Hi this is my first post in this forum. I want to ask for some wisdom and clarity.
I have a 3 years long distance relationship, and we planned to get married to be together. He’s from Florida, I’m from California.
For the first 2 years when we’re in long distance relationship, there’s up and down. I can see myself being a person that has patience to reconnect, solve problems, communicate my feelings needs and wants. There are tiny moments that when I looked back, I realize I suppressed my emotions. Example: we have a movie date by FaceTime, I rushed home after hanging out with friends and he just canceled it once I got hom because he was tired. I told myself it is okay but It has happened many times.
The red flag I can see is anger issues, defense. However, thought out the years, I can see that he’s changed for better. He’s more patient, and he can manage his anger. And I can feel like he fell in love with me more deeply. More caring, more considerate, more love, more effort is put. At the beginning, I was attracted the experience that he had had that makes him be a better person. All of the challenges he’s faced when he moved to US. He’s funny, responsible, caring, smart. We have same type of music and food, sport. We both want “date to marry”
However, there are lingering feelings that I have now as we’re at 3 years relationship.
• I don’t have patience. The last 2 fights that we had, I can feel that I’m more aggressive. It’s hard to compromise and in my head, and my body tells me to break up.
• I don’t feel the connection. For me, I feel the connection when we have adventure or silly moments, or when we’re cuddling and I do cute stuff to him. Since I analyze my feelings a lot, I even question what is connection right now. I shared a lot of my thoughts, my traumatic dysfunctional family stories, he’s the one that see me cry the most.
• I question if I even love or in love with him. This maybe self diagnosed because I don’t have a budget for therapy. BUT, I have had ROCD for a past few months. After we decided to get married, these questions has come up:
+ Do I love him? Do I even feel happy? What if I faked my feelings all the time? Do I feel in love? What if it’s all wrong? What if I don’t love him anymore? What if I’m not bisexual and I’m straight? Should I break up?
=> It’s gotten bad. At first, in third year, the “Do I love him?” just a fling thing. At that time, I have to decide if I want to get married or not. For some contexts, I’m scared of marriage because of my parents. When I look at our relationship, I keep projecting their relationship on my relationship. He’s more like a mix of my mom’s good characteristics (nurturing, caring), and bad ones from my dad (anger issues). The main thing is that I’m more adventurous, spontaneous like my dad and my boyfriend is homebody. This dynamic reminds me of my parents because my dad cheated on my mom so many times. And my mom is forced to be in unhappy marriage that she turned to be toxic, narcissistic, and she expressed her anger on my sister and me. Me and my boyfriend already talked about it, and I can see and feel, be sure that we’re not gonna be like them. However, I keep having those images and thoughts.

Before I went to the trip to Florida for a month, we talked about marriage because he wants to know if I still want this. I notice that I need to make requirements that I can feel safe in marriage even though we should compromise. For example: he wants to stay at his aunt and uncle’s house to save money before we move out. My perspective/protective/conservative defense wants to move out because I don’t want any one to interfere the relationship. Like what if they talk bad, make us do stuff, etc. Logically, he’s right so I admitted that I let my fear turn everything to bad place even though it’s not that bad. So we continue, I went there.
I have those thoughts again. On a good day, like if we hang out, it’s not there. But when there’s silence, I lay on his bed, I have those thoughts. It’s so annoying that I checked feelings, checked questions, Google it, used Chat GPT to analyze.
It reached to the point that we were lying on bed and watching movie together. I looked at him and I bursted to tears. He asked me “what’s wrong honey?” and I just cannot stop me from saying “ Why I don’t feel any sparks? Is it normal?” And he said it’s normal since we have dated for so long. Long short story, I decided that I still want to stay even though I have a mixed feelings should I go or stay.
Sometimes I know I still love him and care for him, sometimes I feel numb. While I look for reassurance on Reddit or any platform, I cried because I don’t want to hurt or lose him. But I talked him about this, 3 times, I still don’t have my certain answer. I fantasized being with somebody else, but I know that deep down I want to stay with him and explore life with him.
He took a break from me, he said I wasted his time. I keep being on and off, I don’t even know myself. Trust my thoughts or my feelings.