Help with Closure

Guys, I need help. My gf left me Sept 1st. It was a 3.5 year relationship. I was never in so much love in my life, and now I have never felt so much pain in my life.

I knew it was coming throughout our last week together, and I spent that last week freaking out. We ended it over text/email because I was too scared and too angry at her to meet her in person.

She told me over text that we never had a chance to develop, and that she thought about leaving me for over a year. I was suffering from depression for the past year and a half, and there was lack of communication on my end due to my depression, but I did my best to still love her. I tried putting everything I had into her, into her family, into a future together. I spent the past year helping her with her career so that she could get a promotion. Well, she got it, and after a couple of months of barely getting to be together due to work/vacation... she left me.

I tried going no contact since then, but yesterday morning I broke down and emailed her telling her about the depression that I was trying to hide from her and everybody else, and I told her that I started seeing a counselor to help me. I've been wanting to tell everybody about it. Of course, she never replied to my email, despite reading it. I texted her later last night if she could drop my stuff off ($400 in value). She asked if I would like to meet with her in person on Saturday to get my stuff and to end things with closure.

I told her I would like that, because we ended things messy. But now I'm freaking out again. It took all of my willpower to say that I would meet with her, but I'm feeling like I do not have the strength to go through with it. She has too much power over my heart.

I cannot ever see it being possible to be "friends" with her. I've given her every inch of my heart. She was my best friend. I felt she was my soul mate. I had it all planned out to propose to her for marriage. I wanted to grow old with her and to die with her.

But now it feels like I am dead to her already, that I've probably been dead to her for a while, and that it doesn't phase her one bit.

Meeting her, seeing her face, hearing her voice, looking into her eyes, hugging her for the last time, witnessing her total lack of affection for me... these things I feel will cause me further torment, as if I were to watch her being killed before my eyes.

On the one hand, I want to end things right with her and I want understanding about both of us. I feel if I don't meet with her I will regret it. We've been through so much together. But on the other hand, I feel that anything she says to me won't give me closure. I feel that it will only make me ask more questions and think about more "what-ifs".

I love her so much and would take her back in a second. But if she cannot be all in with me with her heart, I now feel that I have to try to erase her from my life entirely.

I'm scared. Courage is a virtue of mine. I'm a former Marine, and yet I've never felt so scared in my life as I am with meeting her on Saturday. I'm a broken man, and if I meet with her she is going to see how broken I am.

What should I do?

Sorry to hear about your situation. I think you know the right thing to do, although it really hurts emotionally. I would not meet up with her to seek closure. Closure really comes from you. I've never believed another person can offer closure. As you stated, you'll probably end up with more questions than answers. The wounds are all too fresh, so being an emotional mess around her will only prolong this already agonizing experience. You're right...you need to completely erase her from your life and focus on getting yourself well emotionally. Until you can think rationally, don't talk to her again. Strict no contact. Good luck. It is difficult and we've all been in your situation, but it will get better once you are proactive in taking the baby steps necessary to regain your power and not allow her to have such control over your emotions. She has literally had a year to prepare for the pain of this breakup. For you, it is just beginning. Give yourself time...lots and lots of time.

I'm sorry to hear this

Depression is a real problem and a relationship killer if left to its own devices. Now you know this, but it's too late

When she says she's thinking about this for over a year, I think she really meant it. She was very unfair to you in this regard, because basically, she knew she didn't want you and kinda kept you in the loop while she detached herself.

Now, what can you do?

If you go this meeting with her (you don't seem to be in the right emotional state for it), you'll have to put on your big boy pants (sorry for the expression) and be strong while with her. Don't act needy or clingy. You're allowed to be emotional, but begging and pleading will only make matters worse. Be the best self you can be and cry afterwards.

But my advice would be not to go and have a friend or relative pick up the things with a text to her saying you can't handle seeing her right now and that you need to move on the way she already did.

No right answer for this though. Some people crave for "closure", but whatever she's going to say, she won't tell you the whole truth. She'll try and spare your feelings and keep things vague. That kind of closure, for me, it's overrated, but to each its own.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

I'm a big believer in closure. I inadvertently got most of it via our last WhatsApp chat. Initially, I was angry we didn't do this in person. I then realized that even though my ex was a coward for not wanting to meet face to face, she really was doing me a favor.

In this case I have to agree with kctiger. I did not start healing until I enacted strict No Contact. You are not in the mental state to face your ex. Regardless of what she tells you, you will absolutely have a ton of unanswered questions. There is also the very probable possibility that the conversation will not go the way you expect, at all. Regardless of that, even seeing her will just deepen an already raw wound.

It's really up to you. The reason virtually everyone advocates strict No Contact after a breakup is simply because it works. It's not an immediate fix. Nothing is. You're going to hurt, and it's going to suck. But if you don't do this, your pain will be 100x worse. I know, because I've been there very recently. When I cut the cord for good, I began to heal.

My advice: either leave your stuff behind or ask her to put it in a box and leave it where you can pick it up without seeing her. Or mail it. After that, block her from every avenue of possible exposure. Strict no contact means no text, email, phone, social media. It's going to feel weird, and sad. And then after a couple of days you'll realize you're no longer checking your phone every 5 seconds wondering if she sent you a text, or worse, whether you got a read receipt on your WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger message, and why is she not responding?? Then a week later, you realize you're not waiting around, because you have no idea if she'd even try to get in contact with you - she can't!! Then another week goes by, and you begin to think rationally about everything that happened in your relationship. You start seeing the good and the bad. The reasons why you broke up. Why it wasn't perfect, as you thought it was.

You cannot do any of those things while you're in touch with and pining and longing for your ex. The fact of the matter is, the relationship is dead at this point. If this was a war, you're a wounded casualty and you need to survive.

You were a Marine. If you were under gravely wounded in combat (and make no mistake, you're gravely wounded now), what would you do? Help the enemy (your ex) or help yourself? You'd do everything in your power to give yourself every chance to live.

Read breakuprecoveryguide.com. All of it. And start to heal.

I'm sorry this happened to you buddy. It's gonna suck. And it's gonna suck for some time. But with strict NC you will get over it. It's not easy but it's simple.

I don't agree with rustysuit that she's unfair for thinking about breakup for a year. We all process breakups differently and she most probably tried to "fix it" in her head not just leading you on, though I would say your communication both during that time was clearly sub-optimal.

Tell her politely but briefly that you've thought about things and believe it would be wiser to have your friend/relative pick up your stuff.

The lack of affection at breakup hurts, but it's really only because she was more mentally prepared. Don't read too much into it, nor worry what state of mind she's in / who she might be with.

Move on. You have the strength, you just need to let yourself recover enough to realise it..

Thank you for the replies so far, everybody. It is giving me a lot to reflect about over the course of this week. And thanks for the link, mynameisneo. I'm currently reading my way through it and it is definitely helping.

My roommate was planning on taking me out fishing on Saturday to help cheer me up. So far I'm thinking of going fishing instead of meeting with her.

I'm starting to realize that I don't owe her anything anymore, and that perhaps I don't owe it to hear her side of the story - for her or for myself. I've worked so hard for her to get her promotion, all the while she was contemplating leaving me and showing me very little effort to return the favor. I'm starting to think "screw her" (of course, that feeling will probably flip tomorrow).

Throughout the entire relationship I've never blown her off once. Maybe it's time to start. Perhaps I'll tell her I'm busy on Saturday and that she can either leave my stuff on my doorstep or mail it.

You're all probably right. I don't feel emotionally ready to face her and that I should probably go strict NC after I message her.

Dude, same here. I helped my ex through one of the worst times of her life. I was there for her in every way possible. And I realize that I was really just her emotional crutch and she wasn't ready to have a relationship. As soon as she stabilized, this became very evident.

I was really bitter about it, initially. Super angry. It sucks to be good to someone, and get dumped on. Some of the things she said were brutally cold. But - retrospectively, fate did me a huge favor by taking her out of my life. Of course I had a part in the break-up as well, it always takes two. But it came down to me reacting, and not even all that angrily, to her being emotionally unavailable.

I miss her, sadly. We tend to miss what's bad for us for some reason. But I'll be damned if I give her another shred of my self-respect.

What made it worse were the breadcrumbs. When we initially split, she said "this isn't goodbye". Then I lingered on, with very sporadic contact, as she was on a trip overseas healing and making a soft exit. 4.5 weeks in, I pushed a convo and we had an acrid goodbye on WhatsApp. Until then, I was hanging on for contact, looking at social media, etc., and enduring literally the worst suffering of my life. As soon as I blocked her and enacted No Contact I began to heal. Now, 33 days into strict No Contact, I still miss her from time to time, but I'm nowhere near rock bottom, my rational mind has taken over, I went on a date yesterday, and I'm beginning to move on.

Everything happens for a reason. Follow the blueprint, because it works. And don't do it to get her back, to get her to miss you, or any of that. Do it for you. The best advice I got was "be good to yourself". I'm super selfish about this now, and will be going forward.

We're all suffering, and we're all here for each other. Keep posting, we'll be here for you.

Strange reading all these and feeling like you're in the exact same place haha. Sorry you're in this sitch OP it sucks, thing is you'll end up making the same mistakes we all did because we were probably all convinced that our case was different and our exes wouldn't be like everyone else's. I did what your planning, met up to get stuff and managed to create a friendship, ended up sleeping together a couple of times but she still wanted this new guy, shed still ring me up when she was sad and drunk but it got less often. I took whatever bread crumbs I could and this is where the closure happens, eventually you get fed up. Mine happened with me getting to drunk and seeing her out, we had an argument but the next day she sent me a text saying she was in bed with him and couldn't talk I was like wow. Luckily she called later I got too apologise for my own piece of mind but it gave me closure to not lose anymore self respect and I feel much better now.

You may have to go through this as well, I think if I went NC straight away id have regretted it, least this way I tried and I went way out my way to help her when she was down

Good luck man, either way you'll come out of this.

Honestly I wanted to die a month or two ago, now I look back at some stuff I text people and cringe at what I said.

Everything happens for a reason. Follow the blueprint, because it works. And don't do it to get her back, to get her to miss you, or any of that. Do it for you. The best advice I got was "be good to yourself". I'm super selfish about this now, and will be going forward.

Really solid advice. I get tired of seeing the YouTube videos regarding no contact and getting your ex back. It isn't about that. It's about getting your own thoughts back to a rational state. Focus on yourself and be selfish. This is about you healing and making good decisions that set you up for a better life down the road. It isn't about playing some psychological game to make your ex miss you. Everything you do now should be to help yourself heal. You're in a state of shock and it's time to go into protection mode.

So an interesting thing happened last night and today. She accidentally (or fake accidentally) sent a random text to me last night that was apparently supposed to be for (or is supposed to appear to be for) someone else. All it said was "Perfect! ^_^".

When I read that I felt both incredibly sad and angry at the same time. I had a million things going through my head. I couldn't help get the impression that she's as happy as can be without me in her life. Or maybe that was supposed to be a response to a date night with some other man. Or maybe she sent that to me as a breadcrumb to stroke her ego. Sure, I'm very likely overthinking things and that it was probably just a harmless mistake that was meant to go to a friend or family-member. I can't condemn her for trying to be happy anyways. But I didn't respond to it, and I went to bed sad and a head clouded with thoughts.

But when I woke up this morning I was feeling pretty good and felt pretty good all day. I don't know why, but that text made me care a little less about her. At least for today it did. Today I really felt a sense of dissatisfaction for the way she had been treating me, and I felt a little less respect for her.

I've definitely decided that I'll tell her on Friday that I'm too busy on Saturday to meet with her and that she'll have to drop my stuff off. I'm starting to think I can pull this NC stuff off no problem once I get my stuff back from her.

So an interesting thing happened last night and today. She accidentally (or fake accidentally) sent a random text to me last night that was apparently supposed to be for (or is supposed to appear to be for) someone else. All it said was "Perfect! ^_^".

 

When I read that I felt both incredibly sad and angry at the same time. I had a million things going through my head. I couldn't help get the impression that she's as happy as can be without me in her life. Or maybe that was supposed to be a response to a date night with some other man. Or maybe she sent that to me as a breadcrumb to stroke her ego. Sure, I'm very likely overthinking things and that it was probably just a harmless mistake that was meant to go to a friend or family-member. I can't condemn her for trying to be happy anyways. But I didn't respond to it, and I went to bed sad and a head clouded with thoughts.

 

But when I woke up this morning I was feeling pretty good and felt pretty good all day. I don't know why, but that text made me care a little less about her. At least for today it did. Today I really felt a sense of dissatisfaction for the way she had been treating me, and I felt a little less respect for her.

 

I've definitely decided that I'll tell her on Friday that I'm too busy on Saturday to meet with her and that she'll have to drop my stuff off. I'm starting to think I can pull this NC stuff off no problem once I get my stuff back from her.

And that, my friend, is the first step to a full recovery.

Good luck. Just remember, this path isn't linear. Some days you'll feel like you're back at day 1, but don't be upset. It's normal. It'll pass and you'll be back on the road again in no time.

I'm not sure she's going to take the initiative to drop off your stuff for you. If you really, really need it back, ask her to box it for you and leave it on her porch. Have someone else pick it up for you. The other idea is to ask yourself if that stuff can't be replaced? Unless it's something of sentimental value --or a really expensive item-- I would just chalk it up to the cost of my healing and leave it.