Does anyone who wasn’t living with their partner before lockdown feel that not seeing them has...

[Thistimeforamerica]

... changed the relationship fundamentally?

I was seeing someone for a year before lockdown started but we both have kids and were not ready to move in. We haven’t seen each other since March 14th. I have had many emotional ups and downs, feelings of resignation and elation, of disconnection and connection, but the overall feeling is disappointment with his frequency and quality of contact with me in order to maintain the relationship at the level it was.

I don’t know if anybody feels the same way?

It’s almost as if he didn’t see the need to maintain the level of closeness we had and is assuming we can pick up where we left off. Don’t get me wrong, we are still very close (like best friends,) but the type of interaction has completely changed.

We used to speak several times a day, now it’s just once, if that. I feel a lot of frequent sexual longing for him but his sex drive has ebbed and flowed (sometimes very intense and sometimes nothing at all.)

Nothing about our lockdown communication has echoed the substance and style of our real life relationship.

And it makes me wonder, will it ever be the same? I feel like I have fallen off a cliff and have a broken heart and my relationship is over but that I don’t know it yet because life has stopped. It’s almost subconscious.

He would tell you nothing has changed for him so I don’t know why I feel this way.

Is anyone feeling the same?

I was with someone for 22 months. We don't live together. He ended it with me at the weekend. The lockdown has been part of the problem. We did communicate a lot at first, then as his work got busier it dwindled. I was shocked when it happened as I really wasn't expecting it. But he's also a commitment phobe, which really didn't help either.

But what reason did he give for ending it? Surely seeing each other again should be the priority, before making a decision like that? Not much has had a chance to happen

9 years and I finished it 3 weeks ago. We lived apart I have a son who is normally away at school and we were waiting to move after he leaves in two years time. We have had a terrible 18 months nobody’s fault and business related but lockdown just killed everything emotion communication everything. It made me see things clearer and I didn’t like what I saw

@Thistimeforamerica he said he felt i wanted more than he could give me right now. He was supposed to come and see me at the weekend but he allegedly broke down. I called him and he told me over the phone that it wasn't working out with us. Such a coward. I did text him the following day to say I wish he'd actually talked to me about how he was feeling so we could have discussed it.

A friend has advised that her and her partner (who lives separately) are no longer communicating much during lockdown. They simply don't have much to say to each other at the moment as they haven't been out etc and therefore have nothing to talk about. Hopefully it will get better when things start getting back to some level of normality!

I can really relate to this. I think subconsciously my brain just couldn’t actually adapt to not seeing him, and interpreted it as the relationship being over, or him not wanting to spend time with me. I had the same sense of connection, disconnection. Logically I knew it was lockdown, but emotionally I just couldn’t adapt. I think we also had different expectations as to level / intensity/ frequency of communication. But if this reassures you in any way, we are now in a bubble and it’s all fine and normal again. All the stress and weird thoughts and endlessly composing break up texts just evaporated. And possibly, another way of looking at it, is maybe he actually has so much faith and confidence in the strength of your relationship that he feels it can be sort of put on hold / hibernate a bit and will survive? Either way, maybe it’s worth trying to talk to him about how you feel. Pre-bubble, I felt a little better when we agreed on and arranged well in advance virtual time together, even if it was just watching a film together once a week. Planning and prioritising this time together made me feel like I was still important in his life.

Been seeing a chap since May last year and yes, the relationship has fundamentally changed. Trying to keep it going mainly by phone has been really tough.

I am considering ending the relationship.

I'm seeing him Friday for a socially distanced walk so we'll see. That will be the third time I have seen him.

It's just very odd having these phone calls where he talks about the Covid stats (after I tell him I purposely avoid them because they make me anxious) and then asks me what I've done, which at the start was just work, then it was a bit of grieving as my dad died, then work plus trying to support my mum. Now I'm home, my work contract has ended, my dad is still dead, my mum still needs support and dp is off playing golf every day and too busy to meet up. He's very routine driven so I have to "book in" to see him.

We can't be a bubble because I have already been a bubble with my mum, and she is vulnerable so I can't take any risks. Plus his reaction to the virus has been so different to mine that I don't really want to go to his house (he doesn't come to mine anyway because it's too untidy and he doesn't like it).