Yesterday, I made the executive decision to break up with my partner of 5 years.

Nothing in particular happened for us to break up, however I slowly felt myself outgrowing our relationship and finding things that I am genuinely dissatisfied with.

I am a very much people pleaser, and I find it difficult sometimes to have confrontational conversations regarding things that I don’t like. In our relationships, one of the biggest things for me was our sex lifer. It was never like that before, I would say for the past two years of the relationship. The reason why I say this is that I feel like we stopped doing it as frequently and it became pretty much the same thing every time. For the past few months, it went from once a month to nothing at all. Part of it is also that my partner (now ex) has never gone down on me. He’s never done this before me either, and from our conversations we’ve had regarding this, it wasn’t something he was comfortable with. Now, I don’t feel comfortable with making him do something he doesn’t want to do. Bearing in mind, I can’t cum from penetration alone. We have spoken and touched on this conversation before, however it was never a “threatening” or confrontational conversation where I told him I was really unhappy - more of a suggestion and touch on the topic to make him aware that I am concerned.

There are also other, little things that make me feel like we can be incompatible - such as our perspectives on certain situations, love languages, or just life in general. When we come to a disagreement, I feel that we just always have to meet in a middle, although I’ve felt like in quite a few situations I’ve had to kind of meet him more, as I am the type of person to be willing to do that in order to make it work. These things came to my attention over the years as I just grew up.

I suggested a break up and I came clean to him in September. I told him exactly how I felt and how long I felt like that for. He pleased and begged me to give him another chance to fix our relationship, and I did. However, I couldn’t help but still feel so dissatisfied, and it came to the point where I genuinely mentally checked out. Couple of days ago, I told him I was genuinely unhappy with our sex life, he pleased and begged for another chance. We have also touched on this topic before, and he has told me each time that he is just going through some stuff right now, mentally and emotionally and he can’t find himself to have a high libido.

Yesterday, I made the decision to rip the band aid off and told him I’ve made my mind up to break up with him. I think over the years little things have built up that’s caused all this unhappiness. I told him how it was, and he pleased and begged. He also claims that we only had a conversation regarding this a couple of days ago, and I promised to give him a chance and now he feels that he hasn’t had the time to fix our relationship, and to give it 100%.

I can’t help but feel so guilty. I love him so deeply, and he loves me and I know it, but this is the first time I’ve felt like I finally decided to sort of choose myself in our relationship. I feel awful, and a part of me feels that I’ve been really unfair to him by just not mentioning when I felt my doubts the first time a long time ago like he says. I also feel like maybe I haven’t given him the chance to fix the relationship but in my defence, I’ve touched on these topics before just not necessarily gave him the ultimatum. I also don’t want him to feel like I’m leaving him at his “lowest point” In life cause that is not the case. I’ve made that clear to him, but he still feels like that.

I am genuinely devastated for him, it’s like I’m grieving him but I’m fighting so hard to think about myself and tell myself I’ve done the best thing and it’ll be okay for the both of us in the long run. 5 years gone just like that and it’s all because of me. We’ve met each other’s families, friends, had future plans, why couldn’t my heart just take that one last chance? And how do I go about this now when I was so close to his family? Do I message them and let them know? I just don’t know what to do.

I need some advice please.