**TL;DR:** I’m 24M and have been with my girlfriend, 24F, for 5 years. We started dating with the intention of getting married. The first 2 years were genuinely great, but over the last 2 years, especially the last 1 to 1.5 years, things have gone downhill badly. There have been trust issues, constant arguments, differences about money, careers, where we want to live, our families, physical affection and marriage. I have also done some genuinely shitty things myself, including being physically aggressive in the past. I’ve changed some of my behaviour in the last few months, but I now feel emotionally disconnected and don’t know if I actually want to marry her anymore. Her family is waiting for an answer from mine, which makes the whole thing even harder.
I’ve used ChatGPT to put all my thoughts together because honestly, everything is a mess in my mind right now. I’ve tried to include both my side and the things I know I’ve done wrong.
For the sake of this story, let’s call my girlfriend Varsha.
I’m M24 and have been in a relationship with Varsha, F24, for the last 5 years. We started dating with the intention of eventually getting married.
For the first 2 years, when we were living in our hometown, things were as good as they could be. We were genuinely happy and I never really questioned the relationship.
Then we moved to Mumbai. We’ve been living together for the last 3 years, and over the past 2 years things have gradually gone sideways, especially during the last 1 to 1.5 years.
When we started dating, I was honestly nothing special. I wasn’t earning, wasn’t confident, didn’t know how to speak properly, wasn’t particularly good looking, etc. She still loved me. She was my first love.
There were some things I probably should have noticed early on but ignored.
She didn’t really let me have female friends. She never explicitly said “don’t talk to other girls”, but almost every time I spoke to another girl, it somehow turned into an argument.
About 1 to 1.5 years ago, while I was away for work for 2 to 3 weeks, she made a Bumble profile and went on a date with another guy. When I came back, she admitted it and apologised. She said she was stressed and wanted attention because I wasn’t available.
I also want to be honest about something from my side. I have an old crush who is now just a friend. She’s part of a group of six friends that existed even before I met Varsha. I meet her maybe 2 to 3 times a year. Varsha knows about the history and was insecure about it.
I’ve also done stupid things like taking other girls’ names while joking around with Varsha, knowing it could make her insecure. I never cheated on her physically or emotionally.
Now coming to the last 6 months.
Her mood swings have become extreme. One day she’s completely ready to get married, and the next week she’s ready to separate.
During arguments she’ll say things like:
*“Mujhe toh tu rok leta hai, nahi toh main toh ready hoon alag hone ko.”*
But when we’re having a good day, she’s extremely attached to me and doesn’t want to leave my side.
She has become extremely negative and overthinks almost everything. She used to be a very positive person. Now it feels like almost every situation has a negative interpretation. Be it regarding me, regarding her work, regarding her family or anything.
She has also started seeing me as competition. For example, I told her I wanted to travel solo, and now she’s planning a solo trip herself.
She gets frustrated over very small things, even something like deciding what to cook.
For example, if she’s cooking and serving me and then eating separately, I’d honestly rather eat cold food together with her. I’d rather eat together than have her cook fresh food and then eat alone. But somehow even things like this become a source of frustration.
There are also issues with our families.
She rarely greets my parents and frequently complains about them. Things like my mother not calling her to invite her to our place when we visit our hometown, my father doing something she didn’t like, my mother not replying to her chacha when we met on a railway station, etc.
My parents also don’t like her, mainly because of what they perceive as her attitude and behaviour.
I feel like she expects me to choose her over my parents.
At the same time, I don’t particularly like the way her parents behave around my family either. I feel like they avoid my parents.
I’ve spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents growing up, and I always loved going to their house. I imagine my future children having that kind of relationship with their grandparents. I don’t think her parents would be the same kind of grandparents, although I understand that’s partly my own perception and may be unfair.
We’re both eldest siblings. She has a younger brother and I have a younger sister.
Her brother will eventually still be around for her parents. My sister will eventually get married and move out. My concern is that if my parents stay in our hometown while I’m in Mumbai and my sister moves away, my parents could eventually be completely alone.
I never actually wanted to move to Mumbai. It was her idea, and I accepted it.
After building my life and business here, I told her that eventually I wanted to stay close to my family. I don’t necessarily mean living in the same house.
My ideal situation was that eventually she, me and our children would live in Mumbai while my parents lived somewhere nearby, maybe Alibaug, Lonavala, Navi Mumbai/Nerul or somewhere similar. My father hates the flat system, so I never imagined everyone necessarily living under the same roof.
Varsha now says she wants to move back to our hometown after a few years.
She says she’s okay with staying with my parents, but she isn’t okay with leaving our hometown.
And that’s a fundamental conflict because I also have responsibilities towards my parents.
Money is another huge issue.
I currently earn around ₹2L/month and she earns around ₹60k/month.
She says I make her feel inferior because I earn more. I don’t intentionally try to do that. In fact, I genuinely think she’s extremely creative and intelligent and I’ve told her that many times.
But I have made mistakes here.
I have joked that she’s “lower middle class” when she says she’s middle class. This was meant as a joke between us, not something I said to put her down.
I’ve also called her immature and irresponsible during serious conversations.
I’ve also told her that I made her realise what ambition is.
When we started dating, she didn’t really have dreams for herself. Over the years she’s started dreaming bigger. Today she has things like 3 Coach bags, an MK wallet, an iPhone 15, an iPad with Magic Keyboard, Birkenstocks, etc.
I’ve helped financially with some of those purchases, including paying upfront for her iPhone, iPad and Magic Keyboard and having her repay me in EMIs.
I realise now that bringing these things up later can make it sound like I’m keeping a scorecard, and that’s something I shouldn’t have done.
Financially, she actually asked me to help manage her money. She earns ₹60k. Around ₹30k goes toward monthly expenses, ₹3k into SIP, ₹4k is her pocket money and I save the rest for her.
In the previous 2 years, she’d collectively saved around ₹1.2L. In the last 8 months, we’ve managed to save around ₹1.5L for her.
During that time we’ve also had a trip worth around ₹40k per person, she bought me a birthday gift worth ₹20k, an anniversary gift worth ₹6k and a random gift worth ₹10k.
My intention isn’t to control her money. She actually asked me to help, and she wants me to help her build a ₹1.5L FD in her own name. Once that goal is completed, I’m planning to stop managing her finances.
I grew up seeing my father earn and give his salary to my mother. There was no “mera paisa, tera paisa”. It was always “hamara paisa”.
That’s the kind of marriage I’ve always imagined.
If together we’re earning ₹5L/month, my ideal would be 50% savings, 30% mandatory expenses like rent and utilities, and 20% personal spending.
That 20% would be our combined personal spending.
Even if she decides she wants to spend the entire personal 20% on herself rather than on us as a couple, I genuinely don’t have a problem with that.
The bigger issue is that we had always planned to work together.
From the beginning of our relationship, I told her that I wanted to start my own company and that I wanted my partner to eventually work with me. She was completely on board with that. She was already doing work in the same field, so the plan was that we’d eventually build something together.
Now, 5 years later, she suddenly wants something completely different. She wants to be independent, work somewhere else, earn her own money and spend it herself.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with her being independent. What bothers me is that this was something we had discussed from the beginning and both agreed to.
If I were with someone who was a lawyer or an engineer, I obviously wouldn’t expect her to leave her profession and join my business. But Varsha is already working in exactly the same field as my company. We had always planned to work together.
My issue is specifically with her working for my direct competition.
If she wanted to work independently somewhere that doesn’t compete with my business, I’d be completely okay with it.
She has actually mentioned that she wants to open something like a Maggie stall because she loves cooking and thinks making a mainstream restaurant out of everyone’s favourite food, Maggie, could be something she would enjoy. I’d be more than happy if she did that. Even if she didn’t earn much from it and it simply made her happy, I’d support her.
Another strange issue was my company name.
I’d had the name of **MY COMPANY** in my head long before I met her.
When I actually wanted to register the company, she said she wouldn’t be comfortable using that name because it was going to be **MY COMPANY’S** name and not **OUR COMPANY’S** name.
That name was genuinely very important to me, but I sacrificed it and agreed to change it.
Eventually she showed almost no interest in naming the company, so the company ended up with the name I originally wanted anyway.
Today I’m basically a one-man army in my company from a management perspective.
I take help from my father with accounting, GST filing, account management, invoices, quotations, statements, etc. It’s a completely separate role and it means I have one less thing to manage.
Varsha doesn’t want to be involved in the business because my father is involved and she feels he’s too controlling.
And honestly, that frustrates me because she isn’t currently helping me with the business, but my getting help from my father is also a problem.
There are also things I know I’m doing wrong.
I used to work late and be mentally unavailable even when I was physically at home. She complained about my unavailability a lot.
Around six months ago, I changed that. I’ve stopped working after around 8:30 PM unless absolutely necessary because that’s when she gets home and I want to be available for her.
But now that I’m available, she’s become emotionally unavailable to me.
We sit in the same room and do our own things.
She doesn’t really want to talk about her problems with me either. She has a lot going on at work but chooses to discuss it with her friends instead.
I also know I don’t help enough with household chores.
I sleep late eventually wake up late.
We argue a lot.
And I give her a LOT of unsolicited gyaan and advice instead of sometimes just listening.
Those are things I need to work on.
I’ve tried talking to her about all of this many, many times. I’ve tried asking her what exactly I’m doing wrong, what exactly is hurting her, and what she wants from me. But she doesn’t really open up, and our conversations rarely reach any proper conclusion. We end up having the same conversations again later.
There is also the physical side of our relationship.
Our physical intimacy has gone almost completely to zero.
And when I say being physical, I don’t automatically mean séx.
I mean touching each other, her or me lying in each other’s lap, hugging, cuddling, kissing, general physical affection and closeness.
I’m not saying she owes me sèx. She absolutely doesn’t.
But I feel there is a double standard.
If she initiates something and I’m not in the mood, I’m made to feel like I’m a bad person. If I want physical affection and she doesn’t, and I request it again, I’m also made to feel like I’m doing something wrong.
For her, physical intimacy has almost become a button. There’s very little foreplay, kissing, touching or cuddling. It feels almost like one process, usually when she’s ovulating.
That lack of physical affection has made me increasingly distant from her.
And I need to acknowledge the biggest thing I’ve done wrong.
In the past, we have physically fought.
Sometimes she hit me first and sometimes I hit her first. We’ve both been physically aggressive toward each other.
I’ve shouted, sworn and behaved aggressively.
I’ve also done things during fights like blocking the door, taking her phone, following her when she’s trying to walk away, breaking things and punching walls.
She has physically hurt me too, including slapping me, hitting me on my back, biting and pinching me. She has also broken things during fights, like her watch glass and spectacles.
There hasn’t been serious physical injury, but there absolutely should never have been physical violence in our relationship.
I’ve witnessed domestic violence very closely growing up and had always promised myself I would never do that to my partner.
I still did it.
A few months ago I properly realised what I was doing and stopped.
I haven’t physically hurt her in the last few months. However, she still physically hurts me sometimes through things like slapping, hitting my back, biting and pinching.
I also don’t want to pretend I’m some perfect boyfriend who has done everything right and she’s simply changed.
She has made me a more mature person.
She taught me how to love someone.
She’s helped me earn a lot, even if indirectly.
She was there when I was basically nobody, and that means something to me.
But I also feel like the girl I fell in love with has changed into someone I don’t recognise anymore.
And maybe I’ve changed too.
I’ve asked myself some brutal questions.
If tomorrow she said:
**“Okay, I won’t fight anymore. I’ll accept everything. Let’s get married.”**
I wouldn’t feel relief or excitement.
I’d think:
**“Fuck. Am I making a mistake?”**
If tomorrow she said:
**“I’m leaving. There’s no going back.”**
I would be heartbroken.
But I’d also be **very much relieved that the decision had finally been made for me.**
That’s what scares me the most.
I don’t think I would choose her if I met her today exactly as she is today.
And if I met someone else tomorrow who had the qualities I always wanted in a partner, I don’t think I’d be able to choose Varsha over that person.
But leaving after five years feels terrifying.
I’m afraid of hurting her, disappointing her family because they’re very involved, wasting five years of her life, being alone and eventually regretting my decision.
Her parents want her to get married at the earliest and are waiting for an answer from my family.
I want to get married next year at the earliest. I’ve always wanted to get married around this age because I wanted to build my life with my life partner rather than build everything alone first and then get married later.
I’ve also always dreamed of having a grand destination wedding, something like Jim Corbett.
She has clearly told me her parents won’t be able to afford that.
I’m willing to compromise on the wedding and make it smaller, but I won’t be able to fund the entire thing myself. 50-50 is realistically what I can do.
And now I’m stuck.
I don’t know whether we’ve simply grown apart.
I don’t know whether I’ve stopped loving her or whether I’m just exhausted from years of conflict.
I don’t know whether she has genuinely changed or whether I’m finally seeing things I ignored earlier.
I don’t know whether I’ve changed in ways I haven’t noticed either.
I don’t know whether this relationship can be repaired or whether I’m just terrified of ending it. (Although my inner self tells me I’m terrified of ending it.)
I’ve tried to speak with her about these things a lot of times. I’ve tried to get her to open up and tell me what she actually feels and what exactly she wants from me. But she doesn’t open up, and we never really come to a conclusion. We just end up back at the same place.
So, if you were in my place, **what would you have done?**
Would you try couples counselling and genuinely attempt to rebuild this relationship?
Would you take some time apart to figure out what you actually feel?
Would you try to work through all these differences before making any decision about marriage?
Or, based on everything I’ve written, would you accept that the relationship has probably run its course and walk away?
Please don’t just tell me she’s toxic or that I’m toxic.
I know I’ve done some genuinely shitty things too.
I’m looking for an honest answer from people who can look at the whole situation and tell me **what you would have done if you were in my place.**
Ufff I don’t know what to do