Relationship Help

Hey all

I need girl advice, and not from my friend who’s immediate reaction to everything I say is “dump him”.

I’ve been in an exclusive and serious relationship about 2.5 years. We’ve been through a lot together, we’re both 24 about to be 25 years old, if that detail matters.

Sometimes I feel like there’s been more bad in this relationship than good. Not due to anyone’s fault, (random deaths here and there) but during those hard times I feel as though I’m not understood or supported the way I would like to be. We live together, renting a house, we have each our own dog, I helped him get his dream job and I’m going back to school now that I have healed from most of the deaths that I have experienced since 2019. I’m the only one pushing myself to graduate, which I don’t need him to push me but I don’t feel much support. Even though my life’s been on hold to grieve, I have helped him get through tough times in his life, and he’s been receptive of it.

We work two different schedules so we barely have time to ourselves, and every time I try to plan a vacation for us, he never takes off work and I usually go alone.

I feel alone, and he says the same thing because we don’t have sex. We’re not intimate and I know that it’s due to differences in my hormone levels (trying different birth controls), but he doesn’t understand that from a woman’s perspective. Also, how can I open myself up to be intimate when I don’t feel emotionally supported? It’s not like me having sex with him brings on emotional support, so it’s kinda like an issue that’s never resolved. I get all of my emotional support from platonic friends, which I don’t know how that really makes him feel. Living together has kinda made him retract into a child it feels like sometimes.

Would couples therapy be something that I should look into? We’re not at each other’s throats fighting because we just don’t really communicate, but I wish there was more in our relationship than I feel. I know he wants there to be more too, but we don’t know how to get to the place we want.

I want travel, excitement, a teammate. Sometimes (although it may be not true), I feel like his biggest desire is a more intimate relationship. Which I can admit to wanting and I did just get off hormones to balance myself and find myself again, hopefully with that comes some sort of sex drive. But I still want what I want.

I don’t knowwwwwwww help. I feel like a relationship shouldn’t feel like this so early. Everything I was before this relationship was so much better and in no way is that blaming him. But I miss being a good student and traveling and hanging with friends, instead now I’m like a depressed piece of trash that only works and sleeps. (In case I make it sound like this is all once sided, I have issues to fix as well.)