Dear Carol,
I’ve spent 15 years of my life with a woman I thought was my soul mate. We started as best friends, then became lovers; shortly after that, we became business partners. We now share a home and a vacation property, but for the past year and a half that’s all we seem to share. We no longer are intimate, and honestly I no longer feel the attraction or the desire to be intimate with her. She’s a wonderful person, but we seem to have nothing to discuss but work. I want to travel and explore, and I’m all about experiences. She just 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 couples therapy, and still the reality is we have grown completely apart; we really no longer share common goals other than the business. I feel so invested in this relationship, I’m uncertain about what I should do. Is it time to dissolve the relationship? –Bored
Dear Bored,
Life is too short to settle. It sounds like you’re both miserable, and neither of you is getting what you should get 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” or some similar excuse. Perhaps you would be better off as friends and business partners, and maybe you’re both waiting for the other to suggest it’s time to move on. The hardest thing in life is to move on when something is not working. It’s always easier to stay than to challenge yourself and take a risk by leaving. I’m also sure neither of you finds it easy to let go, since 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 resenting each other and the relationship you are in. It’s 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
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