Dear MonaD:

First, my current understanding, then my suggestions:

You are working and studying in India, which is stressful, but you don’t have any relationship there that will lower that stress and allow you to rest and recover from one day to the next: “my relationship with my family is struggling as well. They are not very affectionate and loving towards me and this combined with stress of working+ university 7 days means that I have no time to rest and recover”-

– your long distance communication with this man was your rest and recovery.  When you expressed to him that you need only a few minutes per day of his time while he is with his family, he “requested that we take a break”- the exact opposite of what you needed and wanted: you wanted more time with him and he offered none.

He told you that “he doesn’t have the emotional energy, time or cellular reliability” for you, and that he wanted a break so that “he doesn’t have to deal with the obligations of being in a relationship”.

While you need him so much, to share with him what is happening in your life, how you feel, frustrations included, he “chooses to not open up to (you) about what is happening and his frustrations and instead, go at it alone”.

As a result of these recent developments, you feel “very rejected, hurt and sad… colder towards him.. wary of him and of opening up towards him.. my trust in him has broken a bit.. wanting to hurt him just as much as he has hurt me”.

The reason he meant/ means so much to you is not because the two of you are actually dating, spending time together alone, with friends, hiking in nature etc., nor is it because he supports you financially or that you expect him to do so, and it is not that the two of you have any plans in the near future to date or live together. All that you ever wanted from him so far was his time and attention long distance.

On paper, his position is understandable- his family is in financial distress and he is doing all he can do to save them from financial loss. Cellular connectivity is poor, understandable. He is scheduled to be back  in the U.S this spring so his stay there will not be forever. On paper this is understandable, but not in the context of your relationship with him because all that you had with him was that long distance daily communication and he took most of it away from you, and then expressed his motivation to take it all away from you.

It will take years of hard work for the two of you to finally live together, to no longer be long-distance, but why put all that work, for what? The motivation to endure all the time and work required to be together was that there was something very special between the two of you. But isn’t that something-special gone now?

The first thing you wrote about this relationship, second sentence in your original post is: “Our communication is generally very open and regular and we understand each other quite well”, and sentence before last in your most recent post is “communication is really all we have to maintain a relationship”-

– take away that communication, what is left?

– in every relationship there are times when communication breaks and then restores, but when communication is all you have with a man, then it shouldn’t take days to restore it, it should be restored the same day, I figure.

It just occurred to me that I don’t understand this sentence: “he requested that we take a break”, and can’t suggest anything until I understand it:

– did he request a temporary or a permanent break?

– is it that you didn’t honor his request and therefore the two of you are not on a break?

anita