I'm not sure what I'm looking for here, other than to hear from other women maybe who have been through something similar.
I left my ex 3 years ago.
When we first met, I was in my early 20s and we were both vulnerable, to some degree, and we supported each other. Before he was 30, both of his parents died, his mother committing suicide when he was in his mid 20s. He came from a broken family, with family rifts meaning he had no extended family he could rely on for emotional support from then on.
When we finally got a place of our own in a different part of the U.K, things went from bad to worse, in more than one way which would turn this post into several essays. One of them was that he became more introverted to the point of not wanting any kind of relationship with other people, but he never seemed to want to communicate at length with me either. Short walks around our neighbourhood were often spent with him not really contributing nor really listening either. He almost never wanted to just stay around chatting in a relaxed manner after mealtimes - if he did, he had to be doing something else at the same time, almost to justify doing this to himself, and then he would rush off back to his PC and computer games (which I often felt was the main love of his life, with me being a very comforting, occasionally entertaining side-show that revolved around that).
When we moved to our new town, I encouraged him to join a local hobby group to make fairly like-minded friends in the new area we had moved to. It's not a group you would just find anywhere, so I thought he might have taken the opportunity, but he never did. I suggested we have an allotment, to maybe meet local people and spend direct time together, have a project together. He wasn't interested.
After many years of his grumpiness, moodiness, and many things I haven't mentioned here as it would make the post too long, I left in my mid-30s, with no children.
I now still feel obligated towards him, and he was so low a few months after I left him that I called his local GP and booked an appointment as I was worried. We have stayed in contact mainly because I care about him and he has no one else (but I moved to a different part of the U.K so haven't seen him in person since I left, and neither do I want to do that). He has work colleagues who he has polite small-talk with on the rare occasion he makes a visit into the office, and the occasional hello from a neighbour or two, but that's it.
He really does seem very lonely, and I think he's missing the comforting structure of family and community, yet as a person he seems to have no interest in other people, seems to think they have nothing to offer him. He doesn't seem to want to understand that you have to make an effort to make connections - they won't just fall into your lap, and people get tired of chasing if they feel someone's just not interested. It's not that he's just depressed that I've left him - he's of course sad about that as he wanted to have children too, but the moodiness and and extreme introvert nature goes back years before that, and these traits are holding him back so much. It's just so sad. :(