Dear all,

I would very much appreciate some advice on my relationship that is absolutely confounding me and my friends. I have been with my partner for three years, we have an extremely strong foundation, we went to university together (though he graduated before me and has since been working), have travelled the world, have lived together and have endured a number of tough times including very long distance for a year, and the death of his father.

I recently returned from a placement abroad and after returning we lived together over the summer before I went back to university. He told me in the summer (and has throughout the length of our three year relationship) that he wants me and wants to grow old with me. I felt pretty confident about our status, especially as he is close with my family and we both attended my parents wedding in the summer as a couple.

Everything came to a head in September when we had a disagreement. Out of nowhere he thought about the worst possible situations for the future of our relationship overnight and in the morning woke up and decided that he wanted to end it. He has no history of emotions or unhappiness to back this up and can only claim that during that one night he had a “gut feeling” things could go bad in the future. He also argued the umbrella term of “personality clash” but I don’t see how two people who have loved each other for 3 years and have lived together at points could go so far as to have a personality clash.

Because we were so close and the decision was so unexpected, I reacted very emotionally. He came to see me the day after and after me telling him that there is no way of predicting the future he agreed to continue talking and see how it goes (he did not want to cut conversation even if I had agreed to the break up).

I have since been very reflective about my time abroad, throughout I found it hard to cope being away and will admit to often lashing out due to my own negativity. Because of this I reassessed my behaviour and wrote a very sincere apology to him, laying out the current state of my feelings for him. He did not react the way I would have predicted however and said he never saw us arguing or me being grumpy as an issue, and again he mentioned the “personality clash” in passing as being the actual issue. Again he was not willing to explain what this means, or what aspects of our personality clashed, all in all he seems very unsure of his convictions.

Since I recognised my negative behaviors I have stopped doing it. We continued to see each other every other week and I have to say that the weekends we have spent have been some of the closet and most relaxed in a long while. We haven’t argued for two months and have continued to communicate how we always do everyday. In fact he has called me more just to chat everyday in the last week than he had done for ages before.

During one of the visits he took me to meet some more of his work friends and introduced me as his girlfriend, at the end of every day he still messages me to say he loves me. Also when I made a joke on the phone about job rejections and said “no one wants me” he said “that’s not true I want you”. After this I tried pulling back a bit during one conversation to see if I really should be giving him the space that he wanted from a break up but when I did this he instantly picked up on it and asked me to talk normally.

I am 1000% positive there is no one else involved, and I also recognise that he is very confused in general right now. He has recently realsied that he desperately wants a career change after hating his job for the last year and has been turning his attention to improving other aspects of his life too. I am still however very unsure of where I stand amongst this, and he is not one to ever enjoy deep conversations so when I try to raise the topic he says “I don’t want to talk about this anymore”.

It is clear he still loves me deeply, is attracted to me, wants to maintain daily contact with me and wants to continue seeing me every other week. I can sense though that whatever is behind this “personality clash” excuse is holding him back.

I also have promised to support him through this tough transition so I do not want to just cut contact, especially as at the start when we met, he liked me but I didn’t like him yet he tried so hard to win me back round. I want to give him the same courtesy and fight, especially as I am sure of my own feelings for him (I have already been through the doubt and questioning phase).

Do I just give him some time and try to somehow navigate this girlfriend-non-girlfriend status? Is it likely he is just having a life crisis and will come back? Should I force him to cut contact so he can see if he wants me?

Advice would be much appreciated because neither me nor my friends can pinpoint the reason behind his doubts and behaviour. I know that looking at how our relationship has been we will have a very happy and fulfilled future together, and I am willing to fight for that no matter what. But I also don’t know if it is true that he doesn’t share that vision or if he is confused during a stressful period in his life.