I know this might seem obvious and it should be obvious to me at my stage. I’m 39. I’m trying to process the end of my relationship with the person I thought was ‘The One’. We’ve been together almost two and a half years. We met right before COVID. I thought I’d met the love of my life, based on the feeling I had. He told me he loved me after about a month and it was pretty intense but after about four months he started to get annoyed with me over things that I didn’t think anyone would ever get annoyed over. He didn’t shout or anything. He would go quiet so I knew something was wrong. He would take longer to reply to texts. Sometimes he wouldn’t reply to a Good morning text for two hours even though usually he’d reply straight away. That sort of thing. Go a bit cold etc. Just generally be silent or moody seeming. I’d ask what was wrong and he’d say nothing until I pushed and pushed. It turned into a pattern but then it also extended to when I hadn’t done something wrong. But even the things I’d done ‘wrong’ weren’t wrong by any normal standards. He would seem dismissive of me, ignore me but not really, go cold etc. It always felt like I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I felt bad. He then started to say he had questions about us working out but he would never tell me exactly why. It was always too vague and I felt like I was always guessing what it was and trying to fix the problem I thought it might be. I also asked if he thought we should break up when he’d say things like that but he always said no. The hot and cold became more cold gradually but I loved him and thought I just wasn’t fixing the issues well enough or I wasn’t listening to him. I should say for context that I grew up in a violent home and was in a violent relationship for most of my 20s. I’ve had various short term inadequate relationships in the meantime. I thought we were it. I realised lately that I felt horrible pretty much all the time. Nervous and anxious, checking my phone to see if he’d responded , rereading messages to see if there were signs. When we got together at first we didn’t have sex for quite a while because he said he couldn’t perform when he really liked someone. Then about a year in the sex became pretty irregular and rare. I kept asking what was wrong but he wouldn’t tell me. He just kept saying that for him sex is psychological. He was mostly really affectionate and said nice things. He kept agreeing to move in together and then backtracking. He just broke up with me but says he still loves me but he’s convinced it won’t work. The breakup was actually caused by me saying he was treating me horribly and I couldn’t put up with any more disrespect. I wasn’t rude about. I somehow thought he’d have more respect for me if I stood up for myself. He gave some vague other new reasons for questioning our relationship such as there are things I think are dangerous that aren’t dangerous. He didn’t give me an example so I’m guessing but I think he meant things like if he’s going off on a hill walking trip I tend to say ‘Be careful’, and something to do with me not knowing an important detail about my best friend (she refuses to tell anyone, not just me). Anyway if you’ve gotten this far, I suppose I want to know if that sounds toxic or if it’s just someone going off someone and having trouble processing it himself. I just feel gutted and I feel like I’ve been treated horribly for a long time but I just don’t know for sure. Can there be an overlap? Does anyone have experience of that. I’m just gutted and trying to get my head straight. Also he always told me he loved me and was saying it first until very recently.