I (M30) am blocked in making a decision about my relationship (F30) of 11 years. How do I know if I must listen to my doubts or try to change my mindset?

TL;DR: I've been with my girlfriend for 11 years. After years of conflict, I developed feelings for someone else (nothing physical happened). I cut contact and started couples therapy. Therapy has objectively improved our relationship, but I still don't feel capable of committing to marriage, children or the future we've planned. I can't tell whether that means something fundamental has changed, or whether I'm trapped in fear, burnout and overthinking.

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I (M30) have been in a relationship with my girlfriend (F30) for 11 years and for the last two years I've been in constant doubt, both about the relationship itself and about our future together.

She's my first and only serious relationship. We met when we were 18, started dating almost immediately and we've been together ever since. I honestly don't know who I am outside of this relationship.

There are many genuinely good things about us. We share the same values, the same sense of humor, lots of inside jokes and we genuinely admire each other. I think she's intelligent, kind and fun, and I know she sees many good qualities in me too.

The problem is that we've also fought a lot over the years.

She's very organized and responsible, but also quite inflexible. I'm much more disorganized and forgetful, but generally more chill. For years, almost everything related to living together became a conflict.

Some of those conflicts are completely fair. I know I can be a disaster sometimes and I've genuinely tried to improve.

But other conflicts feel different. They aren't about responsibilities anymore, but about different ways of seeing life and those are the ones that slowly disconnected me.

For example, I'm not a workaholic. I work my normal hours, but if there's an important deadline or a major delivery, I don't mind occasionally staying a couple of extra hours. This happens only from time to time, yet it's always been a recurring issue because, in her view, work should end when your workday ends.

Over time, I started feeling that many discussions weren't really about individual situations anymore, but about her way of seeing things becoming the default one. Not only regarding everyday things like cleaning or organizing the house, but also bigger life decisions and what our future should look like. I often felt like I was negotiating inside a framework that had already been decided.

About two years ago everything reached its worst point. We were arguing constantly and I started feeling like I had less and less space to simply be myself.

Around that time, I developed feelings for someone else.

Nothing physical ever happened. But we talked far more than we should have and I eventually caught myself imagining what life with her could look like. I'm not proud of that at all.

To this day, I still don't know whether those feelings appeared because my relationship was already deteriorating or whether developing those feelings made me see my relationship through a much darker view.

That's one of the biggest questions I'm trying to answer.

Eventually I decided to cut contact with that person and start couples therapy with my girlfriend instead. We've now been in therapy for around six months, and things have genuinely improved. We fight much less, communicate better and there has been real progress.

The problem is that, despite all that improvement, something inside me still isn't reconnecting.

I still feel that, in many ways, I'm adapting myself to her framework instead of building one together. And that's what hurts the most, because I know she's an amazing person. We've shared an incredible life together, and I genuinely don't know whether I've simply convinced myself that the relationship is broken or whether something really changed.

One of the biggest issues is that we've reached a stage of life where she naturally expects us to move forward: buying a house, getting married and having children.

The thing is I don't feel ready for any of those things.

I still like that vision of life. I'd like to have a family one day. But I don't feel capable of taking those steps now.

I'm not financially where I'd like to be. I'm not even sure I'm where I want to be professionally yet. And I don't feel ready to promise someone that we'll get married while I'm lying awake at night questioning the relationship itself.

For a long time I thought those goals were also my goals. Now I honestly don't know whether I've changed, whether I'm simply scared of commitment, or whether years of conflict slowly disconnected me from this relationship.

I also still think about that other person sometimes. Not necessarily because I believe she's "the one", but because she has become a symbol of a completely different life that I never got to explore.

I don't even know whether I miss her or whether I miss what she represented.

Therapy has objectively improved our relationship, which somehow makes everything even more confusing.

She understandably feels that, since we're fixing things, we should finally move forward.

But I still don't feel capable of making those promises. I don't even know what I want to do with my life.

Is not having enough conviction to take irreversible steps like marriage or children a reason to stop?

Even if the reasons behind those doubts are blurry.

I'm not looking for strangers to decide for me.

I'd really like to hear from people who have genuinely lived through something similar.