Well, this is the first time I've posted on these boards for a couple of years, for exactly this reason!
And funnily enough I was kind of resistant to let myself get 'sucked into' the relationship as I could feel I was making decent progress, starting to get laid more with girls I liked. Had been seeing this girl for quite a while, she was pretty chilled out, the sex was decent etc etc.
And yeah the bargain hunter mentality must have kicked in hard, she started stumping up for plane tickets, we were travelling together having a decent time etc
To be fair I figured it wasn't a bad time to take some time out from working on my attraction and ONS game to practise developing some intimacy and dip my toes into the LTR thing - after all, after striking out badly for years there weren't really any LTRs on the cards.
I too feel like I've lost some momentum for approach and so forth but I have learned a few valuable things about myself, how I behave in and what I want from relationships, so it's all good.
I think the real problem is that she was expecting WAY too much from me; once we went official she got far too possessive but also started to depend on me for EVERYTHING, wanting to spend all her time with me, ghosting on all her friends, giving up her hobbies etc etc but then expecting me to do the same, which of course I was very much not prepared to do.
I think the worst thing is I finally ended up going on the trip Down Under I'd been planning for the last decade and with hindsight should really have ended it before I left but somehow she ended up convincing me that she wanted to come with me and as a result I had to experience all the travel and partying from the standpoint of being 'taken' and not really being able to take advantage of the various opportunities presented that I would have jumped on if I was single. But at the same time I noticed the old preselection thing happening, and that I got approached more by women who saw me with her and tried to flirt with me anyway.