I have just been broken up with after a three and a half year relationship, and I’m absolutely devastated. This was my first relationship (I’m not that young or a teen, I’m just more closed off/less likely to date, I guess), and I saw us going the distance. I’m finding it really hard to see a happy future for myself without my now-ex-boyfriend, H. I thought that he and I were deeply in love, but I guess that was just on my end. We had a three hour breakup talk yesterday that came about unexpectedly. He said he had been working up the nerve to break up with me, and that he doesn’t see a future for us anymore. I feel really blindsided.
His doubts really stem from religion. H is very Catholic and while I’m Christian, I’m not Catholic. H has started to think more seriously about his future, and I guess he started having doubts about it including me awhile ago, though he didn’t share that until our breakup talk. He doesn’t see a way for us to work through our differences. He wants a wife someday who wholly believes in Catholicism and can teach his kids that too, and as much as I want to be that for him, that’s not something I can promise in good conscience.He said he hasn’t been happy for awhile, though he hadn’t been truthful about that until the breakup talk. If I’m being honest with myself, I think I would have become Catholic eventually to be with him. But when he came to me about this, he didn’t approach it like “hey I’m realizing this is now a deal breaker for me and I need to take that seriously,” but instead like “I’m just now telling you this is a deal breaker and I see no future/have given up already.”
The worst part is I don’t know how to stop feeling the way I do about him. I really and truly to my core love H. He’s my best friend in the world, he knows me better than anyone, and it makes me feel worthless and afraid that he can know me so intimately and still not want to be with me. During our breakup talk, I tried my best to plead my case for us working through some of the problems he brought up, but he does not see the light at the end of the tunnel for our relationship. I told him that he should make decisions that make him happy. That decision means not being with me. In light of the breakup, I’m struggling to find how I can make choices to be happy, when being happy for me really does mean being with him.
I lost my best friend, the one I talk to every day about everything and anything, and I just don’t know where to go from here. I’m having trouble imagining my future without him, and even more trouble imagining his future without me. I’ve never been overly concerned with relationships (which is probably why this is my first), and I know there are other fish in the sea. It isn’t about finding anyone else. I’m just sad that he doesn’t want to be “the fish,” I guess. How do you stop loving someone you built your dreams about the future around? Is there any hope of reconciliation? I could use some help. 
Thank you for this website and your support.