Hi, I'm a man in my early 40's. I've had a relationship with a woman of a similar age for the last 2 years. I have 2 children she has 1, we both have them about half the time, but still managed a reasonable amount of time together.
For the most part it has been very good and we both had hopes for the future. We had a big falling out a few months back, where she stopped making the effort to meet up for a while, then on a holiday together after a little argument she said she wanted to split up. I left it for a day, then I went back and asked if she really wanted that, she said no and we talked about a few things and moved on. Her main issues linked back to a family holiday with all of our children where she found it tough to keep up with 5 people being around.
A few weeks back my best friend died out of the blue. It's been the worst time of my life and I've been really miserable and irritable ever since. At first she was supportive and spoke about it, came to give me hugs etc. I keep telling her since then that I'm struggling and need to take it easy, and am sharing how upsetting the different stages in the process are. She keeps picking arguments about things which don't seem that significant, like things I've said on messages, or going back to chats from a few days ago and complaining about things. I keep telling her I don't have the energy for these type of discussions and she needs to give me more space and not pile more stress on to me.
It came to a head the other night, where she sent me a message during the day saying she was sorry she'd added more stress and would try to be more supportive. When I got to her house she was clearly very angry, but originally wouldn't say why. After a while she said it was because of a message I'd sent earlier. I said to her, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, we need to stop these conversations, I'm struggling enough already, I can't keep having these fights, I'm too upset already. She wouldn't listen and kept arguing and arguing. I left to do a planned activity for a bit, when I came back I told her how broken and empty I had felt since our chat. She still wouldn't back down and wanted to argue, so I left and went back to my home. She rang later to check I was OK, we ended up arguing, and she hung up on me because she said she didn't like the way I was speaking to her.
The next day she deleted me off Facebook without saying anything. This was yesterday.
To say I felt let down is an understatement. I thought she was so much better than this. My initial thinking is that I've dodged a bullet here and someone who can't support me at a time like this is not worth my time. I do also recognise that these situations are tough for everyone and maybe she doesn't mean to cause the damage she does it she just doesn't know any better.
Any advice on where to go next is welcome :)