I’m really struggling with the situation I find myself in. I was with a partner that I never married nearly a third of my life. When we broke up it took me over 5 years to fall in love again despite dating and when I did, it was a whirlwind. I wasn’t looking, none of the circumstances in our lives were conducive to a new relationship, but we had an instant, undeniable connection. We tried our best to put the brakes on and take it slow, but we were both feeling happier than we’d ever been and so in love, so plans changed. We got engaged six months later, which was a first for me. She has a daughter, who I also fell completely head over heels for and bonded with. Our families started to blend, it was the most joy and love filled time of my life.

A few months after our engagement she said she was feeling depressed. With COVID having just begun and both of us trying to work and continue school from home with a toddler this seemed completely understandable to me. I spent a week trying to find ways to cheer her up and be present with her, but had no suspicion whatsoever anything else was wrong. After that week she said she realized she wasn’t depressed, that she didn’t want to be together anymore, and very quickly and abruptly moved out. I begged her to stay, but she insisted that it wasn’t anything that went wrong with us or our relationship, just that she needed to be alone right now. There were a few things pointed to as issues or things she felt were unresolved for her from past relationships, and there are definitely things I wish I could have done differently in our relationship, but she swore there was nothing I could do or could have done to change this outcome. I didn’t get to know when my last day with her daughter would be. The grief was immeasurable and completely blindsided me. I had a physical reaction to it. This was compounded by pre existing anxieties, a global pandemic, and now having to quarantine alone in the place we picked out and moved in to together after we got engaged.

This is where things got complicated. My ex completely changed her demeanor, as if angry with me. We didn’t talk after she left, but had discussed this potentially being a ‘break’ before then and at very least remaining friends. She kept the ring. But she instantly started treating me like I was some kind of villain, as if a switch had just been flipped. The first week she was gone, I frequently reached out for the support of my best friend and bandmate as I’d always done in years past. She was the first person I went to with everything, so she knew every intimate detail. With over a decade of friendship, she’d witnessed almost all of it. For the first time that I can remember, we ended up in an argument. Essentially, I had what I can only describe as an intuition that she liked my ex fiancé and asked her to please, for my current (likely crazy) trauma brain’s sake, ‘just say you won’t date my ex’. She wouldn’t say she wouldn’t, insisted that people just change their minds, and that I wasn’t being fair to my ex by not accepting that. She is still currently living with her long term girlfriend, although they have been ‘broken up’ or in an open relationship for some time now. I later apologized and felt so guilty and frankly crazy for ever even thinking my friend would do such a thing.

Two and a half months after my ex moved out and after having barely talked to either of them, my friend text me and bluntly stated that it wasn’t to hurt me and that she knew I wasn’t going to like it but she was going out with my ex. She said she waited to message her until after she moved out, although I’d given her my ex’s number while we were still together so she could help her with a school assignment, so they had been talking before my ex moved out. My friend opened up to my ex while we were still together, but I didn’t think anything of it because I truly trusted them both. If anything, I was glad she had someone as easy to talk to as my ex was to open up to during some very difficult challenges in her life. I want to be clear that there is no part of me that wants them to be unhappy, or not experience love. I don’t hate them, in fact, they’re the two people I loved most in the world. My ex fiancé was the first person I have ever felt truly loved and seen by exactly as I was. I learned to be vulnerable with her in a way I’d never done before. She was kind, patient, supportive, and present. She challenged me to be better but in a way that was loving and emboldening. She took such good care of us and was a fantastic mom, which brought me so much joy to witness and to be a part of as a ‘family’ together. But I am just crushed, and responded mostly out of anger and hurt to my friend. I needed the boundary not to bear witness to any of it, so I blocked and walked away from them both. I called our third bandmate to let her know the band was breaking up, and her response was that she wouldn’t have found her current love had they not both divorced their spouses when they met, so she took their side in a way also. Although I don’t feel there need to be sides at all, I just am getting the sense that I need to walk away from it all, which is difficult to accept.

I grew up in a home that was very homophobic and came away with a lot of pre-embedded abandonment, trust, and self worth issues already. My aunt committed suicide last fall, then my fiancé left with her daughter a few months later, and then I lost my best friend and band as well, all in the midst of COVID. I feel overwhelmed by the grief of it all, and the losses are definitely triggering past traumas. I don’t want to be selfish, I don’t wish them unhappiness, but I really need some help understanding how to process all of this. Especially given how the global pandemic has complicated things. I’ve been doing all I can, exercise, meditation, virtual therapy…But the physical sensation of grief feels almost unbearable right now and some days it’s all I can do just to get out of bed. I’m trying to practice compassion with myself, be patient, and just look for the next light under each door as the days go by, but sometimes it feels so hard to even breathe.

Thank you for anyone that takes the time to read and respond. I’m feeling completely swept out to sea, at the bottom of it quite frankly, and any advice or support is so appreciated.