Need encouragement to leave my DB
Hey y'all, how are you? It's my first time posting here! It turned out longer than I expected, so I hope you bear with me. Thanks!
This week, I finally realized that me (29HLM) and my girlfriend of the past 4 years (29LLF) have no future together, and I need some encouragement and support for breaking up. Long story short, we haven't had sex in more than a year now. Before that, at least another year of dwindling sex life because it was increasingly hard for her to get and stay in the mood. We're not married, yes living together. I know that the decline in libido originated from stress and body image issues, but I can imagine that over time, the strain that this put on the relationship also amplified the disconnect and low libido.
Here's some history, feel free to skip it. The gist of it is that my girlfriend repeatedly avoids talking to me about our sex life, and I don't even want to sleep with her anymore because I feel so emotionally neglected:
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Whenever I'd bring up "the talk", I never felt heard or understood or cared for. I never got what I needed out of those talks, and I'm not talking about sex - I'm talking about listening, empathy, trying to work something out as a team. I wanted her to hear how hurtful it was when she would stop midway through sex and go to sleep.
Anyway, about a year and a half ago, she told me she can't take anymore of those conversations. She said that the main reason for the low libido and dead bedroom is the conversations (which would happen about once a month or so). I didn't like it, but I decided to trust her. I told her I won't bring it up anymore, but I'm counting on her to come talk to me when she's ready.
Nothing happened for a year. Then one night she came home drunk, and started touching me. I was resentful as fuck, but I went with it. Then we stopped halfway through foreplay, and she fell asleep shortly after. I waited about a week, she didn't bring any of it up. So again I initiated the talk, and again I didn't get anything out of it. She said she needed a break from the conversation, I specifically asked her to follow up with me in a time and place that's good for her. Nothing. For months and months, I was just waiting for her again. And sometimes if she was drunk, she'd start touching me. I hate it so much, it feels so demeaning. I rejected those advances with various excuses. Mind you, I wasn't drunk and it also didn't seem right.
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So now to the present. After no drama for about 5 months now, she again was drunk and tried touching me. I rejected. But this time, I told her that it hurts me that these advances happen only when she's drunk. I told her that I can't sleep with her, not now and not ever, unless we fix the emotional rupture that's happened from years of rejection, of keeping my mouth shut, of hiding this from our friends, of feeling unaccounted for. I told her that trust needs to be rebuilt. Trust that she won't ditch me again without any explanations. Trust that I'll have a place to talk about my feelings if things go south. She asked: if you need to talk about these things, why don't you bring them up? I explained all of the above (in the spoiler). I explained that I need her to approach me. I need to see that she cares.
She asked if we can do this the following morning and I agreed. Next day arrives and nothing. The following day, also nothing. We're now at day number 5. This was the final straw for me - I would have settled for any sort of follow up from her, no matter how bad the conversation would go. I explicitly said that all I expect is her approaching me for a follow up. Luckily, she didn't do that, and now I have full clarity that I will NEVER be seen and heard by this person. But it's so difficult breaking up: we share a home, I'll break her heart, and in many ways she relies and depends on me. She lost a lot of friends in the past years (they moved abroad). She lost her dad. And then there's the irrational fear that this is the best I can do, which I fully know is bullshit and is just my demolished self esteem from years of rejection and the secret lack of sex in my twenties. I was hoping that the wise folks here have some words of wisdom for me.