He broke up with me, and we’ve been apart since the Aug-Sept shift. Only correspondence was to sort out belongings. He picked up his stuff early October (it took him that long, and he didn’t even reply after he rang my doorbell the first time). The day after I sent him a rather emotional but fairly rational and thought-out email which he responded briefly to, saying he hadn’t changed his mind, that he felt something was missing and he couldn’t explain it. Apart from a voice message I sent in November (I said he didn’t have to reply and he didn’t), we’ve had no contact since. Mainly because I’ve said I did not want to keep in touch as just friends.
Sounds fairly straightforward right? Well, let me give you some background story:
We met and instantly got together two years ago, got on like a house on fire despite his severe depression. Passion and compassion, you name it. No argument or fights, ever. Regular but sincere use of the L-word. Meanwhile, within the year his anti-depressants had killed his sex-drive. Following that, he stopped being able to have me around when he was depressed, despite having praised me for how I handled his depression in the past. He said his depression made him feel like we wouldn’t work out and that he was a bad boyfriend. This was an absurd contrast to the relationship, but that’s depression for you.
The drugs he’d been on during his period were so bad, so his doctor had him change, and this made him unable to keep in touch for a few days, and the next thing I heard was that he was in the hospital emergency for suicidal tendencies. A week before we’d had an amazing time together where he looked me in the eye and said he loved me. A week after he broke up with me. Despite the travel plans we had within three weeks of the breakup.
Those three weeks were hell for me. I was truly not well, after the first 2 weeks I gathered the strengths to ask us to meet so we could talk. I proposed how I’d like the relationship to be (essentially, that he could be rest assured that I was fine when he was too depressed to be with me. Not to feel guilty), but he claimed he didn’t love me anymore. Two weeks after he said he loved me. I thought that was closure, but within the week he wanted us to get back together again, based on my suggestions. Turns out he loved me very much after all. This was early July, and the rest of the summer was fantastic. Like falling in love all over again. It was mutual and great. But at the end of August he got depressed again, and while we handled it as agreed, he felt guilty about not having missed me while he was severely depressed.
During that week we had a break, because I told him, rather angrily (that was a first), that breaking up isn’t something you just take back. During that week we had some contact, and I told him to seek therapy for learning how to deal with how his depression made him feel about us. He came out of it saying he realised he just didn’t want to be in a relationship with me. Given the fantastic summer we’d just had I was rather shocked to be given that reason. I got no explanation. Nothing. I suspect it was deliberate so that I had no tools to make the kind of suggestions I did last time. To penetrate his depression so to speak.
So it’s been quite some time with no contact. Nothing from him since October, and nothing from me since November. I’ve had a lot of positive experiences since, with lots of travel, making friends globally and building an independent career. But I still miss him and hope he is doing well. I am going on holiday again the coming week, and I thought I’d send him a post card saying just that. Keeping it light-hearted and playing on some simple inside jokes to not make it so intense. But a post card still shows some effort relative to a simply text.
Any suggestions for how or whether to break ‘no contact’? What to write?