Had a long talk with my gf tonight for the first time about the state of our relationship and issues. Didn't go great but ended up mostly ok and for the better.
The hardest thing about my relationship is that my gf is a very rare type of woman who falls into the so far on the logical side of the myers-briggs personality type that it makes me feel she doesn't love me because she's not emotionally affectionate (or emotional) AT ALL, and I am very much INFP emotional feelings person.
Like she doesn't do cuddling for the sake of cuddling, though she's ok cuddling when it's a side activity when watching a movie or something, but just laying in bed and having close non-sex intimacy? Nope. And sex for her is a "ok, let's fuck to orgasm. We're done, let's get out of bed and move on" thing a couple times as week like the purpose of sex is just fucking to orgasm. Whereas for me sex is a romantic intimacy feelings thing.
And she cannot share rooms or sleep in the same bed as another person. It's like a dealbreaker for her. She's straight out told me she could never live with me, and don't even bring it up. Her ideal married life at 50/60/70 is having her own apartment/condo/house separate from her husband where she just has her own space for her and her cat and sees her husband a few times a week to fuck and go out and do things together.
Like that is so completely bizarre to me. I have never met or even heard of another woman in my entire life who feels that way about relationships/love. The thought of her compromising and "moving in" with someone is just "asking her to change who she is as a person" and she's no way, no how.
Meanwhile I am the kind of person who craves love, affection and intimacy, who wants to start spending nights over with an SO within a few months and living together within 6-12 months and waking up daily next to a person I love, and cuddle in bed a ton. I also like to see my SO & fuck more than a couple times a week.
So I'm pretty much exactly the opposite of what I need to be fulfilled in intimacy than my SO, which makes this hard af to work.
But I'm crazy and rather just say "we're too incompatible, let's break up" and get back on dating sites and try to meet someone else, I want to try really hard to make this somehow work. I've already made peace about not living together and I'm trying to get my SO to meet me partway and try to stay over like one night a month or something. At first she got pretty upset about even doing that because I was asking her to do something she is clear about her not wanting to do, but as we talked she got more ok with putting in the effort and trying to stay over occasionally even if she doesn't like it because she knows I like it.
I at least feel better about our relationship after talking it all out with her. She loves me, I just have a hard time seeing that being expressed because she doesn't express it like I do so I worry she doesn't love me. I'm going to try to understand her better so I can recognize how she expresses love & affection so I can see it and feel loved, which is what I want.
And no, I didn't end up bringing up the condom issue, because when dealing with all that heavy serious stuff I didn't want to maybe piss her off and bring up that I want better sex with no condoms in the near future. I still plan on bring it up really soon with her. Maybe she'll be ok with it? Idk, every woman is different on how they feel about the necessity of condoms. I do throw out hints though like "It's not you, I only take a while to finish because you know condoms suck and dull the sensations" hoping that maybe she'll catch on and say something like "we don't have to use condoms if we get tested" or something, but that doesn't happen, so I'll need to just bring it up soon.
