Hello everyone.
I badly need advice. I was in a sapphic relationship for 7 months (I’m 27, my ex-girlfriend is 25). We are long-distance, although we have met once on our since I flew over to her place. It was a very good relationship, I can say so. We knew each other very intimately in all aspects, had plans for our future, had hopes and dreams together. I am an anxious-style attacher and she claims to be fearful-avoidant, and she feels unmotivated in general and believes she has depression.
When I was with her, I felt very secure. We hardly had fights except for when I would feel neglected from the lack of time—but I understand she was also busy with work. She had a problem with me not celebrating special dates and not expressing enough interests in her TV shows and games, even though I did try.
Sometime during our 6th month, she admitted to holding resentment towards me over a fight we had back in our 3rd month that she didn’t quite communicate to me in full. She then confessed to sometimes saying things deliberately to hurt me/get back at me. We almost broke up then but she begged me not to do it. I didn’t, but I told her things needed to change since then.
The next month, the same fight and wounds resurfaced. I noticed that this was becoming a pattern of empty apologies without tangible change, and I also felt like I was the only one who was more proactive about our relationship in terms of wanting to fly out and see each other, since she has not made any concrete plans to see me despite me having gone to see her last time.
I was the one who broke up with her. I’m just going to get that out. But I was also quite clear that I treated this breakup as a way to break the toxic cycle that was slowly making us unhappy—her with her resentment, and me with my anxious attachment style. I told her that this was not meant to punish her and that this was only temporary. We just need to heal our individual issues first and then revisit the relationship when we’re in better headspaces. I fear she took it wrongly.
My fault was that I did not allow us to have a clean no-contact period after the breakup. Even though she repeatedly asked for time and space to heal her resentment, told me that she processes things slow and and that she was not in the right headspace for a relationship right now because of all her real-life problems, I still pushed until it got to the point of removing each other from our socials.
But she did say in our last messages to each other:
“I want to try again when I get a new job. […] I meant what I said about wanting to try again, but I also know I need to work on my own issues first.”
And I also told her,
“You know where to find me when you’ve got things figured out.”
As a way to keep the door open. Then we wished each other well.
We have been in no contact for 3 weeks now, broken up for 2 months, and it has been super hard for me. I am regretting a lot of things, especially with how I handled our conversations and how I should have stuck it out. We still share some spaces on social media, and I can see that she is grieving the relationship (which is her right) in a quite angry and bitter way. It makes me believe that she is becoming more and more disinterested in reconciling the longer she processes this.
What I’ve done so far: started therapy and started doing the shadow work to address my own anger issues and anger displacement, trying to manage my attachment and anxiety. I admit I had moments of weakness where I tried to break no contact 1 and 2 weeks after our last message, but she never replied to any of those. I suspect she has my number blocked.
But I still want this. I know I still do. I’m flying out to a city close to hers in October, and I do have plans to reach out and maybe have a real conversation with her in person by that time. But I feel like absolute crap right now. I don’t know if it’s still worth holding hope for.
I need advice and any helpful insight. Thanks in advance.