queer advice #57: how do I know if I need to break up with my girlfriend?
"If I could snap my fingers to make her fall in love with someone else and leave me, I would."
It’s Monday and I’m back with a new advice column!! If you’re new to this newsletter, this is a recurring feature where I answer love and relationship questions from lesbians and other homos. Some past editions include an important missive from a MILF lover and ”I'm a 33-year-old dirty slut who loves to be alone and go to bed at 10 pm.” Also, "It's so rare that I find someone that I'm interested in, and when I do, it's never great."
If you have a problem for me, send it my way anytime. Also, new Dinner Diary is imminent. xoxo, Maddy
My girlfriend of a year and a half has been very straight-forward and explicit about what she wants since essentially our first date – marriage and children. Fortunately, that aligned with what I want (or at least, one of the futures that I can very much see myself in)! Unfortunately, the longer we've dated, the less sure I've felt if she is the person I want that future with.
We're different people in a lot of ways — different hobbies, different friends, different ways of looking at the world, different ways of approaching conflict (I'm avoidant, she blows up in a way that sometimes scares me). I think that we could work out some of these things over time — or, let time decide if this isn't meant to be. But, the feeling of urgency over our timeline for moving in, marriage, kids, etc., puts me in a situation where, for the last six months, I am continually analyzing our issues and differences in my head every day. This is both of our first serious relationship, which makes me feel more uncertain and panicked, something she says she does not understand.
When I try to talk with her about our differences or my uncertainty about our future, I always end up blaming myself. Talks end with me comforting my girlfriend or feeling guilty and shutting down. But, not being able to talk about it leaves me feeling like there is no option but to break up. When it's just the two of us in the moment, things are great. But, when I'm trying to balance everything in my life and figure out the future, I feel like I'm constantly letting her down. Her expectations can feel so rigid. I am exhausting myself with guilt.
I love her. If it was a matter of keeping things the way they are, I would not break up with her. But, knowing what she wants, I increasingly think breaking up is the right thing to do. If I could snap my fingers to make her fall in love with someone else and leave me, I would. (Again... I am obviously at fault here as an avoidant person who hates conflict!) I guess what I'm looking for is — how do I know if I need to break up with my girlfriend, when we're happy together more often than not? And how do I do it "right"?
I’m the Problem, 31
I get why your girlfriend brought up her marriage and baby goals on your first date—not everyone wants those things, and it would suck for her to invest time and energy in a relationship with someone who would rather spend their childbearing years living in a van and exploring America with a pack of semi-feral road cats. I think people, especially lesbians and the lesbian-adjacent, forget that it takes a long time to build trust, accrue shared experiences, and gather all the information you need to make a lifelong commitment to another person (not to mention having kids together, a decision that is infinitely more legally and socially binding than marriage). It sounds like you and your girlfriend are both operating under the expectation that you should have a solid answer re: marriage and parenthood after only a year and a half of dating, which feels super unreasonable and short-sighted to me. It also sounds like your girlfriend is more interested in your potential as a couple than your actual relationship as it exists in the here and now. This is bad for a lot of reasons-namely, your actual relationship will never live up to a fantasy.