It’s somewhat of a long story, but basically, we met around 9 or 10 months after he got out of a messy relationship with his ex wife, which was a good ten years or so of physical/mental abuse on her part.
We dated for about 7 or 8 months, and I don’t believe we had a single fight up until the day he broke up with me. Early Feburary, his ex wife did something that drove him to attempt suicide, and I was with him through all of it. He’d been very upfront with me about her when we first started dating, and had never shown me any violence or abusive behavior. In fact, I felt safer with him than I have others I’ve dated.
My favorite memory of us, ironically enough, is after I brought him home from the hospital and he mentioned he was still interested in going out for Valentine’s Day dinner. So we went out the next day and got fancy clothes and shit - something different, since neither of us are the type to dress up. On the way back to get dressed, I suggested he see if his ex wife would be up to letting us bring his little son with us to dinner, since the reason he attempted suicide was because she refused to let him see the kid at all that weekend and was threatening to push for full custody/police involvement out of spite (this has since been taken care of - kid is doing fine!)
We went to dinner with the kid, took him back to his mom afterward when he got sleepy, and then took a walk by the water downtown. I just wanted to give him something positive to think about when he went to work the next morning instead of having to carry the memories of that shitty weekend the whole time. Just wanted to show him someone loved and respected him.
From there, I helped him get an apartment in my apartment complex at a discount once the house he’d shared with his ex sold. I did what I could to encourage him/make him feel appreciated, and he did for me as well. When I found out he’d be able to go back to school this year, I bought him a Fitbit as a gift and planned to take him out for dinner that week - it’s something he’d been working toward but had to stop when his ex wife fucked up his finances. He told me it was the coolest gift anyone’s given him.
The fight he ended it over was something stupid, we were both tired/in shitty moods, but the next day, he drove off somewhere, texted me to essentially get my shit and get out (paraphrased), and told me he wanted to break up. After giving me a myriad of different reasons, he finally told me it was because he no longer felt the same. That I wasn’t “the one”.
I tried to be normal around him, but I couldn’t stop myself asking him questions, all of which he answered. He told me that the relationship hadn’t been a waste - that we’d shown each other we were both capable of being loved. That he cared for and respected me too much to keep dating me when he’d lost feelings.
About a week after he dumped me, he met another girl, and suddenly they’re all over each other on Facebook. He’s texting me less. Around May 22, he finally told me I was being obsessive and that I needed time to heal and he unfriended me on Facebook and went official with the new girl. No word from him since.
I’m doing 45 days NC, maybe longer. I wonder if he ever loved me - if he ever saw me as anything but a sex toy. He went to my therapy appointments with me when he could. Gave me the expensive guest bed in his house that never got used that he could’ve sold for hundreds. Was ready to run to my apartment at 4am when I woke suddenly with a migraine so terrible I thought I needed to be driven to the hospital. Do you do that for someone you don’t love or care about? He never stopped showing affection - never gave any sign that he was “done” with me.
Now it’s only taken him a month to completely forget I ever existed. The day he officially broke up with me, he deleted every picture of us or relating to us, even the ones of him that just happened to be like in my room or something. He erased me as quickly as he could and now appears to be deeply in love with this new girl. They go to parties/the beach all the time - all things he never really expressed much interest in doing when he was with me. She’s a recent divorcee, too and also has a kid that his kid can be friends with.
I just don’t understand. I never hurt him. I encouraged him as best I could without being overbearing. I didn’t buy him shit all the time. I listened to him when he felt worried. I even listened when he expressed frustration over the way his ex was handling the custody arrangement. Perhaps the only things I can think of that went bad on my part was my anxiety over my weight and the fear that he’d eventually dump me for someone prettier and skinnier - which he did. I’m doing better with weight loss/eating healthy now, and trying to be less down on myself. I had asked him what tI could change about myself, and he told me to be more confident.
If I can do all that I did for him, and still not be “the one”, then what makes someone “the one”? What makes someone worthy of love? Why her and not me, and why so soon? Do I even have a chance of getting him back if he’s moved on so quickly and deliberately? Why the hell is everyone constantly yelling at me to ‘forget about him and move on’? I don’t WANT to move on. I don’t know if I even want to ever date again. I did everything right and still once again lost to some other girl.