Relationships are hard

Post date: 2021-07-22 20:44:31

Is it insane of me to unravel an eight year relationship in the course of a month?

I have always been indecisive with everything in life and making a drastic life decision like this is the scariest feeling. I'm not sure what I need. Perspective? Affirmation? Help?

Without getting into too much details, I basically fell into an emotional affair overa month ago, and it escalated to us kissing twice but not beyond that, and the whole thing made me question everything about my own relationship, one I've been in for eight years where we've entangled every aspect of our lives and put a lot of work into. I am 34 and we were heading toward having a kid so this is all just real shit timing. I've come clean about everything and we've been talking honestly. He's upset but wants to work through this. There is a lot of love here, but I don't know if I ever had that deep guttural physical pull toward this person. We just have so much going on otherwise that it was fine with me to not feel. We get along well and it is easy to with each other mostly. We do have a sex life and I enjoy the sex we have, but I just don't feel the "want", if that makes sense.

I've spent the past few weeks out of our home, and the more time I'm away, the more it's surfaced other issues that I wasn't happy with in our relationship, most of which I understand can be workable through therapy and talking, but part of me just isn't sure if it's too far past. And the little things have build up over time, and now for the first time I'm being honest with myself about the physical chemistry aspect. I've been not home for two weeks and basically have planned to not be home for the next month. We've started couples therapy and I have my own therapist as well. I feel immense guilt about all of this and for dumping this all on a person I do care about, and I feel even guiltier thinking that I'm possibly dragging this out longer than necessary just because I might be too scared and guilt-ridden to act. I'm trying to just let time pass, but every day feels like eternity.

I'm struggling with the idea of unraveling an eight year mostly-good thing over the course of a month, and feel frightened that I might regret this later on. I know there's another person involved here that I haven't mentioned much. I have kept as much space as possible between us for the last few weeks, because I don't want to be making my decision based on them and their actions. I know all about limerance and NRE and all that, but also know I'm feeling an intense thing that I've rarely if ever felt in my life. It's nigh impossible to separate emotionally, but I'm trying.

I understand I did a shitty thing, I know. I have had some panic attacks already as I'm trying to figure out who I am through all these things I never thought I'd do in a million years. I feel like garbage most days and just don't know if I'm convincing myself to give up a mostly good thing to chase this idea of a relationship in my head that I don't know if exists.

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