Just split up, don't have a clue what to do...

[david_n]

First of all, please excuse me if I start to waffle a bit!

 

I split up with my first real girlfriend yesterday. I'm 27, we'd been together for 9 months and it now feels like I've been punched really hard in the stomach. I can't seem to stop crying. It feels as if my whole future has been taken away from me.

 

Some background: I met my girlfriend over the internet last summer. I've been out of work with a serious knee and back injury since last May and I used the 'net to try and meet some new people; being at home all the time was really depressing me.

 

She lives 100 miles away and at first it was just great to email and text and talk to her over the phoine. We really connected at fundemental levels. Our emails were huge and our phone calls lasted for hours. She'd just been through a string of short-term relationships and was having real problems with her family (she still does), her job was and still is awful and she has a large and barely managable debt. She said she wasn't sure if she wanted another realationship. I knew the distance would be a problem and I was in no position to offer her anything really. But over time my feelings really grew for her. One day I told her that I loved her. She was surprised but she had similar feelings for me too. I started to drive up to see her and being off work meant I had the time to spend with her. Seeing her was great. We managed to spend every other weekend or so together and we spend all of Christmas together. We'd send each other cards and poems and just little things that we thought each other might like. We were in love and we started to plan a future together. We made no definate plans, nothing concrete, but I knew that whatever we'd be doing we'd be doing it together.

 

Then...

 

Over the last couple of weeks it seemed a strain for her to talk to me. She has a life away from me and it seemed that it was becoming hard for her to have these two lives 100 miles appart. She was honest and told me that she didn't feel as close to me as she had before. She knew how much I loved her but she felt she could love me back with the same intensity.

 

We went away last week with some of her friends for a long-planned trip. We thought that some time together in a stress-free environment would help but over the week I could really feel that she didn't want to hold hands or hug or even spend time alone with me.

 

Yesterday I talked all this through with her. She said that she still loves me, we're still soulmates and that she still cares deaply for me. It's just that she feels pressured by being in a relationship with me. It wasn't anything I'd done, it was how she felt about everything in her life right now. We split. She's so precious to me but I had to let her go.

 

My feelings haven't changed. I still love her with all my heart and I believe her when she says she still loves me. I know how difficult and complicated her life is, mine is too, I just can't see how being further appart will help. She says she can't explain how she feels, only that she can't be with me right now. She can't or won't give any other explanation and I don't want to upset either of us any more by pushing her for one.

 

So what the hell do I do now??? My future with her has suddenly disappeared. The woman I love cannot be with me for reasons I may never know. She still wants to be in contact with me but how much is going to be good for me or her? Every part of me wants to hope that we can get back together, that this is just a temporary thing. But hanging on for something that might never happen would be a living hell.

 

Right now I'm just crying all the time. I have a sense of loss that I've never felt so deep. All the photos and letters and poems and emails and cards; all those hopes and dreams; all the memories! They're all meaningless now! She said she meant it all at the time but what the hell does that matter now???

 

I'll give her the space she needs and I know she appreciates that. It's just, what do I do now for me and for her?

 

If you've read all this through then you have my deepest thanks. It's complicated I know, but if anyone can offer any help at all, I will appreciate it more than you know.

[ger_in_love]

hiya

i have been there done that, broke up with ex 12 mts ago (together 7 yrs),

 

i will give u this advice from experience, she wanted to be friends, i complied we were best friends for 12mts till last week when she went and met another,

 

so what i say to you now is dont beg or plea or do her head in, i done that and i pushed her away, i asked her awhile back if i had not pushed her away would she have come back and she said probably she would have,

 

dont push her away , this gives her time to heal, trust me on that, no contact make her sweat, its now too late for me, but if she loves u she will be back that i promise you

[david_n]

Cheers ger that helped. I won't push, I'll give her the space and time she needs. But right now, I feel like I've lost her forever you know? That really hurts...

[Hope75]

She said that she still loves me, we're still soulmates and that she still cares deaply for me. It's just that she feels pressured by being in a relationship with me. It wasn't anything I'd done, it was how she felt about everything in her life right now.

 

David,

 

What she is saying doesn't make any sense. If she loved you and believed you were soulmates, she wouldn't have broken up with you.

 

I think for your sanity you need to assume this relationship is over for good. Actions speak louder than words, and she broke it off and is choosing not to be with you. If I loved my guy and felt we were meant to be the last thing I would do is leave him. Get what I am saying?

 

Do your best to focus on other areas of your life and try to heal. If it is truly meant to be she will come back, but I have doubts since if she really has the feelings for you that she says she has, she wouldn't have left in the first place.

 

Hang in there!

[lady00]

She said that she still loves me, we're still soulmates and that she still cares deaply for me. It's just that she feels pressured by being in a relationship with me. It wasn't anything I'd done, it was how she felt about everything in her life right now.

 

What she is saying doesn't make any sense. If she loved you and believed you were soulmates, she wouldn't have broken up with you.

 

I disagree...I think that it's possible for someone to know they love someone else and to feel that they are soulmates and still want to break up. Sometimes, feelings aren't enough to sustain a relationship, especially when a person is dealing with a lot of stress or feels pressured by the relationship. It could be that the relationship was becoming too intense and that she needed a breather. I think that sometimes someone can get too wrapped up in another person and they need to take a step back and sort themselves out as an individual first.

 

I think you should take time and space without talking to her so that you can heal from this. She felt pressured in the relationship so you need to give her space and you need space yourself. I can't predict the future and don't know what will happen but I can tell you this...it's all about how you make her feel. She needs to want to come back for it to happen. You can't really do anything to influence her besides just moving on yourself and not pressuring her and if, after some time, you do talk, you'll have to just take things easy and just enjoy the conversations and not expect anything further. Pleasure, not pressure...that's the key. She needs to feel that being around you is more pleasure than pressure. Just try your best to heal up and get to a point where you are not as emotionally attached to her as you are now...it's hard but you'll get there with time. You'll be in a better position to interact with her at that point (or to decide not to...whatever you choose).

[david_n]

Thank you both for your replies. Even though you might seem to disagree, you both make sense.

 

Hope75 - Not much of what she has said has made sense. If she loves me and has this deep connection with me, why break up? I think I have to assume that the relationship in the form it was in is over. I have a lot to get right both physically and mentally and those things won't heel over night but heel they must.

 

lady00 - About 2 years into a relationship my brother split from his gilfriend for over 18 months. They both had other relationships in that time and both of them moved on in various ways. They eventually got back together and have now been happily married for 8 years this June.

 

I think the way I feel now is proof to me that I was too attached to her emotionally. Not being with her, even though my proximity to her is no different in real terms, makes me feel so awful that maybe despite the distance things were just too intense.

 

Again, thank you all for your thoughts and considerations.