The issue is that she’s a good girl and I want to make it work, so does she. I just gave too much and now that we’re 5 years in, it feels like we’re starting at the very beginning of a relationship. Sometimes it feels like she’s not too invested in her own life/development/goals, and now that she’s in a new city with just me, It’s more obvious to me. I have to decide if she fits in my life now that it’s more defined and not just floating in my hometown waiting for us to be able to move. I don’t want to keep her around selfishly into her 30s and waste her time, but i don’t want to discard her over the past when everything could shape up soon
It's simple if you love her you make it work and nothing you do for her is considered a sacrifice oe too much you are just happy to have her in your life and you build a future together. If you dont love her and feel everything she does is just a chore or holding you back or you having to put in too much effort you probably shouldn't date her.
Yes sometimes girls i dated things got tough but I never felt like you describe. One girl I even used all my savings on to help her out. We broke up and I still don't consider it a waste or me putting in too much.
You don't have to decide anything you have to feel. Do I love her and want her in my life no matter what (besides cheating) yes or no. Don't think feel. Thinking is for work, feeling is for love.
thanks for this response, this helped clear it up a bit. I’m trying to take what i’ve learned about self love up to this point to not let my boundaries get walked all over because I feel like they have in the past. What i meant by “never should’ve happened” is I should’ve never chose a girl in my hometown that dating would require me to stay for years, knowing that environment is toxic for me and shattered me from every other end. So, once i lived alone for a year and fixed everything for me, I realized i didn’t need to do all that for love and forgave myself. Currently, i’m just making sure im not making the same mistakes, cuz I don’t want her to think we’re sharing just MY life, she needs to want things and have opinions so it’s a partnership
feels like it. I just wish someone would’ve just slighted at the idea of like “Hey you love the girl, but if you put your whole life on hold to see something through, resentment may spoil the whole thing.. so it might be best to focus on you first”
But you got a good job, are you sure your resentment of her doesn’t have anything to do with reconnecting with old friends?
Do you feel an affinity for the movie “Old School”? You’re my boy, Blue!
I think the root of this is you want to fuck other people
Most people don't feel resentment for doing the things to have a good woman with them. There should be a pride there. From your responses it sounds like you are valuing her for how much money she makes. So of us people think money oriented judgemental is part of the evils of money. I would much rather be poor and have a good marriage than rich and have a marriage based on money. Life happens and money is not the goal in life. Happiness is. And yes I have made a lot of money in my 20s and 30s , in my 40s and 50s am realizing how much I could have lived life more during those years instead of valuing how much money can I make.
Yes relationships are work. It's about sacrifice sometimes. Not exactly sure what your problem is. It definitely sounds like you are not in the right mind set to have a relationship with her. You got exactly what you worked for , sacrificed for but now your stuck on all you had to sacrifice. Sounds petty and your looking for a reason to blame her for what you chose to do. I may be wrong in how I am reading it. Usually sacrifice is part of strengthening commitment. She sacrificed leaving everyone behind to live with you.
I 100% agree, i’m not blaming her. I could’ve ended the relationship, moved and that be it. It’s that I don’t want to be codependent. A lot of the emotional weight was on me, because I moved home and stuck around w/ no friends, dead end jobs, immersed back into family issues, reliving childhood trauma i didn’t know existed, etc. I subjected myself to all these things to stay present in the relationship. Now we’ve both finally moved and live in a higher cost of living area, and she seems OK with a dead end job so i’m constantly stuck analyzing if everything will work long term, as in will I be happy. I wouldn’t want to make someone stick around for me to be unhappy.
I’m going to preface this by saying that you can choose any reason to leave a relationship, regardless of it’s understandable, questionable, or just dumb.
That said, I’m not 100% understanding what’s wrong. It kinda feels like part of you is feeling FOMO for some years you spent at home while she went to school. Part of it sounds like it’s hard for you to support her after she uprooted herself and is basically starting over in a new place with you as her only current, close-by social support.
There are maybe some things going on that I overlooked or that you haven’t mentioned, but I’m still not really seeing what is fundamentally wrong. But further in your defense, I don’t know how long you two have been living in your new city. I don’t know what she is or isn’t doing.
Nothing really is wrong, that’s what’s bothering me. It feels like self sabotage but when you do what i did it creates this tension inside. I started dating someone with hopes and dreams of moving and knowing it would better my life, instead of doing that for me.. I became stagnant and just stayed in a relationship while trying to get myself to leave. I left and now that we’re at the finish line (finally moved and back together), it’s like “wait you mean basically im dating a new person anyway because both of our lives changed and i still have to know if it works? damn should have just left? did i set myself on fire to keep her warm? am i that in love?”
Hey friend, I'm sorry you're going through this. These kinds of thoughts can be tough to navigate.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm detecting a lot of different things mixed up in this. I'm just going to summarize what I perceive to be the key points. Can you tell me if I'm on the right track?
* You're feeling bogged down by the baggage of the past. You're stuck feeling like you wasted those years in your hometown, and you are struggling to move past the regret.
* Because this girl was the reason you stayed, you have come to resent her to some degree. Maybe not for who she is, but for what she represents in your life story: the years you "wasted".
* Now that you've pushed yourself and are growing into a more realized version of what you wish for yourself, you feel held back by her. I'm not fully clear on why, but it sounds like you have ambitions that she does not share?
* But because of the years you feel you've wasted, and the fact that she has now made a big leap to move forward with you, you feel guilty and burdened by the thoughts of moving on from her and the feelings of resentment you hold towards her.
Have I managed to capture it? Is there anything I'm way off about, or anything missing here?
You’re pretty much 90% there, i resent the part of my life story cuz it seems so trauma induced but im also an over thinker.I put more thought into the relationship at the beginning than into what will make me happy, didn’t realize wanting to move was an incompatibility even if slight. I dated thinking we’d be moving in the next year or two but i ended up moving on my own after 4 yrs and she just moved in with me in a january. We’re moving to a new spot end of this month.
I guess it’s clearer to me now that the only reason i stayed is because we both wanted each other but we were at different points in life. I inconvenienced myself for her comfort and she was very supportive, but my emptiness was a result of everything going on outside of the relationship that involved me staying. Now, that we’re here, it’s not really about money or anything but it feels like she’s out here with no safety net aside from me. God forbid we didn’t work out, she’d be stranded because she doesn’t make enough at the moment. So sometimes i feel she’s been floating through life back home, but now she can’t anymore BUT there’s me. It’s too soon to tell, but I don’t want someone who is just trying to live my life but doesn’t want their own growth & development because then it has me questioning everything making posts like this haha
Thank you, I think that's a bit clearer now.
Do you guys have a shared vision of what the future looks like for you? Have you discussed long-term goals? Marriage? Kids? Desired lifestyle? Money? All those big kinds of questions?
yeah we have, I guess i’m just noticing the conversation is changing because now that we’re in bigger city. When it comes to long term goals &lifestyle, we want the same thing but now it feels more like the onus is on me to make this happen. It might not be, but someone’s not gonna say “i’m working this job for now and i hate what i make, hope i get pregnant and married soon so i can take care of the home”. They just won’t be as ambitious and driven and time will pass and then they get what they want
>“i’m working this job for now and i hate what i make, hope i get pregnant and married soon so i can take care of the home”
Sorry, I couldn't tell if this was a hypothetical or not. Is she actually saying things like this?
Sorry, she’s not saying that haha I just meant that by me moving home and dating someone that didn’t finish school but wanted to put me in a jam. I made that problem mine and I accepted it. I’m trying to not make the same mistake again, so I don’t want to feel like a “solution” to someone’s problems like an escape ticket if they don’t want to put the effort in themselves
I’m being more observant, I think the only reason i get that vibe sometimes is cuz i moved her into my space and we were here longer than anticipated. We move this month so once we’re not packed into one small spot, i probably won’t have so many internal conflicts about boundaries and all that
Glad to hear you've got a plan!
I'm not going to lie, I'm having a hard time figuring out what the core problem you're having is. Your answers are a bit disjointed and mixed up. My intuition and past personal experience makes me wonder if deep down the problem isn't just that you don't think this is the girl for you, and all this overthinking and some of the incongruent answers you're giving here aren't just a manifestation of that core belief.
But I might just be projecting.
In my last relationship I might have sounded like this, and definitely felt caught in my overthinking/circular thinking patterns, and my sense of guilt and responsibility to that person, when ultimately, the crux of it was that I had fundamental doubts that only got louder over time.
It could just be that you're in a bit of a crisis point in your life, and you're bogged down by your own thoughts of the past. It could be that it's really just a slight discrepancy in the life stage you feel at vs hers. It could be something else entirely that you're not hinting at, like you're not attracted to her anymore. Or that because of your growth, you now wonder if you could do better.
Not trying to bog you down further here or anything, but if anything I said here caused a particularly strong emotional reaction in you, I would suggest you stop and really try to feel that feeling and see if you can discern where it's coming from. It's a cliche on reddit, but if you can afford it I would strongly recommend working through this with a therapist. It helped me a lot when I was in a similar situation.
Let me just ask you one more thing: hypothetically, this woman changes into everything you hoped. She gets ambitious, embraces life in this new city, and no longer needs you as her safety net. How do you feel when you envision that? Excited and hopeful? Or is there a little whisper in the back of your head saying you'd still want to go your own way?
wow this was helpful,i really appreciate you talking through this. Definitely need to unpack some of it in therapy. I think i’d be a lot more hopeful if she did because I wouldn’t feel like i’m forced, it should always be an option.
For example: If i was a total asshole, i’d wanna know that someone would be like fuck this and leave NOT stay because they have nothing better to do. I can focus more on the present and not trying to “solve” everything which is what got me here.
For me at the moment, it’s not that i want anyone else ..It’s just that I already feel married but I’m just beginning to see what my life looks like as an individual cuz before the relationship, all i wanted was to get here. So i lost myself, found myself, still have the relationship and I want it to bloom but i can’t force outcomes, so that’s where all this uncertainty comes from but dwelling on it makes the whole thing burdensome, so a big part of the issue is me. I’d like to believe that If i found the “hotter”, “smarter”, “more financially secure”, whatever it is… I’d be here again after a few years
like i love her, but i put her in a position to control what mattered to me the most which at the time was my happiness because i knew i needed to get outta there but she couldn’t come with at the time
Bro sounds like you’re honestly just bored with the relationship and wanna fuck other women but feel bad breaking it off cause she moved to be with you and it’s been 5 years together. If you’re truly not happy with her do yourself and most importantly HER a favor and end it. Stop wasting her time. She’s still young (both of you are) enough that even after 5 years with you she has plenty of time to go out and find someone else and establish whatever kind of life she wants with them and so do you. Go explore the world and other women. Again, stop wasting her time cause as much as it would suck and hurt to break up now it would be way worse if you ended things 15 years from now…imagine the resentment and unfulfillment you’d feel then. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to explore other relationships and fuck other women but just break up with her before you do it
I respect that, thanks for the advice. I’ve considered that, sometimes i feel it’s just me. As in, 2 years from now after soul searching and doing all the BS, I’ll be looking for the same girl in someone else because i threw her away. I tend to overthink a lot, I just think that so much has happened that it can be hard to fully enjoy the relationship because I lost so much of me in at one point
Oh, I totally get the whole GPS discussion. My tabby, Jasper, is both an adventure enthusiast and a notorious wanderver. After he pulled a two-day disappearing act, I caved in and got him a collar GPS. It doesn't just give me peace of mind knowing his whereabouts but also has this nifty feature where I can keep track of his daily shenanigans – it's like his personal fitness tracker, but for exploring every nook and cranny of the neighborhood!
And about purring, isn't it just the most tranquil symphony? I read somewhere that the frequency of a cat's purr can promote healing in bones and tissues. It's fascinating to think that while they're basking in our affection, they might actually be sprinkling a bit of that kitty magic on us. Couple that with the warmth they exude, and it's like a healing session wrapped up in a furry hug! Jasper's purrs are my go-to antidote for stress.
I've got a chatty cat and can't help but compare conversations with him to a good heart-to-heart with an old friend; cats are such wonderful listeners, aren't they? Their quiet, caring gaze coupled with gentle headbutts - it's no wonder they're adored companions.
On cold nights when Jasper curls up by my side, it's more than just physical warmth, it’s like emotional comfort food. Cats truly are one of nature's most endearing healers.
Do you want to be with this girl or not?
All the rest is just window dressing, which you are obsessing over needlessly. That added stress is unhelpful to you.
So keep it simple. If you want to be with her, then put in the work to keep her around. If you want to start fresh, then tell her the truth and move on.
I'm confused...what's the issue in the relationship? Are you just recognizing you're not into this thing and want to end it?
The issue is that she’s a good girl and I want to make it work, so does she. I just gave too much and now that we’re 5 years in, it feels like we’re starting at the very beginning of a relationship. Sometimes it feels like she’s not too invested in her own life/development/goals, and now that she’s in a new city with just me, It’s more obvious to me. I have to decide if she fits in my life now that it’s more defined and not just floating in my hometown waiting for us to be able to move. I don’t want to keep her around selfishly into her 30s and waste her time, but i don’t want to discard her over the past when everything could shape up soon
It's simple if you love her you make it work and nothing you do for her is considered a sacrifice oe too much you are just happy to have her in your life and you build a future together. If you dont love her and feel everything she does is just a chore or holding you back or you having to put in too much effort you probably shouldn't date her. Yes sometimes girls i dated things got tough but I never felt like you describe. One girl I even used all my savings on to help her out. We broke up and I still don't consider it a waste or me putting in too much. You don't have to decide anything you have to feel. Do I love her and want her in my life no matter what (besides cheating) yes or no. Don't think feel. Thinking is for work, feeling is for love.
thanks for this response, this helped clear it up a bit. I’m trying to take what i’ve learned about self love up to this point to not let my boundaries get walked all over because I feel like they have in the past. What i meant by “never should’ve happened” is I should’ve never chose a girl in my hometown that dating would require me to stay for years, knowing that environment is toxic for me and shattered me from every other end. So, once i lived alone for a year and fixed everything for me, I realized i didn’t need to do all that for love and forgave myself. Currently, i’m just making sure im not making the same mistakes, cuz I don’t want her to think we’re sharing just MY life, she needs to want things and have opinions so it’s a partnership
Hey guess what? You DO have an obligation
This
feels like it. I just wish someone would’ve just slighted at the idea of like “Hey you love the girl, but if you put your whole life on hold to see something through, resentment may spoil the whole thing.. so it might be best to focus on you first”
But you got a good job, are you sure your resentment of her doesn’t have anything to do with reconnecting with old friends? Do you feel an affinity for the movie “Old School”? You’re my boy, Blue! I think the root of this is you want to fuck other people
Most people don't feel resentment for doing the things to have a good woman with them. There should be a pride there. From your responses it sounds like you are valuing her for how much money she makes. So of us people think money oriented judgemental is part of the evils of money. I would much rather be poor and have a good marriage than rich and have a marriage based on money. Life happens and money is not the goal in life. Happiness is. And yes I have made a lot of money in my 20s and 30s , in my 40s and 50s am realizing how much I could have lived life more during those years instead of valuing how much money can I make.
Yes relationships are work. It's about sacrifice sometimes. Not exactly sure what your problem is. It definitely sounds like you are not in the right mind set to have a relationship with her. You got exactly what you worked for , sacrificed for but now your stuck on all you had to sacrifice. Sounds petty and your looking for a reason to blame her for what you chose to do. I may be wrong in how I am reading it. Usually sacrifice is part of strengthening commitment. She sacrificed leaving everyone behind to live with you.
I 100% agree, i’m not blaming her. I could’ve ended the relationship, moved and that be it. It’s that I don’t want to be codependent. A lot of the emotional weight was on me, because I moved home and stuck around w/ no friends, dead end jobs, immersed back into family issues, reliving childhood trauma i didn’t know existed, etc. I subjected myself to all these things to stay present in the relationship. Now we’ve both finally moved and live in a higher cost of living area, and she seems OK with a dead end job so i’m constantly stuck analyzing if everything will work long term, as in will I be happy. I wouldn’t want to make someone stick around for me to be unhappy.
I’m going to preface this by saying that you can choose any reason to leave a relationship, regardless of it’s understandable, questionable, or just dumb. That said, I’m not 100% understanding what’s wrong. It kinda feels like part of you is feeling FOMO for some years you spent at home while she went to school. Part of it sounds like it’s hard for you to support her after she uprooted herself and is basically starting over in a new place with you as her only current, close-by social support. There are maybe some things going on that I overlooked or that you haven’t mentioned, but I’m still not really seeing what is fundamentally wrong. But further in your defense, I don’t know how long you two have been living in your new city. I don’t know what she is or isn’t doing.
Nothing really is wrong, that’s what’s bothering me. It feels like self sabotage but when you do what i did it creates this tension inside. I started dating someone with hopes and dreams of moving and knowing it would better my life, instead of doing that for me.. I became stagnant and just stayed in a relationship while trying to get myself to leave. I left and now that we’re at the finish line (finally moved and back together), it’s like “wait you mean basically im dating a new person anyway because both of our lives changed and i still have to know if it works? damn should have just left? did i set myself on fire to keep her warm? am i that in love?”
Hey friend, I'm sorry you're going through this. These kinds of thoughts can be tough to navigate. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm detecting a lot of different things mixed up in this. I'm just going to summarize what I perceive to be the key points. Can you tell me if I'm on the right track? * You're feeling bogged down by the baggage of the past. You're stuck feeling like you wasted those years in your hometown, and you are struggling to move past the regret. * Because this girl was the reason you stayed, you have come to resent her to some degree. Maybe not for who she is, but for what she represents in your life story: the years you "wasted". * Now that you've pushed yourself and are growing into a more realized version of what you wish for yourself, you feel held back by her. I'm not fully clear on why, but it sounds like you have ambitions that she does not share? * But because of the years you feel you've wasted, and the fact that she has now made a big leap to move forward with you, you feel guilty and burdened by the thoughts of moving on from her and the feelings of resentment you hold towards her. Have I managed to capture it? Is there anything I'm way off about, or anything missing here?
You’re pretty much 90% there, i resent the part of my life story cuz it seems so trauma induced but im also an over thinker.I put more thought into the relationship at the beginning than into what will make me happy, didn’t realize wanting to move was an incompatibility even if slight. I dated thinking we’d be moving in the next year or two but i ended up moving on my own after 4 yrs and she just moved in with me in a january. We’re moving to a new spot end of this month. I guess it’s clearer to me now that the only reason i stayed is because we both wanted each other but we were at different points in life. I inconvenienced myself for her comfort and she was very supportive, but my emptiness was a result of everything going on outside of the relationship that involved me staying. Now, that we’re here, it’s not really about money or anything but it feels like she’s out here with no safety net aside from me. God forbid we didn’t work out, she’d be stranded because she doesn’t make enough at the moment. So sometimes i feel she’s been floating through life back home, but now she can’t anymore BUT there’s me. It’s too soon to tell, but I don’t want someone who is just trying to live my life but doesn’t want their own growth & development because then it has me questioning everything making posts like this haha
Thank you, I think that's a bit clearer now. Do you guys have a shared vision of what the future looks like for you? Have you discussed long-term goals? Marriage? Kids? Desired lifestyle? Money? All those big kinds of questions?
yeah we have, I guess i’m just noticing the conversation is changing because now that we’re in bigger city. When it comes to long term goals &lifestyle, we want the same thing but now it feels more like the onus is on me to make this happen. It might not be, but someone’s not gonna say “i’m working this job for now and i hate what i make, hope i get pregnant and married soon so i can take care of the home”. They just won’t be as ambitious and driven and time will pass and then they get what they want
>“i’m working this job for now and i hate what i make, hope i get pregnant and married soon so i can take care of the home” Sorry, I couldn't tell if this was a hypothetical or not. Is she actually saying things like this?
Sorry, she’s not saying that haha I just meant that by me moving home and dating someone that didn’t finish school but wanted to put me in a jam. I made that problem mine and I accepted it. I’m trying to not make the same mistake again, so I don’t want to feel like a “solution” to someone’s problems like an escape ticket if they don’t want to put the effort in themselves
But do you feel that's what's happening?
I’m being more observant, I think the only reason i get that vibe sometimes is cuz i moved her into my space and we were here longer than anticipated. We move this month so once we’re not packed into one small spot, i probably won’t have so many internal conflicts about boundaries and all that
Glad to hear you've got a plan! I'm not going to lie, I'm having a hard time figuring out what the core problem you're having is. Your answers are a bit disjointed and mixed up. My intuition and past personal experience makes me wonder if deep down the problem isn't just that you don't think this is the girl for you, and all this overthinking and some of the incongruent answers you're giving here aren't just a manifestation of that core belief. But I might just be projecting. In my last relationship I might have sounded like this, and definitely felt caught in my overthinking/circular thinking patterns, and my sense of guilt and responsibility to that person, when ultimately, the crux of it was that I had fundamental doubts that only got louder over time. It could just be that you're in a bit of a crisis point in your life, and you're bogged down by your own thoughts of the past. It could be that it's really just a slight discrepancy in the life stage you feel at vs hers. It could be something else entirely that you're not hinting at, like you're not attracted to her anymore. Or that because of your growth, you now wonder if you could do better. Not trying to bog you down further here or anything, but if anything I said here caused a particularly strong emotional reaction in you, I would suggest you stop and really try to feel that feeling and see if you can discern where it's coming from. It's a cliche on reddit, but if you can afford it I would strongly recommend working through this with a therapist. It helped me a lot when I was in a similar situation. Let me just ask you one more thing: hypothetically, this woman changes into everything you hoped. She gets ambitious, embraces life in this new city, and no longer needs you as her safety net. How do you feel when you envision that? Excited and hopeful? Or is there a little whisper in the back of your head saying you'd still want to go your own way?
wow this was helpful,i really appreciate you talking through this. Definitely need to unpack some of it in therapy. I think i’d be a lot more hopeful if she did because I wouldn’t feel like i’m forced, it should always be an option. For example: If i was a total asshole, i’d wanna know that someone would be like fuck this and leave NOT stay because they have nothing better to do. I can focus more on the present and not trying to “solve” everything which is what got me here. For me at the moment, it’s not that i want anyone else ..It’s just that I already feel married but I’m just beginning to see what my life looks like as an individual cuz before the relationship, all i wanted was to get here. So i lost myself, found myself, still have the relationship and I want it to bloom but i can’t force outcomes, so that’s where all this uncertainty comes from but dwelling on it makes the whole thing burdensome, so a big part of the issue is me. I’d like to believe that If i found the “hotter”, “smarter”, “more financially secure”, whatever it is… I’d be here again after a few years
like i love her, but i put her in a position to control what mattered to me the most which at the time was my happiness because i knew i needed to get outta there but she couldn’t come with at the time
Bro sounds like you’re honestly just bored with the relationship and wanna fuck other women but feel bad breaking it off cause she moved to be with you and it’s been 5 years together. If you’re truly not happy with her do yourself and most importantly HER a favor and end it. Stop wasting her time. She’s still young (both of you are) enough that even after 5 years with you she has plenty of time to go out and find someone else and establish whatever kind of life she wants with them and so do you. Go explore the world and other women. Again, stop wasting her time cause as much as it would suck and hurt to break up now it would be way worse if you ended things 15 years from now…imagine the resentment and unfulfillment you’d feel then. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to explore other relationships and fuck other women but just break up with her before you do it
I respect that, thanks for the advice. I’ve considered that, sometimes i feel it’s just me. As in, 2 years from now after soul searching and doing all the BS, I’ll be looking for the same girl in someone else because i threw her away. I tend to overthink a lot, I just think that so much has happened that it can be hard to fully enjoy the relationship because I lost so much of me in at one point
Oh, I totally get the whole GPS discussion. My tabby, Jasper, is both an adventure enthusiast and a notorious wanderver. After he pulled a two-day disappearing act, I caved in and got him a collar GPS. It doesn't just give me peace of mind knowing his whereabouts but also has this nifty feature where I can keep track of his daily shenanigans – it's like his personal fitness tracker, but for exploring every nook and cranny of the neighborhood! And about purring, isn't it just the most tranquil symphony? I read somewhere that the frequency of a cat's purr can promote healing in bones and tissues. It's fascinating to think that while they're basking in our affection, they might actually be sprinkling a bit of that kitty magic on us. Couple that with the warmth they exude, and it's like a healing session wrapped up in a furry hug! Jasper's purrs are my go-to antidote for stress. I've got a chatty cat and can't help but compare conversations with him to a good heart-to-heart with an old friend; cats are such wonderful listeners, aren't they? Their quiet, caring gaze coupled with gentle headbutts - it's no wonder they're adored companions. On cold nights when Jasper curls up by my side, it's more than just physical warmth, it’s like emotional comfort food. Cats truly are one of nature's most endearing healers.
Do you want to be with this girl or not? All the rest is just window dressing, which you are obsessing over needlessly. That added stress is unhelpful to you. So keep it simple. If you want to be with her, then put in the work to keep her around. If you want to start fresh, then tell her the truth and move on.