Advice on this

[JJ96]

My gf decided she wanted to go travelling for 4 months, I couldn’t go with her and 6 months before she even went I suggested we split up and see how we’re feeling when she got back. She declined that offer and said she wouldn’t go travelling if we split up. I decided we gave it a go and we agreed to communicate a lot and we will meet half way through her trip.

First 2 weeks she’s in Thailand, communication is awful and I give her an ultimatum, we either try communicating better or we split up and see how things are when you get back…

She said " I don’t want to lose you, I’ll try be better” (the words you want to hear) communication is great for another 2 weeks and I’m feeling confident and better about it all.

3 days ago she moved over to Vietnam, exactly the same situation happened, awful communication.

I call her out on this and say this isn’t working, she agrees, but can’t give me an explanation as to why it’s so difficult for her to communicate, I ask her " do you wanna be single for this trip” answer is no. "Do you want me to meet you for your birthday still?” Answer is I don’t know everything is really hard…

She gives me no reason or explanation as to why things are hard and she leaves me no choice but to focus on myself and tell her we need to go our separate ways. I send this text:

Do you still love me or do you feel different about us since being out there

I know you don’t wanna read this right now Al but I feel like we’re damaging what we have

and the best thing to do is to leave each other alone and see how we feel about ourselves and about each other when you get back.

I’ll always love you, you’re a big part of my life and always will be but I’m feeling resentment towards you. We can’t do this right now and we can’t continue like this

Enjoy all of your travelling, I want you to have the best time and I’m so proud of you and I honestly hope we’ll connect again in the future

She replies: I’ll always love you Monts but yeah I kind of think that is best rn I hope we do reconnect

And that’s it…3.5 years, 4 years in September together.

I haven’t responded and plan not to respond, she has 2.5-3 months left of her travelling until she comes home to reality

What do you advise here? Will no contact be the best thing for this situation, considering she’s across the other side of the world and 8 hours ahead.

Would love your advice, sorry about the long message.

But then again, I probably wouldn't go travelling alone for 4 month if I had someone I really liked back home. It may be your relationship was on the out anyway.

I don't really get this - if, say, op isn't in a position to go travelling for 4 months and won't be any time soon, or if they have no interest in travelling themselves, but it's something that their girlfriend has always wanted to do, a relationship of 3 years ought to be able to survive her going without it being seen as her not caring enough. Why should she give up her opportunity to go just to stay joined at the hip at home with the partner? It's four months out of a potential lifetime together.

It's not often in a person's life (for most people) that it's the right timing to go backpacking. Maybe she'd been planning ig for years even before they met. Maybe it's before she starts her career. I think too often women do put their dreams aside in favour of the big relationship and it's a shame.

It sounds like youve made a boundary for yourself where you won't be strung along. The problem is that you're enforcing this boundary in ways that are unrealistic. Relationships are a risk. In many cases where people felt strung along, it was because they had determined a destination for that relationship and anything short of that was deemed a failure. People change over time and sometimes we don't always change in ways that make us a great match for other people. There is nothing you can do to negate that risk and attempts to do so usually come of as toxic and controlling or just ridiculous.

Just let her enjoy her travelling? She doesn't want or need to be talking to your needy arse all the time.
She's on a lifetime experience, living in the moment. You can talk to her when she gets back.
She was happy to not split up, but as you have suggested it you may have bitten your nose off to spite your own face.

This is ridiculous. I'm married and I still go on trips with my friends annually. I went travelling in the summer for over a month last year without him! DH and I have different interests in terms of where we want to go and what we want to do. We're very much into each other and have been together over a decade. In this case OP's gf had travel plans and he didn't want/wasn't able to go. So she should just give up on her dreams because they're not the same as his? Being in a relationship doesn't mean merging into one person.

This