Ex-Boyfriend Having Doubts After Ending a 4 Year Relationship With Me

[hopeful89]

Hi all,

 

I know that no one has a crystal ball and can me what is going to happen, but I am wondering if anyone has heard a similar story to this and what they think may happen in the end for me. I love him, and I really want to get back together.

 

The Relationship: So we met while I was dating Paul. Justin and I have always kind of had a magnetic sort of pull together and I tore everything apart to be with him. It was quite the scandal. I've never done anything like that before or felt more drawn to another person. We fell in love hard and quickly. We moved in together after a year. We were already talking marriage and kids and all of that. We got a dog that complicated things, and then we ran into some issues in the relationship (he felt like I was trying to change him, I felt like he didn't give me enough time). I thought we were working through it. In retrospect, I think we had a lot of lack of communication about our issues.

 

 

The Break Up: We were discussing renewing our lease, and he said,"I don't think we should renew our lease b/c I want to break up." He goes on this whole spill about how he's been unhappy for awhile, thinks we can find other people that will make us happy. He says he's never going to marry me etc. I go back to my parents house for a week for him to get his stuff out. He moves his stuff out before I'm back. He leaves the mattress and bedframe (he didn't want me to sleep on the floor). We have about 2 weeks of no contact besides logistics.

 

Break Up Letter: I wrote him this after the breakup.

 

Justin –

 

I wanted to write you a letter to articulate all the things I can’t in person.

 

When I met you, I was dating Paul. Paul came into my life at a very unfortunate time. I wasn’t over Steven, the first guy I’ve ever loved, and was such a desperate mess I latched onto him because it was obvious that Paul cared about me. I so desperately needed to be cared about then. He took care of me for three years, brought me back to life after Steven left me in a horrible mess. The chemistry was never quite right with Paul, but I will always have love for him for everything he did for me.

 

I didn’t think much of you at first. You blended in, you didn’t seem particularly special to me. But as I got to know you, our chemistry became clear. I’ve never wanted marriage, kids and all of that, but I still clearly remember a defining moment where I looked at you before we were together and thought with absolute certainty – this is the man I’m going to marry. That feeling led me to choose you when I was faced with the choice of you or Paul and has carried me through any difficulties in our relationship. I was just SO sure of you that nothing could shake that. That absolute certainty I’ve carried with me for years that you would be the last man I was ever with is why I think this hurts so much. You were, obviously, never even close to being on the same page. How stupid I was.

 

I’m literally crying right now as I write this. It’s killing me that I can’t call you or text you anymore. It’s killing me that I’ve kissed you for the last time. It’s killing me that you took a look at the relationship I wanted to be in for the rest of my life and said ‘no thanks’. Not even no thanks – you’d rather have this awful, awkward dividing of the assets and dividing of the friends than be with me. It ing hurts. I finally slept a couple of hours last night and when I woke up, I forgot for a second this was real. Then I remembered and went down into a spiral of sadness that feels like it’s eating me alive.

 

Seeing Rhylo this weekend I thought would make me feel better. But it hurt. I just kept seeing us bringing him home, you sleeping on the floor next to him when he was scared, us taking him to the vet. I ended up breaking down and telling him how sorry I was that I lost his dad. I failed even the dog. I hate myself for losing you.

 

I want the memories ripped out of my head. The night we stayed in the metro stop for hours kissing because neither one of us wanted the night to end. The first time you told me you loved me. The snowday where we stayed in your bed all day and watched Frozen. When we looked at apartments to move in together. The way you introduced me to your world of videogames and board games. When we watched the final episode of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ together, and you turned to me and said, “I can tell my kids I watched the final episode of this with their future mother” and grinned at me. God, I ing love you. But it doesn’t really matter because you don’t love me, or don’t love me enough. Whatever your reasons, you would rather all this messiness than stay with me, which means you really, really, really want out. You’re a go-with-the-flow type of guy, and you’re deliberately going against that just to get away from me.

 

So that’s the crippling sadness part. Then there’s the anger. The anger that you wasted four years of my life, the anger that I literally ripped my life apart to have you. Even after I ripped everything up to be with you, the relationship was never even. I tried and tried and compromised and compromised, and you never could. I cooked, I cleaned, I played video games with you, I played board games with you, I found myself filtering the shows I watched to ones I knew you would enjoy too. I tried new types of music for you. When we lived apart, you never made the effort to come to my place. From the beginning, you weren’t very romantic. You never surprised me or took me out to dinner. On the date nights we did have, I had to do all the planning, all the scheduling. Same with any vacation. Same when we did move in together. Yet with all the compromising and work I put into the relationship, you couldn’t even do simple things. You couldn’t play less video games. You couldn’t sleep at the same time I did. Frankly, I’m an idiot and I should have known from the effort I was putting in compared to the effort you were that this relationship was going to crush me. I’m mad at you for not trying harder. For not trying harder during the relationship, for not trying harder to save our relationship. For letting me go now without trying to make it work.

 

You never were good at communicating, so I really shouldn’t be surprised that you didn’t really communicate to me how unhappy you were. I knew things weren’t perfect, that we had our rough patches but THAT’S LIFE. Nothing is perfect. I was willing to work at it, and you were ready to get me out of your life for good.

 

I try to tell myself that all those negative things are reasons why we aren’t meant to be. But I’m still, even now, finding it really hard to shake how certain I was that you were it for me.

 

I wish I could sit here and say I had no regrets. But the truth is, I really do wish I never met you. After all what good did any of it do? Me hurting Paul, you hurting me – what did it accomplish in the end?

 

The Convo Post Break Up: The internet in the apartment was still in his name, so I had to call him about adding me to the account when it went out. He didn't have internet, so he came down to fix it for me instead.

We had a good convo while he was there. We updated each other about our lives. He told me he loved me, missed me, and may have made a mistake. He told me he wasn't opposed to getting back together after some time apart. He told me not to wait for him though. We discussed issues our relationship had had. Communication, my lack of independence, his playing too many video games, his need to grow up, his selfishness. He admitted he had a lot to work on and was committed to working on it - but apart.

 

I tried to convince him to let us work together on those issues at first, but I eventually came around to his side. He needs to do this on his own. He said he recognized he might lose me in the process. He told me when he said he'd never marry me, he didn't quite mean it. (I had told him that was a deal breaker if we got back together.) He said he just didn't want to be in the THAT version of the relationship the rest of his life.

 

He also said that he didn't think our issues were basic incompatibility, but things that could be worked on. Well I said it, and he agreed.

 

The chemistry between us was unreal but we resisted that part. He said he didn't think anything physical was a good idea. We ended up saying if its meant to be, it will be. He gave me a really tight hug and left.

 

Current Plan: My current plan is to do a period of 'no contact' to allow him to miss me, and for me to get some perspective on the situation. If I still want him back after this (and I think I will), I plan on starting contact again to see where his head space is and to get a little bit back into his life. I'm thinking after about a month of no contact.

 

Questions:

 

1. Do you think he's going to come back and work on things with me? Are there any examples of similar stories?

2. Do you think our issues are workable, or are just delaying the inevitable?

3. Should I alter "my plan" if I really want to win him back?

[gebaird]

Honey, I think you are being blinded by your love for him. This relationship was fundamentally flawed. I think you know this in your mind, but your heart is hurting so badly that you are willing to overlook all of that. If you have to change yourself this much in order to be in a relationship, then it's not the relationship for you. I think if you do end up getting back together, it will end the same way. You'll save yourself a lot of pain and heartbreak by walking away and staying away.

[Wiseman2]

There are only 2 directions in a relationship . Growing apart or growing together.

 

He chose to end it and he's been thinking about it a while and simply used not renewing the lease as the exit. "Work on myself" "confused" "Maybe someday" are all to soften the blow and not be cruel. You've been together 4 yrs, lived together etc. so he knows which direction he wants and that is to move out.

 

Stay no contact but not as a gimmick to 'get him back', but to reflect on what really happened and what you noticed the months before the lease was up.