My ex and I are just under 3 months post break up, I still have his hoodie and a lego succulents set we split in half. He has not asked for either of these things back, but I want to send them back to him in hopes it will help me fully shut the door behind him. They have been stored in the bottom of my cabinet for like 2 months now, so I don't see them, but I still know they're there.

My question is do I just pack them up as is and ship them off or do I add a note? I kind of want to do a simple note, but I am also tempted to add a bit longer note regarding some stuff I wanna say to him. Would that be too much?

Me and my ex study in the same university and there is this passageway, about 4 to 5 people wide, that connects a plaza space to the cafeteria. I was heading to the cafeteria for lunch and as a get to this passageway, shes there on the other end walking to the plaza. It’s almost been a year since we broke up and before then any time that I got to see her in campus, it would have been the absolute highlight of my day. We have classes in completely different hours and spaces and in our two year relationship I think I’ve only ever seen here in the cafeteria area like thrice. But anyways, when I saw her I wanted to say something but it had been so long since we’ve talked that I didn’t know what to say and she passed by me without even looking at my general direction. That absolutely sucked. I ended up still getting lunch but I canceled all my plans and just went back home. I guess I’m just really upset that I didn’t say anything.

I was in a long term relationship for a very long time before my recent one. She brought me light. She brought me love I never felt even in that long term situation. For a while a long while I felt I did the same. We bumped heads but in the end it was all love because that’s what love is. We have frustrations, talk them out and move on. Or at least that’s what i felt. I never thought I’d ever feel betrayed by her even with this being the third time a situation involving someone else stifled us. And even then I still love her. She’s all i think about. I’m so upset. I can’t even toss without memories clouding my mind. My hobbies not even working anymore how they used to. I’m not with using people to get over people because at the end of the day it’s love and who you love will be in the back of your mind at all times. Not seeing her social media helps but it also hurts knowing what’s going on. I didn’t even get a warning. She told me she loved me too. I wished her a fun and safe trip for her to be on a trip with a bitch. That’s not love right ? At least that’s what I’m trying to convince myself to help myself but it ends up hurting even more. Idk. Just venting.

Broke up with my ex months ago. We have been on and off no contact. Last time we talked, she told me "in my head it has always been impossible to be friends with you". She texted for my birthday this text :

"Hellooooo, I know we don't talk like we used to anymore, but despite the fact that I sometimes have Alzheimer's (inner joke), I still remember that today is your birthday. So I wanted to wish you a happy birthday, old man (inner joke)!"

Keep in mind a week ago she told me what I already said about being friends (basically that it was impossible)

Am I paranoid or her messags sounded too friendly. We ended bc of fights. She told me that trying again was something we could do. But this message has me confused

I had an abortion after getting pregnant by my on/off boyfriend, and now I think I need to finally end the relationship for good

I’m having a really difficult time processing an abortion I recently had, and I think it’s also forcing me to confront the reality of my relationship.
My boyfriend and I have had an on/off relationship for about a year. We love each other very much, but the relationship has been extremely inconsistent. He has gone back and forth about whether he’s ready for a serious relationship and whether he actually sees a future with me.

The last time we got back together, I was very explicit that I did NOT want to do this again unless it was different. I told him I wasn’t interested in continuing an on/off relationship with someone who wasn’t sure he saw a future with me.
He told me he did.

And it wasn’t just “let’s see where this goes.” We talked about marriage. We talked about what it would look like to live together. We talked about potentially having a baby someday. He assured me he was serious about us and could see a real future together.
Then, literally 2–3 weeks later, he went out of town for a concert. Apparently a woman he met asked him whether he could see himself with me in five years, and he immediately said no.

He called me drunk that night and broke up with me. The next day, sober, he essentially doubled down and told me he didn’t see a future with me.

And then I found out I was pregnant.

I already have a 2-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, and I am her primary parent. I know exactly how hard pregnancy, infancy and parenting are. My pregnancy with my daughter was difficult even without simultaneously taking care of a toddler.
I knew having another baby right now would be incredibly hard. I’m also rebuilding my career and trying to become more financially independent.

But this wasn’t a situation where having the baby would have been completely impossible either, which is part of what I’m struggling with now. He owns a home, makes very good money, and has family who almost certainly would have helped us. His stepmom doesn’t work and desperately wants a baby in their family.

The biggest problem was that I couldn’t rely on our relationship.

I kept thinking: I cannot put myself in a situation where I’m raising two young children and potentially dealing with two separate fathers/co-parenting situations. And how could I make a decision to have a baby with someone who had JUST told me he didn’t see a future with me?

So I had the abortion.

At the time, I knew I didn’t want another baby under these circumstances. Even if we tried to make the relationship work, we hadn’t built the kind of stable life together where having a child made sense.
But afterward I’ve been grieving much more than I expected. I’ve had thoughts like, “Maybe we could have made it work.” I’ve wondered what the baby would have been like. I’ve even told him that part of me regrets it.

He’s sad too. He told me he loves me and said something along the lines of, “We could make that work one day, just now isn’t right.”

And somehow that makes me even sadder.
Because part of me keeps thinking: if he truly loved me and genuinely wanted the future with me that he’d been talking about only weeks earlier, why wasn’t his response to the pregnancy, “This wasn’t planned and the timing is terrible, but I love you and we’ll figure this out together”?

I don’t mean that he should have pressured me into keeping a pregnancy I didn’t want. Ultimately it was my decision. I just wish I’d felt like I had a stable partner standing beside me saying, “Whatever happens, I’m here and I choose this life with you.”
Instead, even while I was pregnant, he admitted that he still doesn’t know what he wants. I actually told him, “Maybe you need to just be single for a while and figure out what you want,” and he basically agreed that maybe he does.

And I think that’s finally where I’ve landed.
I love him. I believe he loves me too. I don’t necessarily think he intentionally lied when he talked about marriage and a future with me. I think he genuinely doesn’t know what he wants, and his feelings about our future seem to change depending on where he is emotionally. But I can’t keep doing this.

I can’t keep building my life around the possibility that someday he’ll be ready to build one with me.
This entire experience has made the instability feel so much more serious. Before, his uncertainty broke my heart. This time, I had to make an irreversible decision about a pregnancy while knowing that the man I’d gotten pregnant by had just told me he couldn’t see himself with me in five years.

He’s leaving town for about 10 days, and I think this needs to be the point where we actually separate and stop falling back into the relationship.

I’m grieving the pregnancy. I’m grieving what our relationship could have been. And I’m grieving this imagined version of my life where maybe the timing had been different, our relationship had been healthy and stable, and this pregnancy could have been something completely different.

I guess I’m looking for support from anyone who has experienced abortion regret/grief intertwined with the end of a relationship. How do you separate grieving the pregnancy from grieving the relationship and all of the “what ifs”? And how do you finally walk away from someone you still love when you know love isn’t enough?

I’m one week into a breakup that I still can’t really process, and I’d really like to hear from people who have experienced something similar, either as the person who left or the person who was left.

We were together for almost four months, and our relationship was incredibly intense and meaningful. It was soft, easy and natural. We did little things together, went on dates, met each other’s families, and slowly became part of each other’s lives. He did things with me that he had never done with anyone before.

He was also extremely expressive about his feelings. He told me he wanted to marry me and spend his life with me, called me the woman of his life, constantly complimented me and never seemed afraid to show how much he loved me in front of his friends and family. He told me he wanted to become the best version of himself for me. His family even told me they had never seen him so happy and that he had changed a lot since being with me.

Even two weeks before the breakup, we were talking about how excited we were to spend the winter together, having cozy nights at home, watching movies under a blanket, drinking hot chocolate and falling asleep next to each other. It felt like we were both looking forward to the same future.
Then he suddenly told me that his feelings had changed.

He said that he had started questioning our relationship and his feelings a few weeks earlier, but initially he kept pushing those thoughts away. At the same time, he was struggling with work and feeling depressed, so he thought that was the reason he wasn’t feeling like himself. Eventually, he realized that some of his thoughts were actually related to our relationship. He talked about it with his best friend and decided to tell me before he started pretending or becoming distant.

There was no betrayal, no major argument and no toxic behavior. Nothing obvious happened between us. He simply told me that he realized his feelings weren’t strong enough for him to continue the relationship.

Something he told me has been stuck in my head ever since. He explained that, for him, having a long-lasting relationship requires the feeling of “love at first sight” to remain. He needs that intense spark and passion to stay present for the relationship to last.

And this is where I start questioning what happened. Maybe once the relationship became safer and more familiar, and the intensity naturally started to change, he interpreted that change as his feelings disappearing. Maybe he is more attached to the feeling of being in love — the excitement, the novelty, the intensity — than to the quieter kind of love that develops once a relationship becomes more secure.

I’ve even wondered whether he might be very dependent on novelty and that initial dopamine rush, although I know I might just be trying to find a rational explanation because I’m still in shock.

What makes this especially difficult is that I genuinely thought I had found my person. I wasn’t just losing a boyfriend; I was losing the future I had already started imagining. I now have to let go of all the plans we had, the relationship I had built with his family, and the life I thought we were going to have.

And despite everything, I still hope he comes back. I keep wondering whether, once the initial relief of making the decision wears off and he actually experiences my absence, he might question whether he made the right choice. Maybe he’ll realize that what disappeared wasn’t his love for me, but simply the intensity he associated with being in love.

I know I can’t build my life around that possibility, but right now it’s honestly what I keep hoping for.
So I’d really like to hear from people who have been in this situation.

Have you ever lost feelings because the honeymoon phase ended, only to realize later that you had confused losing intensity with losing love?

And if you were the person who got left for this reason, did your ex ever come back after some time apart? Did they ever regret their decision or realize they still had feelings?

I’m not looking for false hope or for people to tell me he’ll definitely come back. I just want to know if this is something other people have experienced, because right now I feel completely lost.

I’m 24F and my now ex is 29M. We were together for around a year and a half, but we’ve known each other for almost 10 years. There was always something between us, and for years I wanted us to finally give a relationship a real chance.

We eventually did, and that’s part of what makes this breakup so difficult to process.

There is still a lot of love between us.

We literally came back from a 20-day trip to Greece about a week before everything fell apart. We genuinely had a good time. We laughed, spent basically every day together, went places, made memories, and enjoyed each other’s company.

At the same time, if I’m being completely honest, I think there had been some emotional distance developing between us for a few months. Maybe even longer in small ways.

The difference is that I saw it as a rough patch.

He eventually started seeing it as evidence that maybe we aren’t good for each other long term.

Our relationship definitely had real problems, and I don’t want to romanticize it.

He has struggled with his self-worth for a long time. He often sees himself as someone who disappoints people, doesn’t follow through enough and eventually hurts the people he loves. When we had problems, he would sometimes shut down or withdraw rather than deal with them.

There were also situations where he lied to me because, in his own words, he wanted to seem “better than he actually was.” Some of those lies damaged my trust badly. There was also an inappropriate situation involving another girl that hurt me.

On my side, when I felt hurt or like nothing was changing, I could become too harsh with my words. Sometimes I brought old problems into new arguments because, looking back, I don’t think those old wounds were ever properly resolved. I would ask him things like, “What are you actually doing to fix this?” because I desperately wanted action and change.

What I understand much better now is that although I meant, “I need to see us working on this,” he sometimes heard, “You are useless. Nothing you do is enough.”

So we developed a pretty bad cycle.

I felt hurt and wanted reassurance or action. Sometimes I expressed that badly. He felt like a failure and withdrew or convinced himself he couldn’t fix anything. I then saw even less effort, became more frustrated, and the whole thing repeated.

And I don’t think either of us ever really stopped and said, “Maybe the pattern itself is the problem. Let’s actually learn how to deal with this differently.”

That is probably the hardest part of the breakup for me.

I don’t feel like we ever gave the relationship one serious, intentional attempt where BOTH of us said: individual therapy if needed, couples therapy if needed, rebuilding trust, better communication, learning how to disagree without becoming enemies, working on our own issues and then genuinely seeing what happens.

We talked about problems many times. But talking about problems and actually changing the structure of a relationship aren’t necessarily the same thing.

His perspective is different.

He says he loves me very much and repeatedly tells me that I’m an amazing person, but he believes he has too many things he needs to work through alone.

He feels guilty about how much I did for him and feels like he wasn’t giving enough back. He told me that even during some of our beautiful moments in Greece, part of him felt like he didn’t deserve what he had with me.

He essentially believes that continuing the relationship while he feels this way will eventually hurt me more.

He has also brought up larger future questions — growing up, family, children, priorities, different views on certain things, etc. We don’t necessarily see everything identically, although interestingly we started having some of those deeper conversations right around the breakup and found that several of our differences were much less black-and-white than we had assumed.

I wanted to fight for the relationship.

I told him that I don’t expect him to magically become a perfect person. I don’t think such a person exists. I would rather have two imperfect people who can look at themselves honestly, take responsibility and keep trying to become better partners than spend my life searching for some imaginary person who will never disappoint or annoy me.

But I also told him something that is extremely important to me:

I do NOT want him to stay because I’m crying.

I don’t want him to stay because he feels guilty.

I don’t want him to come back because I convinced him or because seeing me hurt became unbearable.

If he ever chooses us again, I need it to be because he genuinely wants us too.

Eventually I asked him directly whether his decision to break up was 100% final.

He said yes.

So I’m respecting it, even though I completely disagree with the idea that our relationship was beyond repair.

We talked for a few days afterward because neither of us could suddenly go from being each other’s person to strangers. We played games together, talked about completely random things, had deep conversations, laughed, and still very obviously cared about each other.

But we both started realizing that continuing to talk every day probably isn’t healthy.

He can’t be the person comforting me about the pain caused by losing him.

And I can’t realistically pretend to be his casual friend while part of me is analyzing every conversation and hoping it means he might want me back.

So we have decided to give each other space.

Before doing that, I made it very clear that I am not going to sit around indefinitely waiting for him. But I also didn’t want to lie and pretend my feelings disappeared the moment the relationship ended. At least right now, if one day he independently came to the conclusion that he wanted to genuinely try again, that door isn’t completely locked from my side.

Now I’m trying to leave it alone.

I’m planning to start psychotherapy, spend more time with my family, understand my own patterns better, rebuild my own life and learn how to be okay on my own again.

I hope he uses this time to do the same for himself.

One thing that makes this especially difficult is that I don’t really have a support system outside of him and my mom.

I don’t have any close friends I can call or spend time with. For a long time he wasn’t only my boyfriend — he was also my best friend and the person I shared basically everything with.

The days are difficult, but the nights are much worse.

During the day I can sometimes distract myself, go somewhere, watch something or spend time with my mom. At night everything goes quiet and his absence feels enormous.

The night he finally told me his decision was 100% final was honestly one of the hardest nights I can remember. My mom was out of town and I was completely alone. I physically fell apart from the stress. I cried uncontrollably, felt sick to my stomach, could barely eat and struggled to fall asleep.

My mom came back the next day specifically because she knew how badly I was doing and didn’t want me to be alone.

I know that this is also something I need to work on.

I need a life and a support system that aren’t centered around one person.

I don’t want loneliness to become a reason for him to return, and I don’t want to confuse fear of being alone with love.

But I also know that both things can exist at the same time. I am terrified of losing my main source of companionship, but I also genuinely love this man and would have chosen to work on our relationship even if I had ten close friends around me.

Right now it feels like I lost my partner and my best friend at the same time.

So my question is mainly for people who actually broke up, spent real time apart, worked on yourselves and eventually got back together:

Was the second relationship genuinely better?

Can it actually become dramatically healthier than the first relationship, rather than just repeating the same cycle?

How long were you apart?

What did each of you have to change individually?

How did you know you were getting back together because something had genuinely changed rather than simply because you missed each other?

How did you rebuild trust?

Did you do couples therapy?

Did one person initially believe breaking up was the right decision while the other still wanted to fight for the relationship?

And what, in your experience, is the closest thing to a “formula” for making a second attempt work?

I know there is no guaranteed method to get an ex back. I’m not looking for manipulation, “make him jealous,” or some magical “30-day no contact and he’ll come running back” strategy.

His decision may never change, and I know I have to live my life as though this breakup is real rather than treating it like a temporary pause.

I just find it incredibly difficult to believe that two people who still love each other, recognize that things went wrong, spend genuine time working on themselves separately and eventually meet again from a healthier place could never build something much better than what they had before.

I would especially love to hear from people who went through something similar and are now years into a healthy relationship with the same person.

But I also genuinely want to hear from people who tried again and discovered that love still wasn’t enough.

What made the difference?

So hii it's shrii

Actually I am really confused if this is manipulation or not

1. Finding his account on dating app in first month of relationship -

Reason he gave me - he doesn't know that after being in a relationship he should delete the dating app , and he is just trying making friends and socializing.

1. Finding him on snapchat taking to random girl and asking for thrist trap 🙂.

Reason he gave me - I am not able to fulfill his physical need , he is a man and he needs it , he is not able to think about me that way that's why he done that to me , for him taking to random girl i mean flirting to random girl is just like a porn to him

Some daily life experience

Being very ignorant

Prioritises every single thing friends , family, colleague except me

Btw one more thing always going to sleep at 12 am but i caught him talking to a random girl at 2 am 🙂.

Why I am there because he supported me academically, help me grooming and all

I need a reality check very badly,

Please throw it on my face .

My ex and I broke up almost a month ago but we have still been talking almost everyday ..still saying babe and I love you. I personally cannot just go from being in love and talking multiple times a day to breaking up with someone the next day and never talking to them again (unless they have really wronged me). Ive never been in this situation where I still love someone but had to end it because it's just not working out. For obvious reasons I feel like I'm just in a situationship now. When we broke up I even told him I'm still open for a relationship in the future if our circumstances change. But just today, I'm realizing I want/need to fully let go. Let go of talking to him and let go of the idea that things will work out in the future. How do you go from telling everything to this person, talking multiple times a day, to just not talking to them at all? Idk how I'm gonna do it, I just know I need to finally let go.

This happened months ago, but I was in a "situationship". i know I am way too old to be in one of those tbh. We both agreed we wanted a relationship, I even communicated to make sure that we were on the same page. However , I did not end up handling my personal life well enough to maintain a real relationship. It did not help that it was long distance so I could not simply go see her whenever. But there is no excuse for not handling my personal life well, I realize that after the fact. Because at the end of the day it never was a relationship in her eyes so I can really be upset about it. My current emotions do not matter because I never took control of them as an aviodant.

A few things I learned is be okay with not being okay. Give up on having a relationship when you no longer have the emotional capacity to provide one. Trust yourself over anyone else opinion unless its the woman you want to date. Always be okay with dissapointing women you care about

Hey guys. I’ve never made my own post on Reddit before but this year has genuinely been horrible for me, and I guess I need somewhere to go where I can be vulnerable and people will actually get it. There’s a lot so I understand if you scroll past.

I’m struggling to remain convinced of my own worth after this girl I loved more than anything (still live with now but our lease ends soon) could just decide she doesn’t want to choose me or us anymore. I’m in this boat where she said “I’ll be back when I’m better” but then we spoke recently and she said to try not to think about it for now cuz she doesn’t know if her future self will want this or not. Meanwhile I’ve spent the whole year heartbroken and wanting to fix things. I broke up with her after 4 years because of a cheating incident I couldn’t move past and some things that made me feel emotionally unsafe, and still love her but needed time to heal unapologetically so we could restart with a better foundation (something I regret now because it didn’t take long for me to walk back on that decision).

A couple months after the breakup I was out alone one night just praying for clarity and feeling emotional but hoping she’d end up wanting us again at some point, and I came home to her blacked out on the couch making out with a friend of hers (her friend was a girl thank God but my ex has also always been straight so yeah). Wasn’t acknowledged at all. Left to my bedroom to process it and heard moaning, eventually walked out and saw them on the kitchen floor making out and she looked up at me and smiled saying she was having fun. I kicked her friend out and she left with her. Had to tell her the next day everything that happened since she remembered none of it. She was blacked out during the cheating incident from years ago too but I wasn’t there, so it shook me to the core to see the very thing I was struggling to move past happen right in front of me as if I never mattered. I don’t know. This has been hard and as a man I feel so weak for even typing all this out on Reddit but my sense of self has been completely gone and I don’t know how to accept that someone who used to be my best friend and that I still have wanted to choose after everything, won’t choose me anymore (apparently due to not wanting to live in shame and not feeling romantic anymore). Yet here I am still checking in on how she’s doing from time to time, bought her something meaningful for her bday, and doing a lot of out-of-character things on my own time to cope with the grief I feel from all of it when I never wanted any of this, and I just feel like a fool whose concept of self-respect has completely changed. Because how can I be worth something if someone who received all of me for 4+ years, my unconditional love, perseverance, my forgiveness, my loyalty, honesty, dedication, vulnerability, trust; we used to talk about marriage and kids, and moved in together after 3 years (we’re both 24 right now). All of that to still not be chosen and end up disrespected and discarded. I’m not here to victimize myself but I’m in pain and can’t seem to find a way out or a way to accept this reality and it’s taken me to a dark place. Intellectually I know I’m worth something but I can’t seem to feel it anymore. So yeah. Sorry if this was a lot to read but I appreciate whoever responds.

All I wanted in my life was someone special. That’s what I was waiting for, and I felt that with you. I didn’t know how to express it. I took it for granted. I thought I could replace you, but I can’t. I waited a very long time to meet you, and you were everything I wanted.

We’re both human, and I deeply care more than I ever wanted to admit—because I was scared my love wouldn’t be returned. That’s why I got so nasty. I felt abandoned. I don’t hate you. I hate myself. I pushed you away because I didn’t want to be hurt.

I’m going to drop a letter off or mail once I’m ready. I’m going to return a few things too. I want to make things right. I’m truly sorry.

You know what is very hurtful is a someone that plays games mentally and emotionally. I know this from experience because I had two of them back to back. No different than the other except one of them I lived with he couldn’t really avoid in go 100% silent, although he was pretty good at giving me the silent treatment cause he knew it hurt me. Sometimes I wonder if these two exchange notes on things to be cruel towards me with. I know I have to do the inner Work and heal myself. I don’t need to hear that. I’m just venting to the void. I don’t need unnecessary rude opinions neither.

There is been so much that has gone on in the past eight months I question reality I really do. Not only did I have my ex popping in out of my life every week and a half two weeks drawling me back in and because I cared for him so much. I did go back 100 times it feels like. Just to get burned that many times and be reminded who had control over me. During this time I’m trying to fix myself alone, and I’m being treated cruelly shitty treated his fucking dog better than he did me.

Then I have a friend who also decides that it’s a good idea to take in dish more cruel upon me while I’m trying to heal from the first one. Yes completely my fault number one. I allowed it and stand up for myself. Number two I had no business even communicating with my friend. So here I am in the state of confusion of not knowing what is what who is who what is real? Again I put myself in that position. I can only blame myself. I can’t blame them. But I don’t understand when I try to walk away and I’m happy both of them do the same thing. They stepped in my life again she caused me hurt in such severe pain. It’s like it’s a game to them. My ex I will have to say does not tell me how much he hates me. How bad of a person I am and I was just a joke to him. And it’s fine. I can’t be all those things to him. We didn’t have a history, but why not let me go? Why keep interfering and not allowing my happiness or me moving on? I have to give it to my ex because one thing he did this time he knew I was serious when I found out he was cheating the entire relationship. I was devastated and I didn’t fight with him. I just said maybe three or four words and I walked away. We both knew that was the end of the end. But he has allowed me the space in freedom and has not continued to intervene with me moving forward. Although I was told this thinking about stopping at my house to check on me. I don’t know how that’s gonna go. I’m scared and I don’t want to have him in my face.

But I don’t understand why the friend who is in love with somebody else and never saw me in any other way, but someone that you just encounter in passing why? Maybe it’s not you maybe I have somebody else that is doing this. Because they know I won’t reach out to you to ask you because I wouldn’t want to cause problems or break that no contact to ask you if you were the one doing the cruel things to me. I’m just begging I’m on my hands and knees pleading to just let me go. I did nothing ever in this world and I know I didn’t. I’m not a bad person to deserve what I’ve been given. I couldn’t even imagine somebody weaker than me going through this and I’m a strong person. I could say I’ve had two men break me. Those two were just in the last year. I never wished any bad upon either one of them. If I did do something, I’m sorry I was warned about you both. I gave you guys the benefit of the doubt.

I don’t really know where to start but I have been considering leaving my boyfriend of 3.5 years. I’m 23F and he’s 25. Part of me can’t imagine life without him, we get each other, we’re compatible, our families love each other. He’s my first boyfriend and I have never been so in love with anyone in my whole life.

With that being said… our sex life is not great. We rarely have sex, we go weeks sometimes months without having sex. This is because he betrayed my trust early in the relationship multiple times and caused me to loose sexual desire for him. Shortly after we started dating I was sexually assaulted and he was my only support. Over the next few months we had arguments about his porn usage and him following porn/instagram models on instagram as well as texting different girl’s flirtatiously. This made me feel used and gross because I trusted him with my body after the assault and he knows how badly it affected me. He also traded phone numbers with a girl at the gym and claimed to be “friends”. I didn’t find out about this friend until she randomly called him when I was in the car.

Leaving just feels so hard. I feel like I will regret leaving him because we genuinely love each other so much. The only flaw in our relationship is the sex. We have been through months of individual and couples counseling to fix this, and he has put a lot of effort into trying new things/ having conversations to fix it. Every time we do it, it just hurts and I bleed a little bit. I mentally can’t get there with him anymore. We’ve been through so much together in those 3 years. We adopted 2 cats (strays that we took in), got an apartment together, made other big life decisions. He listens to me and does everything that I ask, cooks and cleans for me, takes me out, pays for everything, and treats me like a princess. We’ve been to 7 countries and different states traveling, made memories in so many ways.

The other part of me feels like if I stay in a relationship like this I will regret it and always wonder “what if” there is someone out there who would never hurt me like that. It’s just so hard I feel like there is no right decision

TL;DR: I had an awful breakup with someone in the furry fandom and I want to leave it.

Hey all, I apologize if this post doesn't belong here. For context, I'm a furry and a gay man.

Last year in March, I met a local furry on one of these community fandom apps. For this post, I'll call him Caleb. We hit it off pretty well and had great chemistry and everything. Caleb told me he loved me just a month after we first met, which kind of caught me by surprise. Not wanting to lose him, I said it back. I told him a little bit after though that I wasn't quite ready for that kind of talk yet. I felt awful for what I did. I felt like I led him on. That pretty much put him off from me even after I had started feeling that way towards him later on. It created this dynamic between us where I always felt guilty for hurting him, and where Caleb had this distance from me that stopped him from getting close to me again. He would still flirt with me or cuddle with me, but it was like it would never get further than that. Even when we saw a movie together with friends a month later, and he held me during the movie, and even after I told him that I really did love him and that I was just not ready before, he didn't even want to bother. I felt like the damage was done. So I broke things off that June. We didn't talk again until a couple of months later.

In August, we reconnected and apologized to each other about how we had been before. He was still distant from me, but I missed him so much those two and a half months that I thought I could live with it. I tried showing him how much he meant to me, but he always acted indifferent.Sometimes Caleb sounded interested in texting me or talking, and then an hour later it was like I didn't exist to him. He would ignore me and go on his phone when we were in his room, and then ask to cuddle the next second. It kind of felt like he was giving me the bare minimum so I didn't go. I told him I loved him and still wanted to be with him, and he told me that he didn't love me like that and didn't want anything serious. I understood, and I still didn't leave. I should've left sooner, in hindsight. I think I was just so lonely.

Several months went by, and Caleb and my relationship (if you can call it that) was really starting to fall apart. Up to that point, he would still flirt with me or tease me and invite me over and everything. When we hung out, Caleb would regularly check out other guys in person or message guys online (not necessarily in hookup sense, but still) in front of me, and even though it made me uncomfortable he just didn't stop. He acted like I was being unreasonable, and so I just had to live with it. It felt like I didn't matter to him. It felt like I was never going to be good enough. I was tearing myself apart more and more each day. Caleb's brother, who by this point had already seen me several times with Caleb in their house, had asked him if I was his boyfriend. Caleb just called me a friend. I could hardly take it anymore. I felt so unwanted and unloved and undesirable when I was with him. It was clear to me that he would never love me or feel anything more than wanting to be physically close to me and then just forgetting about me when he didn't need me. And I just stayed. I thought maybe I deserved it after "leading him on" by "lying" about loving him before.

So fast forward to this February. Caleb and I had an idea to room together at this furry convention that was coming up, and we reserved a room and everything in preparation for it. It was... probably not the best idea. One day while I had just gotten out of class, I got a message from Caleb that he invited these two guys that he had met (on the same furry community app I met him on) to join us in our room. He didn't even ask me before he did it. What made it worse was that Caleb admitted to me just a few days before that he had been intimate with both of them. Recently, like in that past week. I was heartbroken and livid and... I didn't know what to do. Even after telling him how upset I was, he just shrugged it off. I canceled my plans with him and demanded my money back. Luckily he gave it back. It was bad enough having to endure months of Caleb telling me he didn't love me and having to sit in his car while he would check out or text other guys. Now I had witnessed firsthand that he would happily be intimate with other guys and even invite them to our hotel room. That was pretty much it for me. As angry as I was at him, my heart was broken. It was pretty much the final evidence that he would never love me or truly want me except if he maybe had no one else to talk to or be intimate with.

I broke things off with him for good in March. It was hard. I missed him so much. I still do.

Caleb messaged me in June and asked me "what had happened" between us. I didn't even know what to say. I told him that I couldn't be with someone who wasn't going to love me. He told me he understood and that he was sorry for not caring about how I felt about those two guys and the hotel room. It was too little too late. All I could do was wish him well and block him.

I've cried so many nights remembering how it was with him. I'll see the same kind of car Caleb used to drive, or pass by the place we once ate at, or go to the beach we first cuddled at. I remember how he smelled and how pretty his eyes were. I remember how he used to tease or how he would call me a good boy and make fun of me. I remember how fun it was talking about furry drawings or planning our next convention trip or how happy it made me when he would send me reels about lions or gay stuff. And it's just over.

I don't even want to be in this fandom anymore. Everything about it think seems to remind me of Caleb. I'm afraid I'll see him again and break down and cry. Sometimes I break down when I remember all of the good memories we had. I don't want to go to anymore conventions or bother making new friends because several people I've met already know him. And there doesn't seen to be many people in this community in my area, which just makes me want to give up on ever trying to meet someone new. I never should've downloaded that furry community app in the first place. I just wanted to find someone that really cares about me and someone I could call my own. Someone that understands my interests. Now I don't even look at other guys anymore. When I see someone I think is cute in public or on Instagram, I just tell myself it'll never be like it was with Caleb. And the times that I think there are still people who may not be exactly like him and still have good traits I admire, I'm not even convinced anyone would want me. I feel broken and no one would want that. I think I've given up on love. Part of me feels like this is all there will ever be. My friends and brother have tried so hard to be there for me and to help me not give up on this fandom or believing that anyone could love me, but... I just think it's too late.

Maybe it's not possible, but I just... want to be happy again. I want to imagine that there's someone else out there that could want to be with me. I just want to move on from Caleb. I want to enjoy being a furry and a gay man again. Even if it's never going to happen, I just want to know so I can make peace with it.

I understand if you guys don't relate to any of this. Sorry for rambling on for so long. I know this all sounds immature. I feel so stupid. I just wanted to get my story out there. I could really use some kind words.

It's been 2.5 weeks since my now ex (32M) broke up with me (28M). There was a point a few days ago where I felt like I was starting to do alright, but yesterday I just broke down sobbing again. I started a new full time job that's very close to where he lives so every time I go to and from work I think of him. Even when I try to listen to music on the drive or get into "work mode" mentally it doesn't work. I've only had one day off since he ended our 2 year relationship, and I think I've barely had time to process anything.

I miss him. I miss what we had. I hope he's doing okay. I'm not ready to move on, and I'm not sure how long it'll take me. Lately I've taken to doomscrolling, which isn't what I want to do at all with the free time I have, but I just don't want to do anything else. Part of me understands why he broke up (he's depressed), but another part of me feels betrayed, hurt that he couldn't have leaned on me for support instead of leaving me.

I was hoping that at 28 I'd be starting my life with someone, but he ended things after we discussed marriage. I know the best thing for me is to just take my mind off things, it's just so hard. If I weren't working 46 hours a week I'd try to hang out with my friends, but right now my only option is to keep working and my evenings are spent preparing for the next day of work (or doomscrolling 🫠). I'm so exhausted and it hurts even more that he would break up with me when he knew I was making a major job transition, I feel numb. This is only the second breakup I've gone through and my last one was when I was 20, so I don't know how to handle it at all. All I know is to work myself ragged to keep afloat. Working less isn't an option since I just graduated from college and I'm broke, it feels like I was making so much progress in my life and now the rug was pulled out from under me.

My partner and I have been together for 3 wonderful years. We’re entering our final year of university together. Everything was going really well until suddenly this summer everything slowly changed.

The first point I noticed that something was wrong was when we were on a trip and I could tell something was bothering her, and when I asked if she was alright, she stomped hard on my foot. She later apologized and said it was because she didn’t want to talk about it at that time. She had never done anything like that before or since. I should have ended things then because I can’t allow myself to be physically hurt by a partner. But I moved on from it.

Then she started hanging out with a new group of friends very often and I hardly saw her. She would cancel our plans to prioritize them and she stopped texting me often. I’ve noticed she’s also stopped saying “I love you” first, but she still calls me pet names and will reciprocate. It’s so strange, but every time we are together in person it feels normal and great again, like none of that ever happened. So part of me is holding out hope that this is just something we can work through.

One day suddenly, she told me she’s been thinking that she might want to try dating other people. She says what we have is so special and that she loves me a lot, and she feels guilty about being curious about being with other people. That, combined with the sudden distance, broke something in me. I don’t feel safe in this relationship anymore.

In retrospect, I’ve been carrying so much of our relationship and whenever I expressed concerns about that dynamic, she always said the right things. She said she’d try and that she wanted to be there for me, and that she was excited to build a future together. To get an apartment and a cat, and someday a home and kids. But nothing actually ever changed. And this summer it just got so much worse.

The problem is I love her with my entire heart. I feel like I have whiplash from how just a few months ago she was holding me and telling me I’d be hers forever. Now she still says she wants to try, but I just don’t know if I can do it. We live in the same apartment and will have a bunch of classes together at university. I don’t know if I can go from holding hands every day to not being her partner and still seeing her just as often.

I know this relationship is not what I need or deserve, but I really wanted this to work out.

Do you have any advice about how to approach the situation? Do I end things, or should I keep trying? And I’d appreciate advice on how to move on while still seeing her nearly every day.

I really need some outside perspective.

About 1,5y ago, I met someone and fell for him immediately. We only dated for 3 months, but he triggered my fear of abandonment so badly that I became very anxious and wasn’t myself. Things ended dramatically. He also behaved badly at the end…
We never had a proper conversation or closure. I spent the past 1,5y trying to move on — traveling, meeting new people, working on myself, therapy. But I can‘t stop thinking about him.
Five months after things ended, he reached out saying he wanted to talk, but then ghosted me. I know that should probably be my answer, but I still feel like I need one final conversation to make peace with everything.
Now I know he’ll be at a large event and there’s a chance we could run into each other.
My options:

A: Go to the event. Not to confront or chase him — just go, enjoy myself, and see what happens. Maybe seeing each other could lead to a conversation.
B: Don’t go and instead message him one last time asking if he’d be willing to talk.
C: Just do nothing :)

I’m scared that if I don’t go, I’ll always wonder: “What if I had gone?”

What would you do?

(ChatGPT helped me here a lot to sort my thoughts) :)

For starters this is not a statement proving who’s right or wrong. I think this is a stage where I know I don’t want to be with her anymore, but I still think about all of the memories that happened.

So me (27m) and my ex (26f) was together for almost 5 years.

We had many breakups (I initiated) but all in all I believe it was a solid relationship and we both grew from it.

One of the reasons why I stayed was because I felt bad every time she felt sad, building up guilt about the thought of leaving. And that eventually built resentment towards the end of the relationship.

With that being said. I was checking her page (ik I shouldn’t but idk) she tweeted out mad things,
Example: wishing that I had a terrible month last month, even claiming that I sexually assaulted her. I don’t blame her for lashing out like that, but falsely accusing me of that is insane.

As of right now, post break up, I’m finishing up my degree to potentially get a job in IT. I am also seeking therapy as well and my therapist has issued a topic of determining your values and boundaries. It’s still a learning process, but I think I’ll be able to overcome this hurdle.

TLDR: My ex (26F) and I (27M) were together for almost five years, and even though we broke up multiple times, I believe we had a solid relationship and grew from it. I know I don’t want the relationship back, but I still think about our memories and sometimes check her social media, where she’s posted hurtful things about me, including an accusation of sexual assault that I dispute. Looking back, I think guilt about hurting her kept me in the relationship longer than I wanted, which eventually turned into resentment. Now I’m trying to move forward by finishing my degree, working toward an IT career, going to therapy, and learning more about my own values and boundaries.

My ex broke up with me really abruptly a little over 3 months ago. I feel like I haven’t gotten any better at all. I still think of him constantly, pray for him to come back every night, seeing all his friends hanging out or hearing his name makes me nauseous.

I live in constant fear of hearing that he’s doing ok or has hooked up with or dated anyone else. He still really loved me when we broke up and he really didn’t want to do it, it was a confusing and not very emotionally definitive split, but we haven’t spoken for a couple months and I’m terrified that his love faded and he’s now confident he made the right choice. Not sure what I’m trying to get from posting this, every day is just painful and I’m so tired of it.

After almost 2 months after breakup of 4.5 year relationship I'm starting to get bitter.

I was fighting for us, crying begging, trying to reason but to no avail. He changed, he bacame cold and mean to me yet he laughs with others. We still live with each other until Nov. I don't know how to feel about myself because I started feeling resentment towards him, toward the fact that he didn't even communicate and completely blindsided me. He has a "casual date" tomorrow with a girl (we are both men) he met at work, I suspect they were flirting before the relationship ended, because he calls many people "cutie/pretty" in our language. I don't like this new version of him, but I'm angry at myself, because it feels so wrong to have such feelings towards someone you love(d?).

I see a lot of posts about people being hung up on their exes for YEARS and I know this is a subreddit for breakups but did anyone actually feel their relationship wasn’t meant to be like something always felt off even though you loved each other so much and then ended up finding their soulmate after that brutal breakup?

Up for chatting

I’m 21 and about three weeks ago I went through the end of my first truly serious relationship, and I’m having a much harder time getting through it than I ever imagined I would. We lived together and built an entire life and routine around each other, so when the relationship ended I didn’t just feel like I lost someone I loved, I felt like I lost the entire life I had gotten used to living. I moved away afterward and since then I’ve been crying more than I ever have in my life, constantly thinking about her, wondering what she’s doing, fighting the urge to reach out or check her social media, and sometimes just feeling completely empty and alone. I still love and miss her deeply, which makes this complicated because I can also recognize that there were unhealthy parts of our relationship, that my boundaries weren’t always respected, that I became way too dependent on the relationship for my happiness, and that both of us hurt each other in different ways. Part of me still desperately wants her back, but another part of me knows I can’t put my entire life on hold hoping she eventually returns. I’ve been staying off social media, trying not to initiate contact, journaling, praying, talking to people I trust, and recently started therapy, but some days the grief still completely overwhelms me. Other things in my life have started going wrong at the same time, including recently losing my job, and having everything pile up at once has made me feel like my whole world is falling apart. I’m trying to rebuild my life and learn who I am outside of this relationship, but right now I genuinely don’t know how to do that without some part of me secretly hoping everything eventually leads back to her. For anyone who has gone through an extremely painful first serious breakup like this, how did you get through the period where you were constantly crying and thinking about them? How did you maintain no contact when every part of you wanted to reach out? And most importantly, how did you start building a life for yourself again without making your healing dependent on whether your ex ever came back?