I don't know if anyone can help me. Reaching out over the internet in desperation because I feel like I'm not coping.
I went through a breakup last summer that was really difficult. I'd been through a really bad year and had depression and he'd been really supportive but he had problems of his own and I think it all just got on top of him. We didn't argue or anything or have a rough patch but one day I was going through a really bad depressed point and was quite hard to live with and he just looked at me, started to cry and told me he was sorry but he could not marry me and he had to leave.
I thought he was joking at first, but it turned out he wasn't and he moved out within about two weeks of the house we'd shared for three years.
He got back together with me once about three weeks later, which lasted a week then he did the same thing again. Then a couple of months later we got back together again for three months then he did the same thing again. So it was an up and down ride for a while.
It took a very long time to get information out of him about why he did what he did because I didn't realise how much my depression had affected him, but he told me in tears after he'd left how he used to love coming home to my lovely smile, and over the past six months he'd been struggling at work and had his own problems and coming home to find me in tears and still in bed had ground him down. He said he wished he had talked to me but he thought his job was to try and give me love and patience, so he did that until it exhausted him.
He said was that he loved me very much, and leaving me was the hardest and most painful thing he had ever had to do but that he had to do it for his own sanity.
I wish he'd told me this was how he felt, so I could have taken a long look in the mirror (and seen he was right in a lot of ways) but he didn't do that and I genuinely was not aware of how diferrent I was, how needy and weak it made me and how much it affected him. He just kept it inside, told me he was happy, and just left.
I was a strong and positive woman when we met but depression changed me a lot. I leaned on him emotionally, financially and practically in a lot of ways. I was still really loving towards him, but I can see that it put pressure on him.
Although I was devastated and in shock, I took his words on board, and made myself independent and strong since he left. I got into treatment and am now no longer depressed. I started a business doing my dream job and am now very successful. I learned to drive finally. I have managed on my own with a child (not his) and I have been through counselling and feel like a much stronger person.
This is all good, but deep down, I am still just completely broken hearted inside. Although I am achieving all my dreams, none of them seem to matter or have any meaning without being able to come home and share that with him.
I pulled off the biggest job of my career yesterday, something really impressive and friends and family are telling me they are proud of me, but I came home from it and just lay there crying for hours and hours because I couldn't share that with him.
I miss him and it never seems to go away.
In terms of our relationship nowadays, it is hard to explain. Leaving me was incredibly hard for him, and he managed that by being cold and refusing to talk. The pain of that, and the way he just removed himself from my life completely was really hard. I felt betrayed and I felt like he had jumped ship on me when I was ill instead of helping me. I felt like if I was ill he should have told me how it was affecting him instead of pretending it was fine and leaving. My feelings are very mixed because I feel sympathy for him but also a lot of anger and hurt.
He's not seeing anyone else, and he's been suferring with depression himself since he left so he is quite sad and lonely himself. I have dated a few people, but none of them were him and I felt like it was just trying to cover the pain and I've decided not to date anyone until I feel more healed.
We don't see each other or talk regularly, but we do check on each other by text and that comes in bursts. Usually I am the instigator, although if he drinks, he does drunk call me and he says he is sorry for what he did to me, that I was a good person, that he loved me very much but that he hadn't know what else to do. He said he didn't understand depression and he thought I had just changed into an unhappy and negative person and he missed the girl he loved. To be honest, before he experienced depression himself he had no idea that it was a real illness and he'd though (but not said) that he felt I could snap out of it so he was building resentment inside.
The last face to face contact I had with him he called me up one Sunday evening a couple of months ago in tears and told me he missed me a lot, that he'd really loved me but that love had been chipped away because he felt like I was always unhappy or always negative and that he had to keep trying to sort my life out. He said he was really proud of the way I'd gotten myself together the past year and a half, and he said maybe we could be friends and see if it led to something more. He said he felt that if we'd met at a time in my life when he (and I) were more together that we would have ended up married and happy. We did end up having sex (not good I know) but the next morning he was quite cold and told me it hadn't been a good idea.
I don't really know what to do.
He's not struggling with depression himself, and he feels that I am to blame for it and his emotions are muffled and he's quite dark compared to how he was. He pushes me away but also pulls me back. There's no clear signal of how he really feels and I think he is so confused and messed up that he doesn't really know himself.
I am now mentally very healthy and strong, but also missing him all the time and just wanting to find some way to fix all this. I still feel like a future without him in it would be worse than any other life I could have. I do feel deeply like we just belong together.
I wrestle all the time with up and down emotions. I have a lot of sympathy for him because I think he did love me a lot and tried his best but that he didn't know how to cope with me when depression came along and he didn't know how to tell me it was affecting him so much.
I also feel really angry, because in committed relationships you are supposed to be able to navigate these ups and downs and he could have or should have talked to me about all this instead of handling it the way he did and just disappearing and leaving me to handle a cancelled wedding and all the humiliation and stress. He made me believe he liked looking after me, which I think played into the dynamic of me not getting help.
My head (and all my friends) are telling me that there's no coming back from the way he handled this and all the hurt he caused by just disappearing and doing it to me three times, but despite all that my heart won't let go.
I really want to just find an answer that feels right for me. Should I give up and move on? Or should I try and find forgiveness and patience and keep hoping for a result that might never come?