I’ve been with my girlfriend for 10 years – sometimes I feel like I’ve settled

‘This sounds awful but I’ve started to wonder if I could do better. I even downloaded Hinge, but deleted it straight after out of guilt,’ says the reader (Photo: Westend61/Getty)

It’s clear to me that you and your girlfriend bring each other a sense of safety and belonging: this is really worthy of respect and not to be considered flippantly. I think you named it when you called her your best friend. Such a solid foundation of who you are, having grown into adulthood together, will surely be the greatest gift you’ve given each other.

But it seems to me that you’re asking whether you’re in the 20 per cent of university students who find lasting love on campus, or whether your path involves more passion and beauty found outside your relationship, maybe in your workplace?

Your colleague sounds like the perfect catalyst for you to examine your feelings and question your present situation and the future that you seem understandably hesitant to step into – and indeed seem to be thinking about stepping away from. Then you can make a fully considered decision about your own future.

I find it interesting that you describe your new colleague as beautiful, fiery and opinionated while I notice your fiance is lovely and caring – and perhaps shares more similar opinions to you so that exciting spark and friction isn’t there. So many men can be intoxicated, enraptured and spellbound by truly stunning women and I wonder whether you are feeding off some feisty fantasy female? If you extend this fantasy, can you see yourself getting married, raising children, growing old with this woman? Or are the two worlds quite separate? Here’s your chance to question your wants and needs, without stringing your fiancée along for too long, because if she or you want a large family, then you might need to love her enough to set her free.

I’d recommend you cast your mind back to when you met your girlfriend. Do you remember falling in love? Did you find her beautiful and more intellectually stimulating then? How could you bring back who you were then to your relationship now, to rekindle the flame that might have been lost as you’ve focused on your careers and settled into comfort?

How conscious were you as you ticked off life’s milestones? Or were you perhaps fulfilling the Disney dreams of others? What do you find boring and exciting about each other? Have you fallen out of love? Are you ready in yourself and emotionally mature enough to grow in love with your fiancée, or indeed with anyone else at the moment? Is this a time where you might need to focus on yourself, your self-awareness and grow personally?

I wonder what this out of body experience when proposing means to you: was it a shock that you’re committing to this fantasy fairytale and stepping into a committed adult life? Was it watching something play out as if it’s not you in disconnected disbelief, wishing you’d not done it? Or the cocktail of adrenalin, cortisol and endorphins?

I wonder whether the way your lives are fully intertwined scares you because it might be difficult to separate emotionally, financially, socially and even psychically? Or do you feel hemmed in and lacking a sense of self or choice?

It’s so common for men to get cold feet before marriage and wonder what they might be missing out on, who they might be with other women and whether they’ve explored themselves emotionally and sexually. This doesn’t seem to be connected with their lifestyle: I’ve spoken to many men concerned they’ll no longer be available for casual sex and multiple relationships, despite never having shown an interest in flings of any sort. The grass is greener where you tend to it.

It’s your responsibility to find out, as a matter of urgency, whether your cold feet are a reaction to the reality of wedding planning and your conscious farewell to the possibility of alternate lives, or a signal that you want to explore those possible alternate lives. I’d strongly caution against framing any wish to meet other women as wondering if you can do better as it feels emotionally disconnected, concerned with status and pecking order, and lacking in the love that I’m sure you’ve shared with your fiancee during these formative years of your life.

I wonder what was behind your guilt at downloading Hinge? Was it a sense of betrayal or a fear of being caught? Do you fear being right, that maybe your fiancee is not the woman for you, or that this isn’t the right time? Or maybe you fear being wrong: that she is the woman for you – you fit, being together is like home, this is the cornerstone on which you’ll build your life – and that means choosing not to explore parallel universes?

As well as examining your own feelings, I believe you and your fiancee would benefit from communicating honestly about your fears and hopes, which will help you both recognise whether you are right for each other both here and right now, and whether it is right to commit to each other for future life ahead. The tragedy might be if you don’t have the conversation and you stay, build resentment and one of you ends up unfaithful within a monogamous committed relationship, either sexually or emotionally. I wonder whether she might have had similar thoughts about other men?

These deep, important conversations are sadly something that so many couples run away from as they go along with what seems to be the easy route, only for it to get painful, harder and sometimes break.

I would recommend that you talk to each other about marriages you’ve seen that you’d like your relationship to grow into, whether friends, neighbours or Hollywood fantasy and how you see your lives unfolding over the next decade or two, including children, careers, travel, where you might live and how you spend your time together, as well as apart. Do your pictures match or are your needs different? This might bring up insightful real life conversation rather than the intellectual stimulation you have from your work colleague. I’d look around at older people and consider how people maintain their looks, grow into their looks and the importance to you for physical attractiveness. Tell each other what you see and how you feel about your own and each other’s presentation. I’d also recommend talking about your fears on what might go wrong in your relationship, from your own and even your loved one’s health issues, to turning into a boring couple.

Take this time to listen to your instincts and learn about yourself and what you want from life. My wish for the two of you is that you both consider your futures fully and commit: either stepping into this relationship, or stepping out of it, deliberately and kindly.