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Oxytocin: Not Even Once!
I’m looking at breaking up with my girlfriend of 4 years and I could use a sanity check. Apologies for the length and I’ll try to keep it down, but I need to explain how the situation I now find myself in developed.
I’d normally run this kind of thing by a close friend, but because of where I live I’m kind of away from my support network, I don’t really have anyone close I’d trust to give good nuanced advice, and I feel like a bit of fool for reasons that should become apparent.
So I moved to a new city as a single man about 5 years ago for a job. I first stayed at airbnb’s, but eventually moved into a shared apartment where I met my now partner. She held the lease and interviewed me for the room. Me, her and another housemate became friends and she spent a fair bit of time introducing the city to me.
We were pretty open about the people we were dating. I wasn’t really attracted to her so it was pretty easy to keep her as a good friend. After a year or so during a dry patch I floated the idea of becoming ‘friends with benefits’ while we weren’t involved in serious relationships. I wasn’t that attracted to her, but I had needs so I’d rather look after that with someone I trusted. She rejected the idea and I didn’t push the issue. We moved on.
I eventually moved to another apartment to live alone, but we remained friends. She would occasionally come over to watch a movie or have a coffee and catch up, or we would go out somewhere or catch up with mutual friends.
Then COVID happened. We were living in a heavily locked down city, but there were allowances for single friends to visit other friends. She would spend a fair bit of time at my apartment as we’d become close friends by this time. This continued for months and then one day through the magic of alcohol we hooked up and she slept over. By the time COVID finished we were practically boyfriend/girlfriend, but we never defined things. At the time I still wanted to keep things casual because I knew I wasn’t really attracted to her even though we had pretty good compatibility in terms of personalities.
Due to inertia and I guess laziness I let the situation continue and found that I didn’t really have the motivation to date other people. Eventually we decided to move in together even though I stressed we might break up or date other people. She was fine with this and wanted to do it for practical and cost saving purposes.
So now its about 4 years since we first hooked up and we’re living together out in the suburbs. We’ve had talks about where we are going and even (minor) breakups over the years. I still have the feeling I’m not really attracted to her and we haven’t had sex in over a year. I kind of don’t want to not just because of the attraction, but that I already feel pair bonded and don’t want to make things worse. The feeling of pair bonding is what I’m struggling with. I genuinely don’t won’t to lose this girl from my life. I love her in a way, but I can’t get over the fact I’m not physically attracted to her.
There are other incompatibility issues largely due to it being and inter-racial relationship. She’s from a SE Asian nation, but is educated (Masters) and proficient in English. She sometimes acts crudely and breaches etiquette in some ways according to my WASP sensibilities. For example, she has overshared personal things about our relationship to friends, family and coworkers that has upset me but she insists its no big deal and is funny. I think a lot of these other things could be overcome with work on the relationship, but not the attraction issue.
But recently I’ve realized that if I don’t make any changes, nothing will change. She and I both want marriage and kids, but I don’t want that with her. The window for this for both of us is closing (late 30’s, early 40’s). So I brought all this up with her a couple of days ago and she didn’t take it well. She thinks I’ll regret this (and I feel like I might) and she regretted ‘wasting’ 4 years with me. We’re currently not talking for the last day or so, but we’ll eventually have to talk about all this.
I guess what I’m asking is for some reassurance. Lack of physical attraction is a deal breaker for marriage right? I feel like I’d regret things if I just got over myself and married her as my best friend. I’ve been turning this over in my mind for weeks, but can’t see another solution besides breaking up. I’m also kicking myself for allowing things to develop like this. COVID really allowed time for pair-bonding in a siloed environment and it snuck up on me. I really feel like shit about this whole thing, particularly about ending it.
Seems like a breakup is overdue. Marriage without physical attraction in that age bracket seems pretty miserable - don't do it. Especially not out of habit. I know what I'm talking about.
FWIW, you made a pretty big mistake, but it takes two. As long as you didn't intentionally misdirect her, you can share the blame equally.
I'd be interested if you expand on this a bit. Like OP is early 40's and, uh GF?, is late 30's. At what point is it normal for sex drive to appreciably decline. Somehow I thought that 45 is early, but not supper early, for menopause to begin.
I would have thought that there are healthy marriages, where both people have taken good care of themselves and look good for their age, but neither is close to their objective peak physical attractiveness. Is the expectation that experience and comfort with self/partner makes up for not being as young and hot? That the attractiveness is found in the intimacy of knowing your partner so well.
Surely it's unreasonable to expect your partner to be as physically attractive, with respect to sexual intimacy, as she approaches 40 then when she was 24. What's reasonable to expect? Do you need like > 80% physically attraction relative to the hottest young thing, or just some irreducible quantum of attraction that you share with each other?
I'm no biologist or doctor. I'm just pretty sure that 30s-40s is well within the region in which one can still expect a lot of sex to happen, under normal circumstance.
More generally, your partner and yourself will both age. Maybe the one ages more gracefully than the other thanks to superior genetics, in which case yeah, unless the difference is truly extreme it's just plain good sense to live with it if that's the whole of the problem. But obviously one's standards should adjust themselves with age and the passage of time.
What's unreasonable to expect is that your partner just lets herself go like a sack of potatoes and you tolerate it indefinitely.
This...probably doesn't provide much value to you as far as answers go, but it's close to everything I have to say on the subject.
She hasn't really let herself go. Small amount of weight gain, but nothing out of the ordinary. I just don't want to have sex with her. I can't blame her for that. I shouldn't be here in the first place.
"I'm getting 3 out of 10, elbows too pointy" vibes, unless there's a serious facial deformity involved.
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I didn't mean to imply as much. Sorry, I just piggybacked off of your topic to ride my hobby horse.
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