LTR people, how did you reassess your relationship when the time came?

My gf and I have been together for almost 6 years. It has far and away and without a doubt been the best relationship of my life, and we have given and received a lot of love to each other in many different ways.

There are some factors that have made it something less than a full commitment. A lot of it has been long distance. Expectations of each other, I think, are fairly relaxed. And there’s a lot of compromise (or perhaps plain old codependence). We have certainly given each other a lot but I don’t know that we push each other to be our best selves. We have different “life aesthetics” or perhaps styles that we each do more adapting to than embracing.

I think, too, part of our journey together has been a molting of sorts vis a vis the friction between the beliefs we brought with us and what we’ve learned from the other. From my point of view, this has been a good (but I couldn’t call it great) thing for me in that the result is that I’ve been shaken out of some of my dogma. I know it has been good for her as well.

I’m anticipating a personal shift in my life that’s been gestating for 15 years or so—some actualizing that will require cutting dead weight and picking up significant pace along “my” path. I know this is also more or less what is happening for her, although hers is, of course, an experience unique to mine with different dead weight and a different path. So part of our discussion will be assessing whether changes are done better together or separately.

I think for some here, this may be kind of a duh question. For me, the handicap is that I don’t shit or get off the pot in my relationships. I hang in there until they are dead. And, I don’t do a great job of navigating my “I need, I want, I don’t need, I don’t want” ship. I tend to let it go with the current. So I am kind of a novice with the actualizing concept mentioned above.

In the end, for me, I think the possible outcomes run along the lines of:
a) staying together and being kind of surprised by the degree of change she wants that aligns with change that I want,
b) staying together and accepting slower, less than ideally aligned change but not making it a dealbreaker,
c) deciding to part and looking forward to lots of positive personal change and momentum, and
d) deciding to part and continuing to fail miserably at my effort for change for the rest of my life The End.

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Have you been there and done that? What perspective can you offer?