Me [F] him [M], both mid 30's, together four years. Can't get a handle on my feelings and am looking for advice

This morning my partner of four years told me that he wanted to split up. That he loves me, but that his gut is telling him that it’s for the best that we no longer be together. We’ve had ongoing problems, and we’re unable to continue therapy at the moment due to COVID. He told me he feels like he’s done too much damage to the relationship. I know the right thing to do is respect that. I’m not going to argue someone’s gut feeling. We just always told each other that we would never leave unless we’d exhausted all other options. Because we loved and appreciated the other person so much that we knew we could get through anything. We’ve had 3 therapy appointments, and they were all centered around one specific problem. I do not feel that every option was exhausted. What I do feel, is given up on. I have put up with and pulled through so many of his lies and… I could go on and on with what I’ve put up with, but I know this isn’t about that... This is about him. This is about him feeling like he’s reached the limit of what he’s willing to deal with. And I just don’t know how to deal with feeling like I’m not as important to him as he is/was to me, and that isn’t the partner that I thought I had. I understand. I completely get it. I just thought we were working through the things together.

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Neither one of us have anywhere else to go immediately so we’ll have to live together until we can figure out our next move. I’ve had one moment of intense sobbing today, but I’m trying to focus on acceptance. It’s hard. I never anticipated losing him and I don’t want to. I can’t imagine my life without him. He tried to break up with me once a few months ago, and not speaking for a single day made him change his mind, because he missed me so much. I know this isn’t like that. We’re mostly each trying to find things to do separately in the same space. I can recognize the mild shock I’m in. He was the love of my life. I’ve never seen any previous partners as anyone I could really imagine my life with for the long run. I know my… ex… feels the same. I know his heart is breaking too. But I can recognize that we were breaking each other’s hearts in little ways while together. We didn’t want to and we didn’t mean to… Yet we bear the scars. We love each other so much. We tried really hard being the people that we are, and trying to curtail parts of ourselves and compromise, like people are supposed to. But it took a lot out of us to deal with the issues. I just never ever thought we would stop trying. He has dragged me to some depths…

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But again, I don’t want to think about what I have done or was willing to do for him. I don’t want to compare anything. I just want to let him go. I want to never have to see him again so that I don’t have to reignite these feelings. I want to rid myself of everything I conceivably can that reminds me of him. I want to move on. I’m trying to motivate myself to feel these things wholly. Because really right now I just want him back. I want us back. I want the two people against the world who can find a way to deal with anything. But I also don’t want to change his mind. If this is what he feels like he needs to do, the right thing to do is to make it as easy as possible for both of us to separate our lives. So that’s what I’m doing. I signed some Transfer of Responsibility forms today and it felt like I was signing divorce papers.

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I’m really, really, trying to keep my mind off of all the things I’m going to miss. When I get to my own therapy, I think that’s something I’ll have to probably visit, to get through it and let it go. But this is killing me. Our lives are so intertwined and our interests overlap so much, that I feel like I’ll have to cut out so many goddamn things in order to get rid of the reminders. We’ve worked out how to separate a few things so far today. We’re being civil but I let him know that I didn’t want to talk about things more than we needed to. We’re figuring out food and bills. I know that everything I’m feeling is normal and right and what I’m supposed to go through. I just don’t feel like we were at the end of our time. I don’t feel like it was supposed to end this way, or at all, and I’m torn. I don’t want to feel like I didn’t fight to save this. But I also don’t want to feel like I pushed someone to feel something for a moment, that they don’t actually want. I don’t know what he actually wants. He has a history of not actually knowing what he wants until after it’s too late.

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He lied for a long time, and repeatedly, for years, about different things. We had so many rounds of confessions after I would find evidence of something he was hiding and lying about every time I asked. And it made it very difficult for me to trust him. I trusted him a lot, with a lot of things, but I was always worried that any situation could bring the next opportunity for him to hurt me again. And he got tired of me worrying. And I don’t blame him. And I think that therapy is the right step to address that. And I thought he felt the same way. But I guess he just had too much and lost the motivation to want to try. He’s been telling me for days that everything is alright and we’re just going through some hard things and we’ll be okay. To tell me this today has been blindsiding. He’s a really good guy. I’m really going to miss him more than I know I can even comprehend at this moment in time.

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I’ve started looking for available places to rent in the area. Unfortunately, for what I can afford, it’s all located in dangerous areas and it looks like I would have to abandon the cat I rescued 5 years ago. I’m very grateful that he still goes in for the regular work week while I work from home, because I’m sure we could benefit from some time physically apart. But we’re in the midst of the weekend, and I’m mostly trying to avoid being in the same room as him, and we’re both smoking and drinking too much because we don’t know what else to do right now and it just hurts. He said, “I’m going to miss you. I’m really going to miss you. We aren’t even living apart and I already miss you. I just feel like it’s for the best. I’m sorry.” And all I could muster was to say that I understand. I’m not going to lie to him and say I feel the same way or that I wholeheartedly support his decision. But I do understand. He’s told me that he wouldn’t have put up with everything that I’ve put up with if our roles were reversed, that he would have left me by now. So I probably should have expected this more. But I feel miserable right now. And I really don’t want to ever feel like I made the wrong decision in how I handled this.

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But his brave face is helping me detach. Reminding myself that he didn’t exhaust every option, and therefore I do not mean what I thought I did to him, is what I’m trying to make into my guiding light. Because I know that I don’t want anyone who doesn’t want me. I know that. And while I understand to a certain point that he does want me, and he’s just overwhelmed by the struggle, I can’t understand the getting rid of someone part. I can’t understand giving up and saying that you don’t want to continue to try with the person you claim you’re in love with. Maybe I’ve just never had such overwhelming personal struggles and I’ve just always been the person in all my personal relationships who’s already ready and just trying to make things great. In romantic relationships, that means dealing with the “demons” that are creating current issues. Not everybody wants to do that, I get that. I did some of that on my own, and I truly don’t think that I would have been able to evolve like that if I had been in a relationship with someone at the time. And maybe he just needs to be alone so that he can work on his shit, like he says. But it’s tearing my heart out.

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He just came up to me and asked if he could ask me a question. He asked me if it was bad that he hopes that after he “fixes himself” that we could try to be together. I told him that I didn’t know what to think about that at all. But it makes me feel different things. 1) I know that I want to be with him. It seems, that he essentially believes that not being with me will make it easier for him to deal with the issues he knows he has. And if that is how I get to be with him, I should go that route and wait. 2) I’m afraid that waiting around painfully for some indeterminate amount of time, for someone to maybe decide that they have the ability to be with me, would make me feel like more of fool than I’ve already felt like. I don’t believe he’s trying to string me along or anything and I do believe everything he’s saying is sincere. 3) I’m pissed off, because he originally said that he feels like he has done too much damage to the relationship, and that’s why he feels he needs to end it. Now, he’s telling me that he feels the relationship may be salvageable and that he would like to try at again at a later date. 4) And it’s not like I can just pause myself or my life or my feelings! And I feel like that’s his ideal situation. Freeze time and freeze my actions and reactions and just go find himself and feel better and come back and resume right where we left off, but better. I don’t function like that I KNOW that I don’t. “Ride or die” and “be there for and through everything with each other” are things I actually live by. So many things can happen after people split up that would make them not want to get back together. I’m upset that he’s risking that, and that he doesn’t want to keep trying to work through our issues with me.

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~~~ Update the next day after I slept on the couch ~~~~

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We’ve spoken some more, and it’s changed my outlook on things a bit. He has an addiction, and it’s what many of the lies have been about. I’ve known this, and we’ve taken good steps, but maybe not enough of them. Or maybe no amount of steps we took together would be enough to help him, and this NEEDS to be something he does on his own. That right there is what is breaking my heart. He’s telling me that he’s been trading transparency for self-preservation in our relationship. Meaning that he chose, in a way, to downplay the struggles he was having, so that I didn’t have to deal with “his bullshit.” Meanwhile, “the struggle was strong with this one,” and I sensed how it was changing him, and I was living with it constantly, and he was denying it constantly. He was telling me that everything I was noticing and sensing and feeling wasn’t coming from him, but rather was my own insecurities. And that’s completely unfair when you know damn well that you’re dealing with something that your partner is clearly seeing that. There is a level of responsibility there, when you love and respect someone. My relationship policy has always been that your problems and my problems are our problems. And he agrees with that concept. But he’s aware that he’s still willing to internalize things rather than let us address them, and internalizing has lead to bad feelings and actions. Including me essentially questioning my own skills of observation and my own gut feelings.

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He has started the steps to get into addiction therapy, which is wonderful. He said he doesn’t want to separate, but that he doesn’t want to drag me through more inevitable relapses that he’ll have on his journey. He’s going to have to heal wounds he’s had for decades, and I just always thought I would be there with him through it. And him for mine. But he says he sees how much he’s hurting me and that he knows that until he can figure out what he needs to figure out, I’ll just keep getting hurt and he can’t bear that. And I appreciate the sentiment. Very much. Everyone before has just taken advantage of me in some way until I hated them, until I was easily done with and over the relationship. I never want to hate him. He’s more special to me than anybody I’ve ever met. And he feels the same way. And neither of us want this and we’re both trying to be the best person we can be. But I’m afraid I’ll try to hang on for something and never get him back. Or that too many things will have happened for one or both of us in the meantime, for it to make sense anymore. I know we’ll always love each other, but I’m afraid that life will go on without each other and we may never be together again. I can’t just be his friend… I can’t just sit around and try to make some semblance of a life for myself “in the meantime,” and wish him well and focus on other shit. I don’t know how to do something like that. And he’s told me that he doesn’t want to find anybody else, he just wants to fix himself and come back as the best version of him, for us.

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And how can I argue that? How can I do anything but give my blessing without coming off as some kind of bitch? I want what’s for the best… I just want to be able to FEEL like this is for the best. I want to wake up in the morning and feel like going our separate ways to work on ourselves is the right thing to do. I just can’t shake that it’s something people do together. But I also understand where he’s coming from so much…. Fuck this hurts. It seems like the ultimate, righteous summation after writing this out, is that I am grateful that he recognizes that I will become a casualty of his recovery. I am grateful that he would spare us that hardship. I am grateful that he would put up with missing me so that he didn’t have to hurt me in a greater way. I am grateful that he’s openly communicating with me and being honest about what he feels and what he wants and what he’s going through, even though it hurts us both. I’m grateful that I have been willing to open up and say a few things I know I needed to say, to get them out and let them go and also let him know where I’m honestly coming from. I’m grateful that I love someone who wants to be a better version of themselves, while also trying to preserve our chance of finding our way back to each other in the future. It just hurts so much. I am so terrified that life will happen and it will never be. That we’ve already had our happiest times without ever hitting our full potential. That one of us won’t feel the same way afterwards. And I’m having a really hard time. But I do know that I need to allow him to heal without him having to worry about me.

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tl;dr I've just been broken up with and while I understand, all of my feelings are everywhere and I'm just looking for some sound, helpful, grounding advice right now in the midst of the turmoil.

Submitted April 06, 2020 at 12:17AM

This morning my partner of four years told me that he wanted to split up. That he loves me, but that his gut is telling him that it’s for the best that we no longer be together. We’ve had ongoing problems, and we’re unable to continue therapy at the moment due to COVID. He told me he feels like he’s done too much damage to the relationship. I know the right thing to do is respect that. I’m not going to argue someone’s gut feeling. We just always told each other that we would never leave unless we’d exhausted all other options. Because we loved and appreciated the other person so much that we knew we could get through anything. We’ve had 3 therapy appointments, and they were all centered around one specific problem. I do not feel that every option was exhausted. What I do feel, is given up on. I have put up with and pulled through so many of his lies and… I could go on and on with what I’ve put up with, but I know this isn’t about that... This is about him. This is about him feeling like he’s reached the limit of what he’s willing to deal with. And I just don’t know how to deal with feeling like I’m not as important to him as he is/was to me, and that isn’t the partner that I thought I had. I understand. I completely get it. I just thought we were working through the things together.​Neither one of us have anywhere else to go immediately so we’ll have to live together until we can figure out our next move. I’ve had one moment of intense sobbing today, but I’m trying to focus on acceptance. It’s hard. I never anticipated losing him and I don’t want to. I can’t imagine my life without him. He tried to break up with me once a few months ago, and not speaking for a single day made him change his mind, because he missed me so much. I know this isn’t like that. We’re mostly each trying to find things to do separately in the same space. I can recognize the mild shock I’m in. He was the love of my life. I’ve never seen any previous partners as anyone I could really imagine my life with for the long run. I know my… ex… feels the same. I know his heart is breaking too. But I can recognize that we were breaking each other’s hearts in little ways while together. We didn’t want to and we didn’t mean to… Yet we bear the scars. We love each other so much. We tried really hard being the people that we are, and trying to curtail parts of ourselves and compromise, like people are supposed to. But it took a lot out of us to deal with the issues. I just never ever thought we would stop trying. He has dragged me to some depths…​But again, I don’t want to think about what I have done or was willing to do for him. I don’t want to compare anything. I just want to let him go. I want to never have to see him again so that I don’t have to reignite these feelings. I want to rid myself of everything I conceivably can that reminds me of him. I want to move on. I’m trying to motivate myself to feel these things wholly. Because really right now I just want him back. I want us back. I want the two people against the world who can find a way to deal with anything. But I also don’t want to change his mind. If this is what he feels like he needs to do, the right thing to do is to make it as easy as possible for both of us to separate our lives. So that’s what I’m doing. I signed some Transfer of Responsibility forms today and it felt like I was signing divorce papers.​I’m really, really, trying to keep my mind off of all the things I’m going to miss. When I get to my own therapy, I think that’s something I’ll have to probably visit, to get through it and let it go. But this is killing me. Our lives are so intertwined and our interests overlap so much, that I feel like I’ll have to cut out so many goddamn things in order to get rid of the reminders. We’ve worked out how to separate a few things so far today. We’re being civil but I let him know that I didn’t want to talk about things more than we needed to. We’re figuring out food and bills. I know that everything I’m feeling is normal and right and what I’m supposed to go through. I just don’t feel like we were at the end of our time. I don’t feel like it was supposed to end this way, or at all, and I’m torn. I don’t want to feel like I didn’t fight to save this. But I also don’t want to feel like I pushed someone to feel something for a moment, that they don’t actually want. I don’t know what he actually wants. He has a history of not actually knowing what he wants until after it’s too late.​He lied for a long time, and repeatedly, for years, about different things. We had so many rounds of confessions after I would find evidence of something he was hiding and lying about every time I asked. And it made it very difficult for me to trust him. I trusted him a lot, with a lot of things, but I was always worried that any situation could bring the next opportunity for him to hurt me again. And he got tired of me worrying. And I don’t blame him. And I think that therapy is the right step to address that. And I thought he felt the same way. But I guess he just had too much and lost the motivation to want to try. He’s been telling me for days that everything is alright and we’re just going through some hard things and we’ll be okay. To tell me this today has been blindsiding. He’s a really good guy. I’m really going to miss him more than I know I can even comprehend at this moment in time.​I’ve started looking for available places to rent in the area. Unfortunately, for what I can afford, it’s all located in dangerous areas and it looks like I would have to abandon the cat I rescued 5 years ago. I’m very grateful that he still goes in for the regular work week while I work from home, because I’m sure we could benefit from some time physically apart. But we’re in the midst of the weekend, and I’m mostly trying to avoid being in the same room as him, and we’re both smoking and drinking too much because we don’t know what else to do right now and it just hurts. He said, “I’m going to miss you. I’m really going to miss you. We aren’t even living apart and I already miss you. I just feel like it’s for the best. I’m sorry.” And all I could muster was to say that I understand. I’m not going to lie to him and say I feel the same way or that I wholeheartedly support his decision. But I do understand. He’s told me that he wouldn’t have put up with everything that I’ve put up with if our roles were reversed, that he would have left me by now. So I probably should have expected this more. But I feel miserable right now. And I really don’t want to ever feel like I made the wrong decision in how I handled this.​But his brave face is helping me detach. Reminding myself that he didn’t exhaust every option, and therefore I do not mean what I thought I did to him, is what I’m trying to make into my guiding light. Because I know that I don’t want anyone who doesn’t want me. I know that. And while I understand to a certain point that he does want me, and he’s just overwhelmed by the struggle, I can’t understand the getting rid of someone part. I can’t understand giving up and saying that you don’t want to continue to try with the person you claim you’re in love with. Maybe I’ve just never had such overwhelming personal struggles and I’ve just always been the person in all my personal relationships who’s already ready and just trying to make things great. In romantic relationships, that means dealing with the “demons” that are creating current issues. Not everybody wants to do that, I get that. I did some of that on my own, and I truly don’t think that I would have been able to evolve like that if I had been in a relationship with someone at the time. And maybe he just needs to be alone so that he can work on his shit, like he says. But it’s tearing my heart out.​He just came up to me and asked if he could ask me a question. He asked me if it was bad that he hopes that after he “fixes himself” that we could try to be together. I told him that I didn’t know what to think about that at all. But it makes me feel different things. 1) I know that I want to be with him. It seems, that he essentially believes that not being with me will make it easier for him to deal with the issues he knows he has. And if that is how I get to be with him, I should go that route and wait. 2) I’m afraid that waiting around painfully for some indeterminate amount of time, for someone to maybe decide that they have the ability to be with me, would make me feel like more of fool than I’ve already felt like. I don’t believe he’s trying to string me along or anything and I do believe everything he’s saying is sincere. 3) I’m pissed off, because he originally said that he feels like he has done too much damage to the relationship, and that’s why he feels he needs to end it. Now, he’s telling me that he feels the relationship may be salvageable and that he would like to try at again at a later date. 4) And it’s not like I can just pause myself or my life or my feelings! And I feel like that’s his ideal situation. Freeze time and freeze my actions and reactions and just go find himself and feel better and come back and resume right where we left off, but better. I don’t function like that I KNOW that I don’t. “Ride or die” and “be there for and through everything with each other” are things I actually live by. So many things can happen after people split up that would make them not want to get back together. I’m upset that he’s risking that, and that he doesn’t want to keep trying to work through our issues with me.​~~~ Update the next day after I slept on the couch ~~~~​We’ve spoken some more, and it’s changed my outlook on things a bit. He has an addiction, and it’s what many of the lies have been about. I’ve known this, and we’ve taken good steps, but maybe not enough of them. Or maybe no amount of steps we took together would be enough to help him, and this NEEDS to be something he does on his own. That right there is what is breaking my heart. He’s telling me that he’s been trading transparency for self-preservation in our relationship. Meaning that he chose, in a way, to downplay the struggles he was having, so that I didn’t have to deal with “his bullshit.” Meanwhile, “the struggle was strong with this one,” and I sensed how it was changing him, and I was living with it constantly, and he was denying it constantly. He was telling me that everything I was noticing and sensing and feeling wasn’t coming from him, but rather was my own insecurities. And that’s completely unfair when you know damn well that you’re dealing with something that your partner is clearly seeing that. There is a level of responsibility there, when you love and respect someone. My relationship policy has always been that your problems and my problems are our problems. And he agrees with that concept. But he’s aware that he’s still willing to internalize things rather than let us address them, and internalizing has lead to bad feelings and actions. Including me essentially questioning my own skills of observation and my own gut feelings.​He has started the steps to get into addiction therapy, which is wonderful. He said he doesn’t want to separate, but that he doesn’t want to drag me through more inevitable relapses that he’ll have on his journey. He’s going to have to heal wounds he’s had for decades, and I just always thought I would be there with him through it. And him for mine. But he says he sees how much he’s hurting me and that he knows that until he can figure out what he needs to figure out, I’ll just keep getting hurt and he can’t bear that. And I appreciate the sentiment. Very much. Everyone before has just taken advantage of me in some way until I hated them, until I was easily done with and over the relationship. I never want to hate him. He’s more special to me than anybody I’ve ever met. And he feels the same way. And neither of us want this and we’re both trying to be the best person we can be. But I’m afraid I’ll try to hang on for something and never get him back. Or that too many things will have happened for one or both of us in the meantime, for it to make sense anymore. I know we’ll always love each other, but I’m afraid that life will go on without each other and we may never be together again. I can’t just be his friend… I can’t just sit around and try to make some semblance of a life for myself “in the meantime,” and wish him well and focus on other shit. I don’t know how to do something like that. And he’s told me that he doesn’t want to find anybody else, he just wants to fix himself and come back as the best version of him, for us.​And how can I argue that? How can I do anything but give my blessing without coming off as some kind of bitch? I want what’s for the best… I just want to be able to FEEL like this is for the best. I want to wake up in the morning and feel like going our separate ways to work on ourselves is the right thing to do. I just can’t shake that it’s something people do together. But I also understand where he’s coming from so much…. Fuck this hurts. It seems like the ultimate, righteous summation after writing this out, is that I am grateful that he recognizes that I will become a casualty of his recovery. I am grateful that he would spare us that hardship. I am grateful that he would put up with missing me so that he didn’t have to hurt me in a greater way. I am grateful that he’s openly communicating with me and being honest about what he feels and what he wants and what he’s going through, even though it hurts us both. I’m grateful that I have been willing to open up and say a few things I know I needed to say, to get them out and let them go and also let him know where I’m honestly coming from. I’m grateful that I love someone who wants to be a better version of themselves, while also trying to preserve our chance of finding our way back to each other in the future. It just hurts so much. I am so terrified that life will happen and it will never be. That we’ve already had our happiest times without ever hitting our full potential. That one of us won’t feel the same way afterwards. And I’m having a really hard time. But I do know that I need to allow him to heal without him having to worry about me.​tl;dr I've just been broken up with and while I understand, all of my feelings are everywhere and I'm just looking for some sound, helpful, grounding advice right now in the midst of the turmoil.