Ask the Expert Relationship Advice Column – Deciding whether to stay in or to end a relationship
Blog | October 28, 2014
Our monthly Ask the Expert Relationship Advice Column can be seen published at www.gomag.com.
Carol Sugar-Burke is an Executive Matchmaker for NY’s premier gay and lesbian matchmaking service Bespoke Matchmaking.
Dear Carol,
I have spent 15 years of my life with a woman I though was my soul mate. We started as best friends and then became lovers and shortly after business partners. We share a home and a vacation property but for the past year and a half that is all we seem to share.
We no longer are intimate and quite frankly I am no longer feeling the attraction or the desire to be intimate with her. She is a wonderful person but; we seem to have nothing to discuss but work. I want to travel and explore and I am all about experiences. She wants to shop and shop and shop and nothing else… Don’t get me wrong I love to shop and enjoy pretty things but; I also want to do things and have adventures. We have gone to therapy and the reality is we have grown completely apart and really no longer share common goals other than the business. I feel so invested in this relationship I am uncertain as to what I should do. Is it time to dissolve the relationship?
Bored
Dear Bored,
Life is too short to settle. It sounds like you are both miserable and neither of you is getting what you should out of a full relationship. No one can ever tell you whether you should stay in a relationship or leave only you know that for certain. However; it is never the right reason to stay because you have “too much invested” Perhaps, you would be better as friends and business partners and perhaps; you are both waiting for the other one to suggest it is time to move on. The hardest thing in life is to move on when something is not working. It is always easier to stay than to challenge yourself and take a risk and leave. I am also sure neither of you finds it easy to let go as you did share some wonderful years together. It may be better to part while you remember the good times fondly and can still be friends and business partners before you begin to resent each other and the relationship you are in… It is a hard decision to make but; I am confident you will make the right one…
Remember when one chapter ends there is always a new beginning!
Carol