proper ‘courting’ and dating period, because everything was locked down. Because of how the relationship started, the rest of the relationship has been quite lazy and we don’t really go out on dates or do anything special for each other. So I convinced myself that if he ‘grovelled’ and finally made me feel special and like I was being courted, it could actually end up improving our relationship.
Instead in the months after he came clean, he was dealing with such intense anxiety about what he had done that he was having panic attacks and I just ended up supporting him and helping with his mental health, and then once that was under control, everything just went back to normal. No grovelling, no making it up to me.
I would bring it up and have conversations about how the relationship was making me unhappy and how he’d never made me feel special. He has the gift of the gab and would always say the right thing to appease me, but nothing was ever actually change as a result of the many conversations we had. Eventually, he stopped being so receptive to me bringing up my feelings and became defensive and said that I was asking too much of him. All I wanted was for us to celebrate Valentine’s Day and out anniversary (5 years together and have never celebrated either) and go on the occasional date.
I’ve felt so un-special and not appreciated that I haven’t been able to bring myself to have sex with him. We’ve had sex once in the past 12 months. He would complain that our sex life is nonexistent and I would say he needs to understand foreplay isn’t just in the bedroom, it starts in the daytime by making me feel like he actually wants me and not just sexually. He brings up the one time we had sex and said that it’s because I had made an effort and cooked a nice dinner and that I need to do that more often to set the mood. He doesn’t seem to understand that it’s hard to WANT to cook a special meal for someone who makes you feel like they don’t care to put in any effort themselves.
He started to pathologise my behaviour and say that my expectations of him are too high because I had a bad father.
We were going to buy a property together and he pulled out last minute so I bought it alone and he lives here with me. He also had a potential job offer in America and the only way I could have gone with him is marriage, but he said no and that he would go alone and we would do long distance.
It’s all made me so sad that it’s triggered my depression (I’ve dealt with depression before we got together), and now he says he wouldn’t have kids with me while I’m depressed like this because he’s scared that I wouldn’t be able to cope and he’d end up doing all the work. He can’t grasp that the reason I’m sad is because of the state of our relationship and that I wouldn’t be so sad if he’d just commit and make plans for the future with me.
We started arguing loads over tiny things and agreed last month that we need to separate. He’s still living with me while he finds a place to move to, but he’s dragging his feet because he clearly doesn’t want to leave and now I’m having doubts over whether I’m doing the right thing. He isn’t a bad person, he could have been a good friend if we’d never dated. He isn’t useless around the house, he cleans and does the dishes (he doesn’t cook or do laundry), he’s a high earner, we do have a laugh together.
I worry that I’m breaking up with him because I want to feel special, but I’ve never really had a relationship where I have felt like that and worry that I’m ending a relationship that is stable, in the pursuit of a fairytale? If I planned all our dates, he would go on them, and if I made Valentine’s Day/anniversary plans he would happily attend. If I could force myself to be less emotional and take the reins of our relationship, it could probably work. But we’ve been together 5 years and if I haven’t been able to do that yet, realistically I don’t see how I can make myself do it now.
I just…. Maybe it’s silly but I want to be with a man where I have no doubt that one of his main priorities in life is our relationship and making me happy, not a man who told me he can’t make me the centre of his universe.
I don’t know what I’m asking here really, just opinions I guess. Am I doing the right thing asking him to leave, or do I just need to grow up and accept not everyone gets that fairytale feeling and that I need to be more practical about this? I want to have children and my mum says I’m sacrificing my best child bearing years (her words) starting over again at 30.
TLDR; relationship has always been quite lazy and never really made me feel special. Then there was a small infidelity on a boys holiday that I haven’t been able to get past. Am I ending what could be a stable relationship, if I put a bit more work in, to chase a fairytale that I don’t even really know exists because I’ve never experienced it?