Dodge Nitro 2.8 CRD cranking long - 1 minute and up

Hello everyone, recently I've been having issues with my beloved nitro. I'll be very nice and short about it, basically when I attempt to start it, it just keeps on cranking for about a minute, sometimes 2 minutes before starting. When it starts it works like usual, but I've restrained myself from driving it mostly out of fear of not messing something more up due to the long cranks, like burning out the starter (I've heard that's possible). I'd also like to add that I've had the car one year exactly. Now for some things that I've noticed about it:
When I'd try and crank it I'd always let the fuel pump do its thing, and I still hear it pumping for about 10-15 seconds (it's always taken thing long, I know it isn't ideal), I have also tried the turn key/off/turn/off/wait/turn etc trick, nothing happens, still cranking for a minute and more. That's about all I know about it at the moment, my dad has reported that it had a hard time shifting gears yesterday, or didnt shift gears at all but I have never experienced this so it might not be true, but if there's some correlation maybe it'll prove to be helpful that I wrote it down as well. Thank you guys for looking into this, hope you'll manage to help me out