People are quick to jump to the conclusion that he’s going to dump her out of the blue and she’s going to be blindsided.
Assuming they have a decent relationship, and presumably they do if they planned a six week trip away together, there’s no way they won’t have discussed the pitfalls of a long distance relationship when she goes off to uni.
Assuming he hasn’t promised her marriage and babies and a bright future, she almost certainly knows that this relationship has no future.
He’s likely only going to do what they have previously talked about.
It’s possible to love someone and to be realistic about the future.
But hey he’s a man, so the automatic assumption is that he’s using her. Maybe he in fact doesn’t want to break up with her, but realistically there is no future in this relationship, and he’s acknowledging that.
When I was his age I moved from one country to another with my family. I was devastated to leave my then BF behind, but I had no choice, I didn’t have a job and there were very few prospects in the country I was living in. So we made the decision to wait for each other I would find work and qualifications and go back and we would be together. We loved each other.
But the reality was that it was never going to happen. And I spent a year trying to make my job work and to save the money, and having conversations about the promised future. And then he met someone else.
In hindsight I wish we’d just agreed to part ways when I left. It would have saved a lot of heartbreak and wondering and wishing, and would have given us the opportunity to move on with our lives so much sooner.
it wouldn’t have meant we didn’t love each other. We could have loved each other until I left. And then been realistic about the future.