Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I’ve been off for a while.

I’ve been in a relationship with a woman I met and at one point felt absolutely sure she was the woman of my dreams, meant to be forever, etc. It’s been four years…

I’m not overly needy, and she’s very giving. Generous.

But there’s an area in our life that I find lacking; something to do with the love language stuff. I find that I need words of affirmation, and I’ve made it plainly clear to her. Yet to this day I have no nickname, no noun that is reserved just for me, she doesn’t even call me by my name. She usually starts a conversation with, “So…” “Hey,…” “Um…” She does it even when her kids are home and I know she’s capable because of how she speaks to her 6 year old. But too often she starts talking when there’s more than one of us in the room and I never know who she’s talking to until she says, “Are you ignoring me?” She uses terms of endearment more with our dogs than with me, but she claims to love me… Not to be too crass but I swear she loves my member more than me! She’ll often text me while I’m at work saying she misses (I won’t say it here but…); she’s actually given my member a nickname and speaks fondly of that part of my body and yet I still feel like I don’t matter as much.

Does this make any sense?!

She claims that her upbringing didn’t include this, but she also claims I’m the best thing that’s ever happened but in our day to day lives she still leaves me feeling like an outsider. No tenderness, no terms of endearment, no close physical contact unless it’s because she wants to be intimate. Like I’m only there to fill her needs. It’s frustrating. I want conversation, I want intimacy in more areas than one and she just isn’t making herself available.

To drive the point a bit further, one of my parents has been struggling specifically these last couple of years with declining health. It seemed we would lose them at one point this year… SO on the day I got the news, she was aware and yet gave me two full days of the silent treatment because I didn’t say hello when she got home. She fully knew what was going on and it wasn’t until I questioned whether she cared for me at all and what I and my parent were going through that she “apologized”.

I just don’t know anymore.

It’s been ongoing for more than a year and I don’t want another failed relationship but I really don’t know what else to do. Any advice? Or maybe I just needed a place to vent.