u/Jp-888

Hi everyone. This is my first post and the entire reason I created this, and it might be long so if you're willing to read, please bear with me, I could use some advice. I've been in a relationship now for nearly a year and a half with a wonderful and amazing woman. We have become one another's best friend, we can tell anything to one another, we can do so much together, so many of the same interests. She has brought out some of the best qualities in me and I have done that for her as well. However, for the past several months she has been starting to doubt the longevity potential of our relationship. She feels as if I'm pretty independent in the home, household chores and all that. However, she isn't the most comfortable going out in public with me. As a woman traveling by herself, she feels like she needs to have her head on a swivel and always be alert. She feels that when traveling with her boyfriend, walking around in public, she should be able to relax a bit, but since she feels like she needs to take the responsibility on looking out for me and being the one to look out for potential danger or people with bad intentions, she is unable to relax. She said that she almost feels like a mom as well as a girlfriend sometimes. She says that she wants to feel safe and protected when with me, but in public she doesn't really have this sense that she's looking for. I've discussed things that I could do to learn how to defend myself better. I've been looking at self-defense courses, I already carry items on my person that I could use for self-defense if I really had no choice, but she says it's more than just this. She doesn't like having to look out for low hanging tree branches, she doesn't like feeling like she needs to take the lead everywhere we go on top of being the one to do the driving. We are currently on a break, she said that she needs time to think. She's worried in the future that if we have children, a lot of the parenting would fall on her. She's worried about having to be the one to take the kids everywhere, having to be the one to look out for them. At this point I'm doing everything I can on this break to prepare for the worst that might happen, having to leave this relationship because I don't give her the comfort she wants, but I'm also trying to prepare by learning the most I can about things I might be able to do to make her feel more comfortable, less responsible, less pressured, less overwhelmed, more safe. I've been blind since birth, I've always been comfortable with this but this is the closest I've ever felt to being uncomfortable with being blind. She's not a bad person for wanting what she wants, she deserves this safety, comfort, protection, relaxation, the feeling that she is cared for as much as she cares for me, but at a certain point if the problem really is that she wants somebody who can do things in such a way that only a sighted person can, then I simply am unable to be who she wants. There are things I can do better. I can rely on myself more, I can stop relying on her eyes so much simply because that's automatic for her to look around and see what we are doing. The problem is I don't know if she's willing to give this a shot, and I'm afraid of trying again should she decide to because I'm afraid this will just happen again. I know why she held onto this issue for so long, it's hard to bring this up without feeling like a bad person and she was hoping and praying that it would resolve itself. However, I'm afraid now that I'm always going to be second-guessing whether or not things are as good as I think they are, whether or not she's having a bad day or feeling upset because of something unrelated to me or because she doesn't feel comfortable unless we are in the safety of our own house. I know this is a lot of information, but I hope somebody can weigh in here. I love her with all my heart, I'm afraid of trying again because I'm afraid that it will only be delaying the inevitable, I want to try and succeed at finding a way to meet her where she's at. I would just like to know if anybody else has any advice, experience. I could really use some support