Hi Mina,

I hope you do not mind me saying some things here – I thought of saying something as I saw you being very hard on yourself in your recent posts and I just wanted to reach out to you. If you find that what I am saying is not what you need at the moment, then please feel free to ignore my post 🙂 I am also cautious about disrupting the flow you have with Anita so my only aim is to say something to you in the hope to provide some comfort (if it does).

I have been reading your postings as I was in a similar situation as you. My ex bf also had one million and one things going on with his life and like your ex bf did, he dropped me from his life. And it hurts so much to be the one that is removed out of the one million and one things that was going on. So I hope you know you are not alone in feeling the way you do.

Having read your posts, I am in awe of how insightful you are and how open you are to see how you can improve in various ways. I think not many people are open to it and not many people accept their part to play when a relationship ends (although you seem to take on more than your share of the responsibility).

I wanted to reach out to you when you shared on your strong sense of guilt that you felt that you pushed him away as you were an “awful person and a terrible selfish girlfriend”. I do not think you are an awful person or a terrible selfish girlfriend. What I saw from your sharing is that you are a normal person who has needs to be fulfilled in a relationship and what was unfortunate is that your boyfriend was unable to meet your needs due to his other commitments. It is never selfish to have needs and naturally in a relationship, you would want your boyfriend to meet your needs. And you put his needs above your needs as he was a “God” to you and thus his needs seem more important than yours, so much so that you neglect your own needs. You tried your best to be understanding by accommodating to his schedule, not voicing out your needs to him and lowering your expectations.

However, I think it is inevitable that even though you tried to be understanding, your needs are calling out to be met and that is why there were times when you told him how you would hope for your needs to be met. I sense that you try to tolerate the distress of your needs not being met until the point that it may come out in a way that may appear to be “demanding”? It is not wrong to communicate your needs to your partner and sometimes we just need to refine the way we communicate them.

And it seems like your boyfriend’s needs were not met in the relationship too – his needs to be an overachiever , to be a good boyfriend and to meet his girlfriend’s needs. So he is responsible for the relationship not working out in the sense of not being able to meet your needs and he recognises that too. I think even though you did your best to be understanding, he could still feel that your needs are not met.

So what I see is that both of your needs are not being met in the relationship and it was just not a fit given the circumstances.  A relationship takes two hands to clap and no one is 100% responsible for it not working out in the end. So dont be so hard on yourself. You are only human and you have your needs. A relationship is not healthy when you both are not having your needs fulfilled.  Your needs are important and should be fulfilled. 

I do not doubt his love for you as my personal view is that he let you go out of love as he knows that he cannot fulfil your needs and that is why he hopes that you can live your life without him.

I was rooting for you when I saw how you fulfilled your own needs by drawing your own boundaries of not doing things you do not like (e.g drinking to socialize). And I really liked that post when you said you did things by yourself and you enjoyed it! I was so happy for you when I had the glimpse of Mina living for herself.

And I think like what Anita said, “your distress is not about him even though it appears to you that it is about him. Your distress originated and maintained in the nineteen years before you met him” and that would be worthwhile to explore.

Sometimes through relationships, that is when our deeper issues surface and it is a good opportunity to work through them. Try to turn the focus back to yourself and not look to him for answers. I think the answers lie deep within you and I hope you get to see the answers through competent psychotherapy which your university provides.

Wishing you all the best dear Mina!