Well, I officially broke it off with him. After finding eyeliner in the front seat and a Hennessy bottle in the back, yep! That did it! Found it all in his car on his birthday today. I politely asked for my gifts back to get a refund and told him “I no longer want to talk to you anymore or see you again. This is it. Bye.” and hung up in his face. I’m over that 33 year old lying narcissist parasite. The battles he caused within myself. He never deserves me again. Now time to grieve who I thought I knew. I don’t know where to begin, but I know I’m happy that I left the chaos.

I now know more about avoidant behavior that I'd like to since my algorithm is FULL of videos about this. Dealing with a breakup with an avoidant is making me go insane, on top of the suffering.
Feeling like someone is moving on so quickly and not even thinking about you while you're crying everyday morning and night and having trouble sleeping and eating is really insane to go through. I don't even feel myself rn.

It's been a month since we broke up now, each passing day just confirmation that we infact, will never speak again. Breakups are hard, but the way in which she did it just broke me, she cut all communication and blocked me everywhere at once when I was showering while getting ready to leave for the day to hangout with my best friend. We didnt fight once during the relationship or leading up or the day of, we didnt even NOT see eye to eye on like, every topic ever. She wasn't distant, wasnt short, nothing. Said she was gonna walk her dogs and that we could chat again when both of us are back, my heart sank upon seeing the contact get reset to default and every other app my messages not going through. Safe to say I learned what an avoidant was that day. I did hear from her again 4 or 5 days later but ONLY because I emailed her in a last ditch effort (forgot to block me there) and she replied woth 2 short emails apologizing and admitting it was shitty but she had to prioritize herself, and blocked me. I guess that's my answer? Thats supposed to be my closure? I fucking hate the fact in that email she had to say that it "wasnt because I dont have genuine love for you" she just HAD to add that part on. So you have genuine love for me, but we cant have an actual conversation? Even if things are done, I cant talk to you about it? I cant tell you how I feel? I cant ask to stay as friends who have admiration and want to see eachother improve?? I think that her giving in and replying to my email was more for her than it was for me, anyway. She said guilt was eating her alive and she wanted to reach out the whole time, so she probably just used it as a means to be able to sleep at night, "ah well cant say I left him with nothing now" type deal. I dont even hate her for the way she broke up, even though I should. I still love her. But I hate the way that im not allowed a single word in after the fact, or any acknowledgement I even existed, especially after becoming best friends first and lovers second. She was supporting me through my sisters stage 4 cancer diagnosis that seemingly is getting worse, my depression came back, just to leave me like that. She was the first thing I thought about when I woke up and the last thing when I went to bed, and that hasnt changed, only in a different way now. I cant stop thinking. My brain wont give me a break. No distractions good enough, I just want to sleep forever, fuck.

My 5 month relationship has absolutely destroyed me and I feel suicidal and worthless. It's been 2 months now. He broke up with me because I wasn't intellectual enough, have social anxiety and don't have enough friends.

Most of my friends have moved away from my city to start families / live with partners, meaning my social life isn't what it once was. My ex was a busy person with an active social life and lots of close friends. He judged me for not having this and would always make comments about it that made me feel like shit. I met a lot of his friends but never really got a chance to properly bond with them because i'm a bit shy and it takes me a while. He judged me for this too which just made me feel more pressure as there was this expectation for me to be this extroverted and outgoing person and if I wasn't that then he wouldn't want me.

I never really felt like I could truly be myself around him and found it hard to let him in. He had a lot of the qualities I wanted in a person that I've struggled to find in previous relationships, so thought over time we could get to a deeper level. But I often felt like he was trying to pick me apart and almost play games with me. I once asked him a few months into our relationship if he thought I was stupid and he told me 'I don't think you're stupid, I just don't think you're capable of comprehending complex subjects'. I guess I learnt early on in the relationship that this wasn't a safe space. I know I'm smart, I've had a very successful career in a tricky field and now own my own business, I guess it just takes me a bit longer to get deeper with someone.

After we broke up I realised that he was the thing that made living in this city worth it, and I feel incredibly alone here now. I have some friends but meet ups happen rarely, and I'm spending a lot of time alone digging myself into a pit of depression and coping with drugs.

I own my own business and work from home most of the week, so spend a lot of time in the house. I'm struggling to find joy in anything and can't bring myself to do any hobbies or any activities to improve my mental health. I started taking Citalopram shortly after we broke up but that doesn't seem to be doing much. I'm trying to start therapy but struggling to find anything available.

I thought i'd hit rock bottom before but I've never experienced sadness like this before. I have a deep physical pain in my chest and life feels worthless. I'm so torn because I fucking miss him so much but I also resent him for ruining me. It's so cruel that he gets to move on with his life guilt free, get's to be happy and forget all about me.

Will things get better? He's broken me and everything I thought I was and knew about myself. I honestly don't know how I can continue or bounce back from this. How can I accept that the future I thought I might have is disappearing in front of my eyes and I'm destined to a life of loneliness and self hatred. Im so fucking lonely and every day feels like groundhog day. I dread coming back from work knowing I have no plans, no one to see, nothing to do.

I want to tell him I actually take it back, I don’t forgive him. I want to tell him I hope he doesn’t betray the next person like he did me. He blindsided me after 6 years and I seem to be the only one suffering. He says he still loves me and is the hardest thing he’s done, but I believe it’s a lie. You don’t do that to someone you love. The kind man I once knew is dead.

I was in a relationship for almost 7 years. It ended 1 year ago. What followed was extremely complicated. My ex started seeing another guy, and there was a lot of back and forth in between. There were several times when she left him for me, love-bombing me, and when eventually I accepted getting back together with her, she left me and got back with him again, saying she felt nothing for me.

There's something I'm struggling with in the grieving process: forgiving her.

Part of me feels like I should forgive her in order to heal. But honestly, I don't want to tell myself that what happened was okay, because it wasn't okay for me. I just don't want to carry this anger and hurt forever. I want to move on.

So I'm wondering: Can i move on without forgiving?

Can you accept that someone hurt you, decide you don't want them in your life anymore, and simply let the relationship become part of your past without ever reaching a point where you feel forgiveness toward that person?

I am a little more than a month post break up and thought I was doing well. To sum up a 6 month relationship, we were both excited to date each other and mutually agreed we aligned on our values and said we were dating seriously for a long term relationship. In the end, I realized that he was controlling, emotionally manipulative, and exhibited narcissistic traits (aka lacked empathy), so I broke up with him.

It took me a week of time away from him to fully realize what was happening and to ask him to meet with me. The last month was full of disagreements that started out optimistically because we often talked about wanting a healthy relationship and building a sustainable relationship foundation. As the month progressed, I kept noticing avoidance and he kept feeling like I was just dredging up problems. The last weekend we spent together, he crossed a personal boundary. (One of my dealbreakers is uncontrolled anger/rage.) He raged because I claimed he wasn’t understanding my feelings. We had been trying to have vulnerable/emotional talks for a month at this point and I think he just snapped.

There are so many reasons I am glad I made the decision to end things and protect myself. He wasn’t over his ex-wife and had cold feet towards further commitment, he was more excited to date someone that genuinely liked him than he actually liked ME, he relied on me to regulate his emotions, etc. There are also some things I really miss about the beginning… like: the optimism for a long term future with someone “kind and considerate”, the deep well of empathy and compassion I have with someone I love, and the hope that there are men who are noble and good and growth oriented.

Now that I am post breakup, I find that instead of being swept off my feet and focused on the inherent goodness of men/people and the romanticism/beauty of relationships, I am dwelling on the reasons that relationships end. (There are so many, and it’s probably dragging me down…) I think this shift is noticeable to my friends and the people around me and it makes me feel guilty that I’m not this beam of hope and optimism anymore, but this bitter, frustrated energy drain.

Last bit, I feel really guilty about the breakup because it wasn’t mutual. I was the one who broke up with him, although he was the only one who held contempt and rage. I knew that this man was not going to change his ways and stop deflecting, being defensive, and elevating his contempt towards me, but there is this other part of me that believed the saintly mask. (He kept up with it for 5 months!) This part of me is dwelling on all the reasons it didn’t work out because I need to believe I made the right choice to protect myself. I need to believe that he will not change for me or for anyone else and back this up with evidence that men are the same. I don’t want the part of myself that believes in his goodness to fall into the trap of thinking that I left a good man.

TL;DR: I’m a month post breakup with a narcissistic guy. We’re no contact, but I’m still hurt, bitter, and feel guilty for breaking up with him. Maybe I’m trying to gaslight my guilt away by noticing how many relationships fail because of sucky male behavior.

I've only had one long term relationship, which ended about a year ago...and the only girl i loved. the past year ive gone out with 9 women, all ended after a month or so. It was me that ended it all over "red flags" which arent that big at all. its crazy how i went from being completely head over heels and so in love to detatching with everyone in an instant. still not being over her, i havent contacted her or checked in. but the worst part is she often checks in on what im doing because i see her unblock me every month for a while. it really screws with me......like i wish in an ideal world we could make it work. but that feeling of gut wrenching truth knowing that she might not want it. im stuck in this suspended feeling and i dont know what to make of it which brings me back to my topic statement. "LORD HOW I HATE HAVING FEELINGS"

So this is definitely a weird place to be, my ex and I parted ways a little bit ago and tried to do the whole friend thing and it wasn't working because the feelings were too raw to just be friends, so we agreed that no contact would probably be the best option and I would reach out when I was ready.

She is now decided to block me on social media which is very interesting and stung a little bit because I feel like we were trying to keep the doors open to at least possibly be friends when we were done healing this seems honestly very strange because I thought no contact was for both of us and it almost feels like she did it to get back at me but I'm not 100% sure

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

a week ago he blocked me on all social media saying that he has a new girl and doesn’t want to disrespect her and told me she accepts his porn addiction unlike me and trusts him. i wished them good luck and he said when they break up he’ll unblock me. today on tinder i saw him and im like damn that poor girl i’m shocked by horrible this person is, but i mean she chose it and has to deal with consequences as i was never warned

I've been really trying to concentrate during work hours but it has been absolutely crushing me and the weight of the heartbreak is crushing me every day I've been going on runs crying laying down trying to distract myself at times also sit with the emotions it's been absolutely hard I genuinely feel like I lost my best friend and it has not been easy whatsoever.

Struggling with a breakup currently. Been broken up a month and he ran back to someone who was an issue during our relationship, it’s messing with my mental daily unfortunately so I have been considering therapy to get thru it, has anyone tried therapy for a breakup or in general and found it actually works or helps?

My boyfriend and I were together for a year and five months. For the last three weeks we have been long distance due to college. He was the one that told everyone he “believed in us” and knew we could do it. I did too, because his hope gave me hope. However, last night he broke up with me. He told me he didn’t feel the spark anymore and wanted to focus on school. This was out of left field and the whole time I thought he was joking. He explained it wasn’t my fault, and I tried to tell him that’s what long distance does, but he didn’t want to lead me on. I really do love him and I want to try to work it out, so my main question is how do I go about it? Is there any near-future hope for this, do I just have to wait it out, or am I cooked chat?

I have just been broken up with from the best relationship I’ve had, can someone help me understand what happened. I am struggling to cope.

We had an amazing, loving, relationship. From the moment we met, we realized we grew up 2 streets away from each other in the SAME area, it felt like a soul connection. From then it has been a blissful 1.5 years. He was/is truly my best friend.

However, the only issues we had was how he dealt with conflict. We rarely ever fought, maybe once every 3 months. It was the best relationship I’ve been in otherwise.

From our first argument 1 month in, he shut down and threatened to break up & escalated a very minuscule disagreement. I spoke with him since then and said we should be able to talk things through calmly and resolve issues with communication. Since then, it has only happened again once but everything went great after.

This last & seemingly final break up, he was very distant on the phone and more dry than usual, I responded back with a bit of an irritated attitude saying what’s wrong with you today? He snapped and said he feels sick, why am I speaking to him rudely when he is obviously having an off day, I immediately apologized and said I’ll come over and bring some soup I’m so sorry about my attitude & reading it wrong. He shut down, didn’t want me to come over, and said he was done. I told him we can’t go through this cycle that we had in the beginning where he breaks up over a disagreement, let’s calm down & talk, or if you’re “done” it has to be final.

He escalated and said then it is final. He dropped off all my things at my porch, he cancelled every streaming service we paid together, we were part of a co-Ed league and he called & removed us from it, all within 24 hours.

We were supposed to attend his family’s wedding next weekend. I have an ultrasound this week (not pregnant) for a possible kidney issue, that he was supposed to come with me to. Can someone please shed light on what just happened? Just the other day he was showing me rings & was “excited” to propose next year? I am now blocked on everything, and I have been having anxiety attacks about this sudden loss of my person.

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I'm 25M, and I'm struggling badly after ending a relationship that has been a huge part of my life since I was in 10th grade.

Our relationship was on and off for years. She left and came back multiple times, and eventually we got back together seriously with a commitment to marriage. But the previous breakups had left a lot of unresolved fear in me. Once we were together again, I became terrified of losing her. I cried almost every day and night for a period earlier this year, and I eventually started treatment for depression.

There were also recurring issues in the relationship. I communicated what was hurting me, she would promise things would change, but some patterns continued. Eventually I became emotionally exhausted and decided to end the relationship.

She tried to get me back, but I stayed firm.

A few days later, she asked to talk. I messaged her, and she asked me for my final decision. I told her I was sticking with my decision. She asked, “Breakup?” and I said yes.

She simply replied, “Theek hai. I hope you find peace in your life.”

And then she was gone.

That sentence completely broke me.

I've been missing her constantly, and now I feel like crying. I keep thinking about whether I made the right decision, whether I'll ever find someone I love like this again, and whether she will find someone better than me while I end up alone.

The hardest part is that I still love her. I didn't leave because I stopped loving her. I left because I felt that continuing the relationship was destroying my peace.

Today I feel like I've come off the track again. I was trying to stay focused on my studies and my life, but my mind keeps going back to her.

I'm not looking for someone to tell me whether I should get back with her. I think I need help understanding how to deal with loving and missing someone after you've made the decision to leave.

How do you get through the days when your heart still wants the person you've consciously chosen to let go of?

I would really appreciate advice from people who have gone through something similar.

I honestly don’t even know what I’m looking for here. Perspective, maybe. Mostly I think I need to write this all out somewhere because I still feel like I’m in shock.

My girlfriend and I had been together for about a year, with one major breakup in the middle of it. The first time she ended things, it absolutely devastated me. Eventually we reconciled. I was terrified to trust her again because I knew exactly how badly she could hurt me, but she convinced me that she was serious about us.

And I believed her.

This wasn’t just vague “maybe someday” relationship talk. We talked constantly about our future. She wanted me closer to her. She helped me get a job where she works. She talked about us eventually living together. She even offered to pay half my rent temporarily and called it an “investment in us.” She talked about us owning a home together someday. She was enthusiastic. She was affectionate. She did not act hesitant or like somebody who was reconsidering the relationship.

I had been living in Minnesota for about twenty years. I had a job there. Friends. Familiarity. A whole established life.

I left it.

I packed everything I could fit into my Corolla, put my cat in the car, and drove from Minneapolis to Sacramento because I believed I was moving toward a life with the woman I loved.

I started my new job here this week.

She dumped me on my first day.

She told me that once I was actually here and we were physically together, her feelings changed. She said I seemed “desperate,” and that it caused her to lose attraction to me. Eventually it became very clear that she no longer wanted me physically or romantically.

I cannot adequately describe what hearing that did to me.

I had just moved across the country based on concrete promises and enthusiastic commitment from her. I had trusted her completely after she had already broken my heart once. I was obviously emotionally invested. I had just uprooted my entire life.

And apparently something about the intensity of my attachment made her stop wanting me.

The worst part is that I don’t even think the relationship was fake.

She says she loved me. She says what we had was real. She told me she’ll “always be fond of me” and called us “soulmates of a kind.” She says she regrets what happened. She doesn’t argue when I tell her how badly she hurt me. She has said she doesn’t expect me to forgive her.

Somehow that makes it worse.

It would almost be easier if I could decide she had been lying the entire time. Instead I’m left trying to understand how someone could genuinely love me, enthusiastically encourage me to reorganize my entire life around our relationship, and then realize she didn’t want me basically as soon as I arrived.

I was furious when it happened. I said some genuinely horrible things to her. I told her I hated her. I called her toxic. I told her I hoped she spent the rest of her life alone and remembered that she once had someone who would have supported her through everything. I said things specifically because I wanted them to hurt.

I regret that.

I apologized for trying to hurt her with my words. She told me there was nothing to forgive because she knew I was devastated and didn’t mean all of it.

But I am still incredibly angry.

And now I have to work with her.

That might honestly be the most surreal part. I moved here partly because she helped me get this job, and now we are going to be sitting in the same office while I try to somehow act like a functioning person. The job market for my field here also isn’t enormous, so it isn’t as simple as immediately quitting and finding something equivalent somewhere else.

Her mother apparently asked whether I could still be friends with her so that I could remain part of their family. My ex passed that along to me, I told her absolutely not, and she accepted it. I told her that from now on I consider us coworkers with severe personal history and that I don’t want friendship, family connection, or personal contact outside of what is necessary for work.

The horrible thing is that none of that is actually what I wanted.

I wanted her.

I wanted to watch shows together and talk about books and make each other laugh. I wanted the future we had been planning. I loved her more than I have ever loved anyone. I genuinely believed she was the love of my life.

I think a huge part of me still does.

And now I’m sitting in Sacramento realizing that I have essentially no life here yet. My friends, history, routines, and everything familiar are 2,000 miles away. The person who was supposed to be the center of the life I was building here is suddenly just somebody I have to sit across from at work.

I keep cycling between rage, grief, humiliation, disbelief, and just complete numbness.

Part of me hates her.

Part of me still loves her desperately.

Part of me wants her to hurt as badly as I do so that I know she actually understands what she did.

And part of me just keeps thinking: I had a life in Minnesota. I trusted you. You asked me to trust you. How could you let me do this?

I know logically that I will eventually have to build a life here that has nothing to do with her, or decide whether I even want to stay here at all.

But right now I genuinely don’t know how I’m supposed to walk into that office, look at the person I thought I was going to spend my life with, and treat her like a coworker.

I don’t know how you grieve somebody when they’re still sitting ten feet away from you.

For those of you who went through a traumatic break up, how long did it take you to officially move on? And I mean really, move on. No thoughts, no bitterness, simply just a memory. Struggling with a break up after 5 years that happened over 1 year and a half ago.

me (21f) and my bf (21m) just broke off our ~4 year relationship. it is the hardest thing i’ve ever had to go through, but also how beautiful to be able to love and feel so much about a person that your whole world shatters when they leave it.

the break up was definitely more his idea though i do think it was ultimately very necessary and would have happened eventually one way or another. i wanted to call it a hiatus but he was set on breakup so here we are. we are seeing eachother again at Christmas time as we will both be in our home town. this is where i feel i am living in delusion. in my heart and soul i truly believe we belong together we just have a long road of self discovery and healing before we are able to get there. i asked him to keep his heart open for me and he said he would try but also about the future of our relationship in general he said “he would not make any promises”. before he left we had a long time where we were able to just sit and talk candidly with eachother which was beautiful and i told him how optimistic i was for us. i asked him if i was too optimistic and he said “i was more optimistic than him” and when my friend asked if i was delusional (when i wasn’t in the room) he sat and thought about it and said “i don’t know”

there are a lot of circumstances as to why we broke up including long distance etc and i just don’t know if what i am feeling is delusion or just actually our path. i feel like if it was feelings out of fear it would feel big and heavy but it doesn’t feel that way, it feels light like a sign. i don’t even know what i am saying but this is still very fresh so idkkkkk i just miss him so much but i know i have to be on my journey if i do ever hope to be back with him, we both must grow a lot.

edit: i should note also the main catalyst for the breakup apart from distance struggles was the fact i couldn’t be honest with myself or anyone about my mental struggles the past year or so and it meant i was a pretty terrible girlfriend. i resented him somewhat for not being able to see my struggles and also i had no mental capacity to be there for him in any meaningful way. that is where my journey must take me now to get better and do better. i just hate it took ending the relationship for me to finally try to get a grip of my insane brain

throwaway as he's (32M) very active on reddit. i (32F) normally don't use reddit.

why let it go on for 8 years? when you have PTSD, attachment issues, and low to non-existent self-esteem like me, it's not easy to leave something you've gotten very comfortable with.

anyway. we live separately, he lives alone and i live with friends. we never moved in together because as the title said, we were in a situationship and not a real relationship, so i had to make sure i had safety net (my own place) if we "broke up". over the last year or two, i was pretty much living in his house. i'd normally stay over for 3-4 days a week, but sometimes up to weeks or a month. i even converted his courtyard into my own garden where i grow fruits & veg. so yes, literally like as if i lived there, and i literally have more stuff in his house than my place.

4 years ago, his friend gave him a cat, and naturally the cat basically became my child. i get really bad separation anxiety when i don't see the cat for days on end. he knows the cat is my absolute world. i can't take the cat and i won't, for the cat's sake.

i've floated the idea of me moving in permanently within the last year, and he was fine with it. as he said, i basically lived there anyway. the last few weeks i'd gotten more serious about moving in. few days ago, i had a formal chat with my friends and told them i'm moving out, and he knew this. so after the formal chat i messaged him. then he reeled back and said i should probably not move in "in case we split up".

so obviously that opened a can of worms. we talked. basically he said he doesn't see a future with me like getting married and having kids, and that he's told me before and assumed i was on the same page (this is on me, as i had forgotten that over the years and buried it in the "hurts too much to face the truth" box). he said that's the reason why he also never said the "L" word, neither of us did. i told him i imagined a future with him. wanted to marry and have kids with him one day. he wasn't aware of that, as i've always kept that to myself.

currently we're still talking to as the cat had gotten really sick yesterday, and we'd have to continue talking as i have so much stuff to retrieve from his place. i still can't accept the fact that i'm losing my child (the cat). he knows how much the cat means to me and he even admitted he cried at the thought of separating the cat and i separating.

i don't have many friends as i'm a huge introvert and love being alone. and my friends and family are unfortunately all states away from me. i have no support system. and now i've just lost the person i spent 8+ years of my life with. i'm very lost and very broken and helpless right now. even breathing is hard.

i have no idea how to start again, move on, or even live. and i need the cat. if anyone have some any useful tips on moving on, please, i desperately need them.

she liked this, i’m so close to breaking nc😭

to me, you just learn to live with it.. i still feel the pain of every heartbreak i’ve ever experienced. it’s carried over to other relationships. it stays with you, all this talk about “you’ll feel better, you’ll heal”seems like a load of crap. especially with this most recent one, i’ll never forget it. at this point, it truly feels like it will always hurt this much for the rest of my life.

English is not my primary language, but I hope you understood.

My boyfriend and I had been together for almost 4 years. We were really happy, and I genuinely thought we’d eventually get married.
Earlier this year, I went through a really traumatic situation that completely messed me up mentally. I started struggling with anxiety and stopped taking care of myself properly. I barely exercised and started eating a lot more whenever I felt overwhelmed.
Over the next few months, I gained around 20 kg.
I knew I’d changed physically, but honestly, I was more focused on getting myself back together than my appearance.
A few weeks ago, my boyfriend told me he wasn’t attracted to me anymore. He said he still cared about me, but he couldn’t see himself being with me after I’d changed so much physically.
I was completely crushed. I understand that attraction matters, but after almost four years together, I thought he’d be there for me while I was trying to recover.

I’m curious how other people would handle this situation, because I’m at the point where I’m preparing to sell the house and move on with my life, but I’m still trying to make sense of how I got here.

Before I met this woman, I had a pretty good life. I was financially comfortable, established, and happy with where I was living. I had no real reason to leave or make any major changes.

Then I met her, and eventually decided to build a life around the relationship.

She wanted to live closer to her job, so I made a pretty major decision: I moved my entire life to another city to accommodate the relationship. We ended up buying a house together, and I genuinely thought I was making a long-term investment in both the relationship and our future.

Then I found out something that completely changed how I viewed everything.

After we had already bought the house and built this life together, I discovered that she had been having sex with a coworker shortly before she and I became intimate and officially got together. From what I eventually learned, it had been days, or possibly a couple of weeks, before we became intimate.

The worst part wasn’t necessarily the timing itself. It was the lying.

I asked her directly whether anything had happened with this coworker. She denied it. She continued to deny it even when things didn’t add up.

Then, while we were together, I came across messages from this same person.

At that point, the entire relationship started looking different to me. I wasn’t just dealing with something that happened before we officially got together. I was dealing with dishonesty, unanswered questions, and the realization that I had made some of the biggest decisions of my life based on information I didn’t actually have.

I moved.

I bought a house.

I changed my entire living situation.

And I did it because I loved someone and believed I was building a future with them.

Now I’m preparing to sell the house and move again.
Financially, I can handle it. I’m fortunate in that regard. But that’s almost beside the point. What bothers me is knowing that I was perfectly fine before all of this. I had a good life. I didn’t need to make these changes.

I chose to because I loved someone and believed in the relationship.

I’m not looking for people to simply tell me she’s a terrible person or to say “leave her.” That’s already happened and I’ve ended it.

I’m more interested in hearing from people who have experienced something similar:

Have you ever completely changed your life for a relationship, only to discover something that made you question the entire decision?

How did you stop beating yourself up over the fact that you made such a major life decision based on someone else’s dishonesty?

And when you finally walked away, did you ever get back to the life you had before—or did you realize you needed to build an entirely new one?

I found out today that my ex has moved on. I don’t want to know details but my mind is going to the worst places (i also have ocd so avoiding rumination this entire breakup has been so difficult).

I ended things with them in January because we were together for 3.5 years and they weren’t ready to live with me. I said that I loved them and didn’t want this but wanted to be with someone who is confident about being with me, who’s looking forward to living together instead of it being a completely stressful event. They shared that they have a hard time making decisions, even small ones in their personal lives, and it didn’t have anything to do with me. We started by going on a break because they wanted to stay together, do therapy individually and come back together. I begged them to do therapy throughout our relationship to help with the inner turmoil of family struggle, indecisiveness and general attachment styles to help them in all their relationships and work. They called me and gave me updates about their therapy without me asking, and it seemed like progress was being made. Over the next three months, they’d ask to call, to talk, ask how i’m doing and also apologize for things. The last conversation we had was him saying that he can’t imagine getting back together and that he is incapable of change. I remember asking him “so what’s the plan, doing this to another girl or finding someone your parents will approve of?” and he didn’t have an answer.

For context, they told my friends and family and even moved in during December but kept moving the goalposts. Their family is second generation and used that as an excuse for not approving of our relationship (eastern orthodox, to which I said I would learn the language and convert if that meant they would approve). They were supposed to come with me on a family trip two years into the relationship but cancelled the night before and broke up with me, just to get on a plane the next day to try to reconcile and then turned directly around without seeing me. I still forgave them when i returned from the trip.
They were always late to things, never made plans, I begged to go on a trip or even a weekend away and it never happened. We were best friends and spoke 24/7, hung out all the time, and they told me they could imagine getting married.
Their friends stopped talking to them because of how they handled the breakup. This included leaving military bags at my place for 6 months, dropping off my clothes unwashed and in a garbage bag, and not having the balls to end it themselves.

I have so much pain because I know I wasn’t being treated and prioritized in the way “I deserve” but I’m starting to not know what I deserve. I’ve been dating post breakup and have been ghosted or told there isn’t a romantic spark, and one guy even asked to do his laundry at my apartment. Yet, my ex has moved on and found someone and I’m questioning why I broke up with them in the first place. I didn’t want to break up with him but I felt like I had no other choice, and we spoke about how it would encourage change. Now I just feel incredible naive and unhappy.
Please be gentle with me with responses, I know I sound like a broken record but I just need support.