Hi.
So my name is John, and I was recently broken up with by my girlfriend. We had been dating for ten months up until the end of the summer following senior year of high school. We had, up until recently, every intention of staying together in college (we were only going to be two hours apart and we would each have cars later in our first semester). Anyway, a week before she left for school, she broke up with me. She claimed that she no longer felt respected in our relationship. She insisted that we should stay in contact, and check in with each other, because I was a very special person to her. I told her I couldn’t be friends. A few days later, I asked her if we could get together sometime before she left, and she agreed. I wrote a letter and had every intention of having her read it and then make my case when we met up. We got together that Saturday, and we just talked.
I tried to ask her if this was more of a break than a break up, and she said she didn’t know, but she was treating it like a break up, so that’s what it was. She said she was trying to move on, but if we still missed each other come Thanksgiving, then we would reevaluate then. But we just talked about things. I was much more emotional than she was, but whenever I would tear up she would too. Then she opened up to me about some of her insecurities with her friends, and it was a decent–yet emotional–conversation overall. After that, we hugged and said goodbye. Shortly following that, I texted her telling her I wasn’t ready to stop talking. We exchanged more texts, mostly saying that we didn’t want the other out of our lives, and she insisted to reach out whenever I needed her, and she would do the same to me. Although, I didn’t really believe her.
That night, I knowingly self-medicated and got high with some friends. It was bad, to say the least, and I texted her. Nothing too much, but I’m sure it worried her. She replied saying she would give me a ride home if I needed one, and I apologized and said I was okay. When I got home a few hours later, I had concocted this plan to wait 2.5 weeks before reaching out to her, and seeing how things were going then. I texted her letting her know that I had made it home okay, that I was sorry for texting her while I was high, and wished her luck for school (mind you, this was the night before she left for school). She replied the next morning, saying vague texts like that were part of the reason we were no longer together, and that it was unfair to reach out to her the night before she left for school, and that I shouldn’t text her unless I need her. She also said not to reply to that message.
I left her alone for about a week, then texted her if she would be free to catch up sometime. She said she would text me when things with rush calmed down. A week later, she hadn’t texted me, even though rush had ended, so I was like “screw this” and sent her a text asking if she could catch up soon (I had also heard from a friend taht she had hooked up with someone). She didn’t reply. Six hours later I sent another text, basically saying that she was an important person in my life, and I genuinely wanted to talk to her and catch up, but I needed to know where she was so I could have a direction. She screenshotted it, sent it into her friend group chat, and didn’t reply for five hours.
When she did reply, it was a fairly harsh text saying she hasn’t even had time to think about us and that she told me she would text me when she was free, and if I wanted to be friends, then she would just do that. I asked if we could talk, and she called me. We had a long talk, emotional at first, mostly about us, and I told her I needed to know what she was thinking. and she said it wasn’t a yes-no thing if she had moved on, but if she had to pick one, it was yes. We talked about all sorts of other things, and she told me she wasn’t enjoying herself at school, and it was very lonely there. I told her I was coming in to Mizzou during labor day, as a warning, and she suggested that we could get together. This gave me hope.
Come that Thursday (we last spoke on Sunday), I had heard that one of my (ex) best friends had tried to hook up with her, and so I texted her asking if she could talk. She replied “yes!” and then we talked on the phone. She was a little drunk, so I’m sure she was a little more open and less defensive then she would have been otherwise, but we were still able to talk about things. She cleared things up about my friend, who had tried to hook up with her, but she didn’t reciprocate and ended things. But she confirmed that she had been hooking up with other guys, and that hurt a lot. She also apologized for seeming like she had strung me along, because she seriously was not trying to do that. She said she didn’t want to say there was a chance in the future, because she didn’t know, but she did know then that she was trying to move on if she wasn’t there already. She reiterated that maybe we could see each other on Friday, but that I had to text her if I wanted to see her. Also, earlier in the conversation, when I said something emotional, she said, “I feel bad, but I shouldn’t. We aren’t dating, so I should feel upset.” She also said she broke up with me for her own mental health and happiness.
Come Friday, she says she can’t hang out because she has plans (something she warned me about), but that maybe we’d run into each other or that she’d see me tomorrow (Saturday). The next day, I found out that she had told one of her friends that she didn’t want to see me, so I decided to send her a last-ditch text; if she responded, great, if she didn’t, I would cut her out of my life. I asked her if she wanted to get coffee or something this weekend, as we would both be in town, and that it was nothing serious. She didn’t reply, so I deleted her as my friend on snapchat, deleted the friends whose story’s I’d see her on, and deleted our texts. Later that night, she got together with her friends, and she texted me saying that she needed some space and that I shouldn’t text her friends for advice about us. I only texted her friends because they were my friends too, because I didn’t have anyone else to talk to after the break up, but I always made sure to ask them if it was okay, and told them if it was too much to not reply, because I didn’t want to hurt their friendship etc. At that point, I deleted her number and unfollowed her on instagram.
I know she doesn’t need space; she’s practically over me, so she’s clearly just over dealing with me. Prior to the breakup, she tried extremely hard to keep us together, but because I was depressed from a ton of outside factors that had happened in the prior weeks, I removed myself and hurt her in the process. I took our relationship for granted, and now I may have lost it for good. I wish I had just done no-contact immediately following, but because college is such a drastic change, I felt like I had to at quickly or else I would lose her forever.
I know for a fact that she is not happy right now, although I don’t know if things have gotten better in the past week and a half. I fear that I may have pushed her too far away, and that there is no hope at this point. Right now, I have dropped out of school (something I had been considering for a while, because the final selling point on that school was my relationship with my girlfriend, and that being gone gave me no reason to stay), and am looking for travel opportunities in Europe, the U.S., or volunteering for Hurricane Harvey or the forest fires; something to take my mind off of her. I have been talking to a therapist regularly, but I’ve still barely gotten over her. My hope is that I take a 1-3 month trip somewhere, depending on which opportunities open up, and then slowly recontacting her, starting with re-following her on Instagram (hopefully she follows back, or else that would be a huge–but informative–blow), and then after a month of the last contact, considering reaching out to her. Depending on where I am, I’d try to physically see her during either winter or thanksgiving break, and working on building things back up from there.
My biggest issue now is the overwhelming sense of futility. I feel like there’s no chance at getting back together, and that I may have lost the most important relationship in my life permanently. I worry that she’ll just keep getting drunk all the time at parties and hooking up with other guys, then go to Mizzou homecoming with one of them, and then getting in a serious relationship with him and moving on from me completely. I’m also afraid that I will begin to move on too.
I just have no idea how to move forward from here, and I have no idea if there is hope. Please reply if you have any insights or want more background.
Thanks,
John