I (F) want to cheat on my gf with a maintenance guy

It’s basically just the title but so much more than that and I really don’t know how to handle it. It’s also long af so buckle up

TLDR : gf does a lot of things that upset me or make me feel unloved and a cute guy in my new job has been causing me to fantasize and question things

First some backstory: Me (F) and my gf have been together almost a year. I’m not going to say specific ages but we’re late teens/early twenties and she is a year and a half younger than me. I finished my degree early and work full time but she’s still in school. We’re long distance, we live about an hour apart but I have a really bad car (I’m saving up to get a new one so all the working) and she still lives with her very homophobic parents (she’s still in the closet) so we don’t see each other very frequently.

The current situation: I took a new job for the winter where I work for a couple weeks non stop at an isolated labor camp. I won’t get into details but I work for a company that caters the camp for the actual laborers (food housekeeping etc) and so I work every day for a minimum of 12 hours and I see the same 7 or 8 people every night. It’s pretty cool and I’m enjoying it. I’m a week and a half into my first hitch up there and I’ve been working on meeting everyone and figuring where everything is and how it all works.

There’s this one maintenance guy who I’ll call Mark. Mark is 4 years older than me (we’re the two youngest people in camp) and our shifts overlap for 10ish hours. Lately we’ve been hanging out for an hour or so before his shift starts and we just talk or play ping pong or something the camp has available for us.

Today when we were hanging out we were sitting in two big chairs side by side and when we were talking his hand kept grazing my leg when he was gesturing or he touched my back a few times and it was actually really nice. I’m hesitant to spend more time with him because I don’t want him thinking he has a chance and then getting upset and treating me poorly or ignoring me when he doesn’t.

I haven’t been having the best time with my gf and it’s been mounting for a few months now. She’s very sweet and caring but she also does all these things that annoy me or make me feel disregarded or secondary.

She complains a lot about thing like her health or being in pain or struggling with stuff and I’ll offer empathy and also solutions and she’ll just shrug them off by saying something like “no, I don’t think so” in a high pitched voice and then complaining about the same things the next day.

A really big one is her health, she doesn’t eat enough or take any vitamins and so she’s always weak or in pain or dealing with mental fog and I have tried to offer solutions and after she kept disregarding them I would just try to listen and make her feel heard but it’s so hard when I’m not being heard.

Another thing is whenever we’re on call together or texting she’ll just be talking at me instead of engaging in conversation. She’ll just talk at me about her friends or her current hyperfixation or family drama but if I try to ask her about her day and talk TO her she just says it was fine and goes back to whatever she had on her mind or she just won’t talk when we’re on call. I understand calling for comfort but I’m busy a lot of the time and if you’re going to call me just to sit me in the corner and ignore me that doesn’t make me loved and I’d rather hang up and listen to music or something.

There’s a bunch of other things that I won’t get too into but she depends on me for her emotional regulation and I have spent so many nights up late calming her down and talking her off the edge or holding her when she’s feeling super clingy. Because we don’t see each other often she’s always incredibly clingy but it’s so bad that she got upset when I tried to follow my nighttime routine when she was staying at my house that the only way she’d let me SHOWER was if she went with me. It wasn’t relaxing or comfortable at all and she just complained about the lighting.

Mark (I’m only giving him a name cause I cannot spell “maintenance” for the life of me) has been sweet and funny and he asks to spend time and he doesn’t overwhelm me with a bunch of stuff. I’m terrified of the fact that someone’s emotional wellbeing depends on me. It’s so uncomfortable when people say things like if you weren’t here I’d die or something like that and that’s how my gf is.

But she’s also very sweet and kind and I could easily build a stable life with her if I wanted to. Neither of us got a real “college experience” and I’m her first kiss and relationship and stuff but I’ve encouraged her that if there’s ever someone she’s interested in she should go ahead and experiment or do whatever she wants because I want her to have that freedom (and it’s kinda hot tbh). If she leaves me I’m glad she found someone better and I don’t feel possessive of her body or being or attention

On the other hand she’s incredibly possessive and has pinched/hit/slapped me for fake flirting with our mutual friend that she also flirts with or giving someone a platonic kiss on the forehead (I was roleplaying a proud sensei). She also got really mad at me for being fake flirty my last day hanging out with her and some friends before I left for the labor camp and it put a damper on the whole evening even though I apologized a lot and tried to comfort and reassure her. She calls me “mine” a lot which makes me feel like a piece of meat or something

I want to talk to her about a lot of this but I genuinely don’t feel like it’s safe to because she’s told me multiple times that she’ll kill herself if I’ll break up with her and I know me just telling her the things I have trouble with will send her into a lot of self loathing and depression.

I know things would never work out in a serious way between Mark and I but he’s cute and sweet and funny and I miss having something casual. I keep catching him looking at me and I think about kissing him.

I won’t physically cheat on my gf and it won’t be emotional because I am basically unable to be vulnerable like that but I’ve been fantasizing about it and it’s been making me think more about how possessive my gf i and how she makes me feel shitty or like property sometimes and I just don’t know what to do. If I dont do anything and ignore him I know my gf and I can make a stable long term life eventually but I’m scared of missing out on things and I feel a little resentful that I can’t have the same freedoms I’ve offered her