Have I broken up with my girlfriend for the wrong reasons?

I just ended a relationship of a year and 3 months, and I can’t tell if I made the right decision. I think my primary reason for breaking up with her was the fact that I felt like she expected and got so much more effort out of me than she was willing to put in. However, I cannot deny that lust and immaturity played a part in my decision, as part of my breakup was due to the fact that I was unsure of the relationship and wanted to explore my options elsewhere.

WARNING: This is a long story and lust plays a part in it. There is a simple summary at the end if you do not wish to read all of this.

Initially we were just messing around. I didn’t really see myself having a relationship with her for multiple reasons. She was immature, close-minded, and didn’t really seem to care for anyone’s needs outside of her own, though she was in a slightly darker part of her life at the time I met her. As I spent more time around her I got used to her and started enjoying her more for the things I did like about her, like the fact that she was an educated Christian woman. I was talking to two other women at the time and still wasn’t quite ready to commit to a relationship with her, but she kept asking about it and I kinda felt like we’d been involved with each other for a minute at that point. Although, this was my first mistake in the relationship as I wasn’t ready to or sure of how to cut the other two women off, and so in the first month of the relationship I was not a faithful man. However, I did find a way to cut them off and promptly admitted my wrongdoing to her. Around that time, she revealed something she had been lying about as well, and then we made up and were kind of cruising from there. It took a second to build her trust back, but things seemed fine.

There were many things I liked about her. We went to the same college. She was a devout Christian at the church I went to, and over the course of our relationship we both got closer to God. She enjoyed some of the same things I did, even as simple as staying home and watching One Piece. She always enjoyed cooking for me, and in the very beginning of the relationship, she might even occasionally clean for me. She also enjoyed doing my hair, which honestly helped me out a lot. We were open and honest about our feelings, and she felt like a safe space.

Over the course of the relationship, we would CONSTANTLY have disagreements, often over things she didn’t understand because she was a sheltered college girl and I was already a graduate paying my own bills. Additionally, there was a cultural divide, and while I would do my best to accept her culture, it took her a long time to stop trying to make things the way she wanted them to be all the time. I even had to teach her to stop being prejudice towards black people like myself. She literally would not eat anything or even go anywhere that did not align with what she thought was right. Eventually she got to a point where it felt like she was only complaining about not having things her way half the time, but she was still always very picky about everything. Part of the reason she would even cook for me was because she refused to have anything except for what she was comfortable with 90% of the time, including when she would come to me starving saying “I don’t know what to eat” and then denying everything I offered. I felt like I was constantly going out of my way for this woman. It got to the point where one of the things I had to ask her to do was clean up after herself when she was at my place. And then when I would do extra things for her, at least 1 out of 3 times she would just complain and possibly start an argument with me over something as trivial as bringing her a little extra ice cream.

If I voiced an issue I had, she was willing to change, but most of the issues I voiced with her were things she needed to improve for herself (e.g. taking care of her body so she could function in class). The few things I did ask her to do extra were either met with excuses, or adopted for a short period of time and then slowly withdrawn. These might be things like helping me clean occasionally, or bedroom things, or even things as simple as picking up something from the store when I asked her to. It seemed like she’d only really do things that benefited her in some capacity.

Seeing as I was a full time working man and she was still finishing college and slowly figuring out how to live on her own, I never really asked for much out of her, and I didn’t expect her to be able to reciprocate everything I did. But it would have at least been nice to feel like she had some intention of reciprocating what I would do.

As time went on, she would go more into depth about what she didn’t want to do for me and what she wanted out of the relationship. She would constantly be asking me if I was going to marry her, but whenever we talked about a 50/50 relationship, she would keep mentioning things that I should be doing for myself because she wasn’t my wife and “wasn’t my mother”. Meanwhile I literally did almost anything she asked. I even let her stay with me for a month and a couple weeks without charging rent or bills or anything to get back on her feet. I’d help her with her car problems, school things, and even occasionally do some form of cleaning to help her keep her place up WITHOUT her asking me. Honestly, looking back, it was really my actions that made her feel like she didn’t have to reciprocate, seeing that I kept doing more and more things without them being earned or even asked for sometimes.

I started to become exhausted of constantly going out of my way for her and then being met with more complaints. As my doubt in the relationship grew, I began contemplating breaking up more and more. One day, we had a discussion about her speaking with an ex from her home country, and as a result, I decided to start speaking to one of my earlier situationships without telling her. Although I kept it on a friendly basism this was definitely the wrong thing to do. I really wasn’t that worried about my girlfriend speaking to her ex, but it added on to my uncertainty and my resentment in the relationship.

Around finals time, we both became more busy and were spending more time apart. She began withdrawing from the relationship. She even went as far as to deny me physical intimacy as simple as hugs and kisses in the few times that I did get to see her, which especially hurt for me because one of my primary love languages is physical intimacy.

One day, while we were talking on the phone, we were talking about the future again concerning 50/50 in a relationship, and when I mentioned some tradeoffs in responsibilities, her exact words were “I’m not doing all that for a man.” She continued on with this, and then I strongly voiced my concerns that I felt she did not have any intention of reciprocating my efforts in the relationship. Instead of denying it, she essentially just took accountability for it and then explained why she felt that way. One of her reasons was that the other two women I was seeing before her put in effort and I chose to date her anyways, and when I asked her if I made a mistake in giving our relationship that chance instead, she said “I don’t know”.

THAT was the conversation that made me decide to break up with her. If it had not been finals week, I would have broken up with her on the spot.

Though I had already essentially made up my mind, I still continued to discuss the issue with her to see if there was a solution. Eventually, she said that after finals she would do better and asked me what I want, and then that’s when I realized: I didn’t know what I wanted from her.

Additionally, I felt as though I was cut off during my exploring phase and still wanted to see more of what other women may have had to offer. The girl I was speaking to in secret was also a growing temptation, and though my girlfriend had finally decided to let basic romantic physical intimacy back into the relationship (after I asked), she was at the point in her Christian journey where she wanted to abstain until marriage. And I was not ready for that.

Ultimately, I am sure my primary reason for getting into the relationship wasn’t lust mainly because if I just wanted sex, I would have cut her off and kept seeing the other women I was involved with. I know lust was not the primary reason for our breakup, but it certainly did play a hand in our downfall, and I don’t like that. I also don’t like the fact that I don’t even know what I want out of a relationship at this point.

Was I in the wrong?

TL;DR – I broke up with my girflriend because I felt like she didn’t intend on putting the same effort as I do into the relationship, and also because I was no longer sure of what I wanted in a relationship anymore and wanted to explore my options elsehwere. However, the relationship started with lies, and I was not a completely faithful man. I am still not sure of whether or not I broke up with my girlfriend for the right reasons or if my lust and uncertainty is what destroyed the relationship. Was I in the wrong?