I’ve been with my partner for 6 years now. I love him so much — he is a good person, very talented, handsome, and very smart. On paper, everything is good, and we’re generally happy. However, I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong/missing.

Part of the problem is that I’ve never really been single — from 18 to now, I’ve had two serious relationships and a serious “situation-ship.” It feels like I don’t know who I am or what I want; I have no idea if I want to get married, if I want kids, or even where I want to live.

The other part is that my sex drive is a lot higher than his, and I’m also incredibly anxious about being attached to one person for the rest of my life. The other day someone gave me their number while I was on the train and I’m so depressed over how good it felt. We’ve talked about experimenting with a third, but I’ve seen enough posts where people’s lives were ruined by doing that or by opening a relationship, and I don’t want to betray his trust. Even still, I feel like I want to meet with/flirt/sleep with other people. This also comes back to the fact that I don’t know what I want. Is it even fair of me to have these feelings when I’m so uncertain?

I also don’t want to ruin his life/our relationship. He’s dealing with some insecurities and I know that if I were to ever break things off they would get a thousand times worse. I don’t want to cause undue pain, because I’m not sure if I could live with myself. I’m also in grad school for the next two years and money is tight — I’m not sure I’d be able to get by on my own.

I just don’t want to lose him, but I still feel stuck. I love the life we have, and at the same time, I feel uncertain and unsatisfied. We’ve also had our share of issues in the past — a few drunk fights and an instance where he pushed me to go on vacation even though I was incredibly sick. He also has his PhD and it was rough supporting him during the final year, lots of stress and little understanding of how hard it was on me to deal with that. We also have communication problems — we’ve both tried to get better and are making progress, but sometimes I still feel like I can’t really talk about certain subjects with him. I know every relationship has problems, it’s just that sometimes it feels like I’ve forced myself through situations where, if someone else was in my place, I would’ve advised them to break things off.

At the end of the day though, I don’t want to lose my connection to him. Even if I were to break things off, I’d want to remain friends. But it’s so painful to even imagine what that process would look or feel like that I keep pushing those thoughts away.

I don’t think I can discuss with him about any of this, so any advice or recommendations are incredibly appreciated. I’m feeling very lost and I hope to get a bit of clarity from other people’s advice and experiences. Sorry for the word vomit and thank you for reading this far.

Edit: Also, a lot of my friends are through him, and the thought of losing my connections with people I love really hurts too.