Should I leave my girlfriend?

You might be a man asking about a woman, or a woman asking about a woman, or someone for whom neither word fits. The question lands the same way: you love your girlfriend, or you did, and you cannot tell any more whether what is wrong is the ordinary friction of two lives or something you should not be living with. If you are in a same-sex relationship there is an extra layer, because most of what is written about relationships going wrong was not written with you in mind, and some of what has happened to you may not look like the pictures.

From here the page says partner and they. The patterns are the same whoever is in them.

What tends to be going on

Mismatch. A lot of relationships that end should end for no darker reason than that two people want different lives. One wants children and one does not. One wants to move home and one cannot. One needs a lot of time together and one needs a lot of time alone. Nobody is frightened, nobody is managing anybody's moods, and the arguments are the same argument in different clothes. This is sad and it is not a failing in either of you. Staying out of guilt, or because leaving a good person feels unforgivable, is how people lose a decade.

Drift. Sometimes nothing is wrong and nothing is right. You stopped talking about anything that mattered, and you cannot say when. Drift can be repaired if both of you want to, and the honest question is whether you do.

A pattern. Some relationships have a shape that the people who do this work recognise regardless of who is in them. One partner's moods organise the house. Friends have thinned. Money is watched, or the phone is. Threats arrive dressed as jokes, or as concern. In same-sex relationships there are specific versions: a partner who threatens to out you to family or work, who says the police or the helplines will not take two women seriously, who tells you that what is happening cannot be abuse because of who you both are. Those threats are levers, and the services know them well.

Your own side. Turn the same questions on yourself. Who, in your home, has changed shape to keep the peace? If it is your partner, you need to look at that before you look at anything else.

What this might mean for you

Name the category first. Mismatch, drift or pattern. The question "should I leave" has a different weight in each. In a mismatch the answer belongs to both of you. In drift the question is whether either of you will do the work. In a pattern the question has a safety component, and that comes first.

Write down what you want from a relationship, in a list, without reference to this one. Then read the list against what you have. Where the gaps are things no one can change (children, place, pace of life), you are looking at a mismatch and you can stop blaming either of you. Where the gaps are things your partner could change and has been asked to, look at what happened when you asked.

If you are frightened at any point, including frightened of being outed or of not being believed, the fear itself is information. Separation is when control tightens, whoever the people are. Plan with someone trained before you announce anything. Galop will talk to you without needing you to be sure what this is.

One next step

Weighing it: your leaning today is free and asks you to lay the whole thing out and notice where you lean on an ordinary day. If what you recognised was two people who want different things, When it is simply a mismatch takes the blame out of it. If it was the pattern, When the problem is control goes through it slowly and turns the lens on you as well. The assessment asks nothing about gender it does not need to.

Galop 0800 999 5428, free, weekdays, for LGBT+ people experiencing abuse. National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247, 24 hours, anyone can call. Men's Advice Line 0808 801 0327. Respect Phoneline 0808 8024 040 if the behaviour you are worried about is yours. In an emergency call 999 and press 55 if you cannot speak. Pressing Escape twice leaves this site at once.