I am 40 with a 5 and 3 yr old, in a relationship with a 36 yr old man. We are unmarried but have a mortgage and have been together for 7 years. Ever since our last child has grown out of the small baby phase, I feel like I want to break free and leave the relationship. I have very consuming thoughts on how can I leave, I can’t stand being in the room with him, when he talks I cringe inside, when he wants to touch me I recoil, I fantasise about other men constantly. I feel like this has always been on my mind since the day I met him that the chemistry is not there but we rolled along with the phases of a relationship and now I feel totally trapped and feel awful that if I do leave I am destroying a family. On paper everything is good, he is not an alcoholic or abusive, but I do feel like I walk on egg shells constantly that I have done something wrong as he likes to argue about everything or tell me I have done something wrong. When I have brought this up and say I want to leave and don’t imagine our lives together- he says it’s cuz I am traumatised (my mom has been married 4x by the time I was 10, I was forced into a boarding school as a teen) and that I will always feel the grass is always greener. All of a sudden these feeling have hit me like a freight train since I have been 39.5 and I am wondering is this my horomones making me go nuts? I feel like I notice men checking me out all the time and I just feel so much resentment that my own partner has NEVER complimented me, only says I love you when we are in a fight and I lose it. I feel like I’m slowly dying in this situation but I truly don’t know if I am being unrealistic and unreasonable about what life with small children is like when you’re perimenopausal.