I was with my boyfriend for a year and a half. 4 months of that we were living with his family and not even 2 months in our new flat when he said he wasn’t happy anymore and didn’t see a future with me. The day after the break up he said he 6wanted to try and fix things (although one thing he said sticks in my mind – do you really love me or did you like the convenience of having someone to live with so you wouldn’t be alone), I heard hardly anything over the next couple of days and when I reached out he had changed his mind again. This break up completely destroyed me and yet I’ve found that I’m blaming myself for the break down completely?

A little bit of background, we were both quite different in character. I suffer from anxiety and am quite reserved, he’s a bit of a livewire and adrenaline junkie, always getting up to certain stuff. But we had fun. For a year of our relationship we would spend the weekend out at cool places, I would really enjoy it. He would take me on holiday and I used to think wow this guy is really perfect. I wanted to commit to this guy. He’s attractive, funny, nice, gets me gifts. Anyway, an opportunity came up with a new job where I could move to the same county as him. So I did, I uprooted my life and moved everything to be with him. Everything seemed fine, he spent a lot of nights online gaming but in a national lockdown that was understandable (or in my eyes at least) I remember feeling quite lonely and sad when he did that. Wondered if it meant he didn’t want to spend time with Me. Then when we got the flat is when things started to fall apart. I got a bad online shopping addiction, and couldn’t pull myself away from my phone, in instances where we were watching the TV. We had stopped sleeping together as much, my libido had completely dropped. I also suffered with mystery pain so it hurt. Then came housework, I used to do everything apart from the cooking and despite mentioning to him a couple of times it was stressing me out and exhausting me, he only said can you please stop nagging/snapping at me it’s making me unhappy. But I felt like I was doing everything. I was out at work most days and he was working from home, so I came back to things being left and it stressed me out.

So basically, it’s been nearly 2 months since he broke up with me and I keep finding that I blame myself for pushing him away. I keep thinking what if I was really horrible to him and I’ve fogged that over? I keep feeling the urge to reach out to him and apologise for anything i did that caused him pain. I just don’t know what to do. The thought of my potential actions causing him to be unhappy eats me up. i realise now he was never ready to move in together at that stage (I was arranging all the viewings, sorted the docs, furniture etc) but i said i would get a place on my own if he wasn’t ready. He said no.

At the end of the break up and once I had moved out of the flat (he took it on his own) he said he’s sorry for everything, and asked if I was okay. I said no I’m not alright, you’ve broken my heart. He followed this with ‘I never wanted to hurt you, you will be better off in the long run.” Then told me gossip about neighbours, followed by asking me how much the council Tax was. I just felt insulted and hurt and I didn’t end up replying to anything. I just removed him off all social media. I feel bad for ignoring him but I had just told him he broke my heart and I just got that back. Just a bunch of nothing messages.

But yes any advice would be greatly appreciated. Was I really horrible? Should I reach out to him and apologise for anything I may have done to push him away? Was I a toxic person, did he have a lucky escape getting away from me?