Hi everyone. I was very painfully hurt recently. I started trolling the web looking for answers and found this site. I'm almost embarrased to be hurting so much and no matter who I talk to, friends or family, I can't seem to find any comfort or forget the pain and loss I've been dealing with for nearly two months now. I know I'm going to rant but please someone listen to a devastated person's cry for a friendly ear.
My girlfriend and I had been going out for nearly 5 years, ever since the middle of my sophomore year in college. I really thought (and still think) she was (is) the one, and even considered proposing a few times. We are by far each other's longest relationships and have been very happy and deeply in love, so I thought. She is currently in her third year of medical school, a time when she has to go on rotations, which usually entails her waking up at 6 am and getting home past 10 pm some days. It is a very rigorous daily routine and it will only get harder. Last year I went away for my Masters at a University 6 hrs away and though I tried to make it home most weekends, by the time things got academically hectic I was spending well over two weeks without seeing her and even phone conversations were getting very short due to our schedules. It was only for 1 school year, however. When I moved back home I spent a month at home (at which time due to her schedule I saw her maybe once a week) before going on a two week vacation to Germany with my mother. When I got back I found out my Aunt had died and we immediately packed our bags and flew out to the Philippines were we stayed another 3 weeks grieving (it was also my first time back in nearly 12 years). When I finally got back to NY I had to deal with having to make up the lost time looking for a job in a post 9/11 economy. Needless to say I was depressed about the family loss and my inability to land a job immediately after graduation and was very whiny and needy. It was the middle of August. Needless to say we had been spending a lot of time apart. By this time I was seeing her maybe five hours a week in between her getting out of the hospital at 7:00 and bedtime at 12. She was taking naps while I was with her. I thought things were still OK. In September we celebrated her B-Day happily in bed. In October she was deep into her surgery rotation, the most intense for her yet and I started noticing her lose interest. Her grandfather died and she failed her surgery final all within the month of October and the first week of November.
Then it came like bitter rain, painful words we all dread to hear, " I need a break", "I don't have time for a relationship", "This isn't working for me", "I still love you, but I need time for me." "Right now, I can't see us working." During our last real days as a couple together, before we really broke up, she called me in the middle of the night to say she still loved me. We saw each other one last time as bf/gf after that, where we were intimate and she sobbed uncontrollably as I left. She says we have little in common now and that we've grown apart, and I can agree with that, but I am still madly in love with her. I am so willing to try and work something out. She is so entrenched in my soul and my heart that losing her has truly destroyed me. She was so much to me for so long a time. It is a miracle that just as we were breaking up in November I got a great job, a dream job actually, and am now living on my own in Manhattan. I can just imagine the horrible double whammy of losing her and being unemployed. We went on like that for a month until I heard her say the worst thing yet on Thanksgiving. I asked her if there was someone else, she said, "No, but we should be allowed to see other people, I don't want to keep you on a string." The pieces of my already broken heart were ground into powder. I've seen her three times since the storm broke in early November and talked to her several times in the last two months. She's on a rare two week vacation now. She called me and we exchanged presents the day after Christmas. She acts so distant now, yet she agrees that we want each other in our lives, perhaps as best friends. I hugged her a lot. She seems to try to avoid seeing me now, though she said she'd see me sometime next week. I think she doesn't tell me the whole truth and that she is being cordial. I'd like to believe she still loves me, like she says, but she's really acting "cool" around me the last couple of times I've seen her. I know the last thing most people want to do is see the person they dumped but I can't seem to let her out of my thoughts. She's the type who hates to hurt other people and really avoids confrontations. I really try hard not to call her and I've been good about that. I can't let go of her. This has been the toughest breakup I've ever had to deal with because the end isn't so clear cut... no closure. I'm still not sure what happened. She says it's been coming slowly, It was so sudden for me. I still love her so very much and I think of ways to get her to try and work things out, to get her back all without pressing too hard, because I'm afraid she'll just get rid of me completely (though I'm not sure she would do so immediately). Work takes the edge of things but I don't want it to end this way. I know there will be a lot of regret in the future even if she doesn't think so. I don't know what to do. I don't want to seem selfish and push her at the same time I feel betrayed and that she's just telling me she still cares because that's what I want to hear. Maybe she still cares, but no longer loves. Maybe she just doesn't want to hurt me and say she's simply fallen out of love with me and wants to meet other people. She's not the type to plot like that, though. Confusion reigns and sadness pervades my free time. I don't want us to grow further apart. I don't want to lose my first true love. I don't know if I should keep holding on. Has she moved on and left me behind? Please can someone help me ease my heart and mind with a few kind words.
Thank you for your time and It's a truly wonderful thing that this forum exists.
