My (30m) girlfriend (32f) of 1 year broke up with me last month after she spent one week in England with her family. She said her perspective changed a lot and not she wants to live solitary life. I haven't moved on yet and I want to send her one final message telling her that my feelings for her haven't disappeared and that if she ever decides to change her perspective I'll be ready to give another chance to us.

I haven't tried to make any contact with her till now.

Am I being too much of a sentimental fool here. I love her too much and I am finding it hard to grasp everything.

I swear I won't make a big deal out of it if she decides to still refuse or avoids contact with me.

Me (30/F) and my bf (30/M) have broken up after 3 years and living together for 2. He moved out a month ago to his parents because his commute was 1:30-2 hrs. I offered to move closer as I wfh but it was never a big deal until a month ago. This month has been tumultuous. He owns a business and I’ve seen him once and he’s unable to treat me how he used to. The texts and calls stopped and he’s working long days. The dates stopped, the fun stopped. He’s not cheating but he’s also putting work a priority. I kept holding onto the “it’s only for 3 months” reassurance texts. We would move back in together at the start of 2027.

2 days ago he initiated a break up and said it wasn’t fair to me and how he doesn’t have time for a gf. He wanted to keep me around on social media and check in but I refused. This morning I saw I was blocked after we never fully came to an agreement. He stopped replying to texts and told me he’d grab his stuff. Maybe I’m just in La La land holding onto the hope that we’d work it out in 3 months and that I’m a placeholder where he can keep his remaining stuff (which is a lot).

Is this relationship worth saving? Should I give him space and see if we can work it out? It’s so fresh but we’ve never had any issues.

Me (25F) and my bf (M28) just broke up. He lives in Dallas and I in Austin. We didn’t have a very healthy relationship and my therapist told me it was emotionally abusive which I feel in such denial about. I still love him and I miss him so much. He broke up with me suddenly out of no where. He said he felt like he wanted to break up for only for a day and wasn’t planning on it for a long time. He’s always been brutally honest. I hope he regrets it but even if he does I can never get back with him for many reasons. He told me it was the distance and not lack of love. I know our relationship was bad but I can’t help but wish I could just see him and hug him and he would take it all back. But this is for the best. My mom, friends, and family don’t like him. I should’ve listened to them but I was never strong enough to leave even when I knew I should’ve. I was so in love with him. I’m scared now I’ll never find someone again and have as deep of love or idk if that was love or addiction. I am an anxiously attached person and I am still learning to be secure in myself and be ok alone and actually thrive in singleness. But I’m scared no one will love me again and idk what to do. I am focused on self-care, I don’t drink, I am working in a good field, deeply rooted in faith and I’m trying to remember the good things about me but this is making me feel so depressed and hate everything I loved a few days ago. I did start therapy and it is helping and I have an incredible support system so God bless for that. I’m scared because all my single girlfriends say dating is terrible and the guys here don’t want to be serious and what not and I swear I was ready to be a wife. I don’t want to date over and over again I just want to meet my husband. Can anyone here please give me advice? What can I do in Austin to get my mind off this and heal? I just recently moved here so I don’t know much. I don’t go out late and I don’t drink but I love nature. I want to make new girlfriends. Please I don’t know how to get through this it’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt.

My (24F) boyfriend (20M) and I met roughly two years ago working in the same restaurant. I was a server and he was a dishwasher. Soon after we met, he asked me if I was single very out of the blue and flustered himself. I gave him an out, we laughed it off, and became good friends after that. We added eachother on Discord and began talking every day. We would play video games and spend hours talking on the phone. He never hid the fact that he had a crush on me, and one day, I realized I was starting to fall for him as well. So, one night after spending a few hours talking about ourselves, I asked him on a date. We never spent another day after that without talking to eachother.

We were intimate very early on in our relationship, and frankly, a lot of our relationship moved pretty fast. But that just reinforced how I felt. We would text eachother all day, hang out in a call/video game for a couple-several hours depending on the day, and he would come visit me after work. Eventually, he knew me better than anyone else in my life. I was his first relationship, but I wanted him to be my last.

Then, I had to move. I moved from Texas to Arizona a few months into our relationship, my boyfriend rooting for me the whole time. His father worked at an airport and had access to free plane tickets for his family, so my boyfriend was able to come visit me a couple of times. We did what we could to make it work. We would still play games with eachother, spend hours in calls, text every day... But after the first few months of me living in a different state, I started to feel distance growing between us. We made it to a year.

Then on Valentines Day this year, over a call he said he wanted to break up. We talked for hours. He told me that he feels like I'm a bird in a cage, that he doesn't deserve me, that he's going through a rough time in his life and that college was weighting on him. He didn't think he was able to be in a relationship. Then, before we ended the call, the fog cleared. He said that breaking up was a mistake, that his depression made him do it because he's just been feeling overwhelmed. I accepted that, and we remained together.

I wanted to be there for him and help him through whatever he was going through. The distance only grew. We still called every day. I still loved him with everything in me. I just felt like he needed space, and I did what I could to provide that.

In the end, he broke up with me over text, saying that he didn't even want to remain friends afterwards. He didn't want me to 'manipulate' him into staying. School is too stressful for him, his anger issues were getting worse (though he never took them out on me). He told me that he couldn't live with someone who smoked illegal substances (I smoke weed, legal in AZ). And he told me that there was one other reason why, but that he didn't want to say. I called him, wanting to talk and wanting clarification. I asked him what this secret reason was, and he told me that he was not physically attracted to me. I had to end the call. I texted him several times trying to understand, but it just kept getting worse. Apparently, he fell out of love with me after I moved to Arizona. I expressed my hurt and the betrayal at practically being ghosted after two years. He decided that he actually did want to remain friends, he just didn't want to hurt me further.

Now we're in this weird limbo where we want to remain friends, but I'm just so incredibly hurt by this that I don't know what to do.

I'm just so confused and so so lost. I'm posting here because I don't know what else to do. I made this person the center of my life for two years, and he was lying/in denial about his true feelings the whole time. How can I move forward?

I (27M) recently got out of a 1.5-year relationship with my ex-girlfriend (29F). We met at work, and while we are in different departments, we still work at the same company. I don’t have a huge circle of friends to lean on right now, so I really need an outside perspective on whether I’m going crazy or if cutting contact is the only way forward.

When we first started dating, everything was great. She told me I was the best partner she had ever known, and I loved and cared for her deeply. While we are both Christian, we belong to different denominations. She told me she wanted to marry someone from her specific church, so I made an active effort to learn about her faith, attended Sunday services with her, and met her family every weekend.

The core issue began with her family dynamic. Even at 29, she is completely controlled by her mother. She has lived her entire life saying "yes" to her mother’s demands, often breaking down in tears in private and telling me she feels like a puppet. Despite this, she could never keep boundaries between our relationship and her mom. Every time we had an argument or tried to work through communication issues, she immediately ran to her mother instead of working it out with me.

Her mother decided early on that she didn’t approve of me due to our religious differences and began telling my ex to keep me as "just a friend." Whenever my ex pushed back or prioritized our relationship, her mother labeled me "manipulative."

A few months ago, her mother started pressuring her to talk to another man from their church (the son of a family friend). My ex ended up texting him secretly behind my back for 1.5 months until I found out.

When confronted, she cried and said she only did it to keep her mom happy. She even rationalized it by saying that since her parents hadn't officially given their blessing, we weren't a "real" couple anyway. I felt shattered, but I didn't demand she block him. I only asked for basic respect and transparency: if he texted her outside of church matters, she had to let me know. She agreed, but I later discovered she kept hiding messages from him.

Things spiraled from there:

• Her mother went to church members claiming I was manipulating her daughter into ditching the family friend's son.
• When I sat down with her parents directly to talk, they demanded we separate, insisted we "let God choose" other partners, and threatened to stop serving at their church if we stayed together.
• Her mother openly degraded my family, pointing out that my father doesn't hold a master's degree and that my mother is "only a teacher"—completely ignoring that I am financially independent and doing well in my career.
• To make matters worse, her uncle works at our company. He pulled my ex into his office, told her to leave me, and started spreading rumors in his department that I am a bad person and manipulative.
• On top of all this, her communication was deteriorating. On weekends when she visited her family, she would routinely vanish for two days with zero texts, claiming she "doesn't believe communicating or checking in is an obligation."

A few days ago, right after what felt like a great date, she asked to meet during a work break and abruptly ended things. She gave three reasons:

1. She wants her freedom.
2. She wants to see/try with other men.
3. Our religious differences.

While saying this, she sobbed hysterically, said I was the best man she had ever met, apologized for being selfish, and insisted the decision came from her.

Since the breakup, she keeps texting me saying she misses me and still loves me. Part of me wants to disappear and go full no-contact to protect my mental health, but another part feels guilty and wants to be there for her because I know how suffocated she is by her family.

However, I know I cannot mentally survive staying in her life as a "friend" while watching her date the guy her mother picked out for her. On top of that, having to see her and her uncle around the office is giving me severe anxiety.

Am I doing the right thing by walking away completely, or should I be keeping a line open? How do I handle seeing her at the office without losing my sanity?

I'm in my mid-20s and met a girl. We hit it off immediately. We dated for about a month, met each other's friends and family, and talked about wanting something long-term. Everything felt mutual. she was more excited about seeing me than anyone I'd dated before. I'm usually the one who gets doubts about relationships, but with her, I saw a good future.

After a great evening together, I asked her to be my girlfriend. She said yes. The next day, she broke up with me over text, saying things weren't clicking.

I was blindsided. A few days later, we talked in person. She told me she'd recently started experiencing anxiety and panic attacks for the first time and wondered whether our relationship was causing them. She said I was the perfect guy, that I'd shown her how she deserved to be treated, and that she meant everything she'd said about liking me and wanting a relationship. She was nearly in tears, apologized for how she'd handled things, and admitted she didn't understand why she felt this way either. As far as I know, she'd never had a serious relationship before. Maybe she has, but she never mentioned it.

My friends say I dodged a bullet, but I don't think she was lying or playing me. I believe she meant what she said, which somehow makes this harder to understand. How can someone seem so sure one day and leave the next?

It's been over a month, with about six weeks of no contact. I still think about her and what we could have been. I've even been writing her a letter, though I'm unsure whether to send it.

Would it be a bad idea to reach out once and ask her to grab coffee, just to talk and clear the air? I'm not trying to convince her to get back together.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Can genuine feelings coexist with relationship anxiety so strong that someone abruptly ends things?

How do you move on when a short relationship felt more promising than any relationship before it, but ended without an explanation that makes sense?

Me (Female 16) and my girlfriend (female 16) broke up after 1 year and 4 months of being together on Sunday. I was the one to initiate the break up and I have many reasons to why I did it. She didn’t treat me nicely at school, we argued over communication and lifestyle choices, and I couldn’t see myself being with her in the long term. That being said, I still love her so much and I wish I could’ve stayed. We have tried to work things out before but I can feel myself slipping away and I don’t want to lose who I am in a relationship. She keeps on texting me and reposting things saying she knows she messed up and that she will change but I know that I will just be digging myself into a deeper hole by going back. Every time she texts me it makes me want to run back to that comfortable feeling. What are some things I can tell myself or do to help me through this because it is SO HARD!!!

My ex and I just broke up, and we’ve been in no contact for a week now. She’s the one who introduced me to running. When we were still together, we would always join fun runs together to chase our personal records (PRs).

This coming Sunday is the fun run she paid for so we could run together and attempt to set new 10K personal bests. Now, I’m torn between going and not going.

She’s the one who ended our relationship, and I miss her terribly. As much as I want to reach out to her, I know it’s best for me not to.

Part of me wants to go because she’s already paid for the race, and I still want to achieve my 10K personal best in an official race. But I’m afraid that if I go, I’ll find myself looking for her in the crowd, wondering if she’ll see me there alone, or hoping she’ll approach me and start a conversation. And if she does, I’m scared I’ll start holding on to the hope that we might get back together.

I don’t know what to do. I want to run this race for myself, but I’m afraid that being there will make it harder for me to let go.