Hi there,

I’m 25 yo and have been with this one girl since I was 18. She was my first serious girlfriend, first sexual partner (and so was I for her) and a true love. We have made a lot of serious decisions together – moving to another country, getting an aparment, a car, getting engaged and planning a family – it really felt more like a marriage than just a relationship. Now I’m lying alone in our bed, crying and washing down sleeping pills with wine. Why?

We were happy together for a long time. In the eyes of our friends we were a perfect relationship, never to be broken. Of course we had our ups and downs but always came through as a couple. A very serious one happened about 2 years ago – things clearly weren’t right and I had a very good reason to accuse her of cheating. She swore she didn’t and since I hopelessly love and trust her, I decided to believe and let this one go. During that time she said she wanted to break up, there was a lot of tears, emotions, aggression on my side (NOT towards her of course!). We agreed to “take a break” and still live together etc. Boy, was it HARD for me. Until now worst 3 months of my life. And I KNEW we were getting back together at some point, I just knew it and that keept me on a reasonably good shape (at least outside of my bedroom). I even started working out more, eat healthly, picked up an old hobby – to be a better man for when the day comes and we could continue as a couple. And we did get back together. We moved out, got a new apartment in which we put a lot of hard work and money to make it just perfect, bought our first car. We were happy and the world seemed beatiful again. Up until now. Some time ago I noticed something is not right. We both were somewhat depressed, as we faced more and more stress of everyday life – be it bills, work, her college, families, me being uncertain about my future (career wise). The problem is, none of us made the first step to offer some kind of help to fix all of this. Rather than that we started getting passive-aggresive towards each other. She started going out more by herself, sometimes not coming back for the night, in return I would just be mean and cold towards her. It wasn’t like that all the time though, we had nice moments recently.. Few days ago it all just went too far and she let me know she isn’t happy and wants to break up for good. She wants me to move out and “focus on my happiness” so she can do the same. The thing is, I know she started getting closer with a guy from her college, I was sure just as friends – as it wasn’t a secret, she would mention him from time to time, she introduced him to myself etc. I’m worried now that before I know it, she will jump into a rebound relationship with him and that’s something I wouldn’t be able to cope with. As I mentioned before, we were our first lovers, had this intimacy only for ourselves and that’s something that made this relationship special. I don’t know what to do, I’m feeling severely depressed, my friends worry about me even though they don’t know what’s going on – and I don’t want them to – I come across as strong, independent person and I don’t want to get all sad and weepy in front of them. I avoid meeting them and if I do, I put on a mask and pretend I have a lot on my mind and it’s mostly work. I really don’t know how long I can continue like that. This time I don’t have the hope that we would get back together one day… She clearly aaid she wants me to move out, and believe me, in our living situation, this is really serious… How do I cope? Yes, I wasn’t very happy in the last few weeks of our relationship but I know we could fix this, as the relationship itself wasn’t the problem. The way she put it, my personality was the biggest problem so I started blaming myself. I was never very open and pretty bad at showing emotions, she did make me a better man, apparently not good enough to keep it going…

So here I am, sad and lonely and hopeless – I know for a fact that even if I do move on, I will have a hard time finding a new partner, for many reasons, so there’s fear of being forever alone, after knowing what it’s like to have somebody who loves you, that adds up to my depression. Looking bad I can’t focus on the bad bits, I only see what made me happy and what I miss. And since we spent our whole adult lifes together, literally everything reminds me of her. I’m sorry if this post is very chaotic, I can’t really concetrate. I don’t know what responses I expect, I don’t think there’s a combination of words that would make me feel better, but please, by all means, try and help as I honestly have no will to live without her…