@emibot Perhaps a result of the couple years of shit mentioned, but I've been content enough to just be with someone, to have someone with whom to cuddle and with whom to be intimate. For a time, she was the brightest light in an otherwise dark time. 

Along the way, I sought to help her grow beyond what I perceived as her more sheltered personality. She's quiet, which isn't bad, but I hoped it was a matter of introversion rather than a  lower intelligence or general submissiveness. It may be a combination of all three, but in the past couple years, there has been only minor improvement. 

A personal consequence of my few rough years is a I question everything concerning my own actions and decisions. I wonder too long whether or not an event was the result of just shitty luck or something I could have prevented. There has been a fair share of both instances, but the real damage is the anxiety I'm experiencing. As things have taken turns for the better, my anxiety has lessened in nearly all areas...except her. 

*sigh* I'll figure it out, probably have already. The choice has been made, I just now have to make peace with it and enact the choice. If nothing else, maybe time apart will do both some good, spur both of us into further individual development. If not, well....then so be it.

All this turmoil results because I want a blowjob that will cause my eyes to roll back in my head and toes to pierce the carpet. 

*bows to @emibot's awesomeness*

And when contemplating walking away, of leaving the other person, thoughts begin to creep up that you be leaving just before the breakthrough. Of course, with thoughts like that, I may, as you've said, be condemning myself to a life of adequate, another way of saying "settling."