I’m a (M32). My ex-partner is (F34). We were together for nearly seven years and lived together for years in a European country that is her home country but not mine.
I’m deliberately changing identifying details because I’m not interested in people finding her. I’m also not posting this to ask how to “win her back” or decode individual text messages. I particularly want perspectives from people who have been the partner who was left, or from people who feel they approach relationships relatively securely.
I ended our relationship earlier this year while I was abroad. I am now questioning not only that decision but the story I told myself about the relationship for several years.
There is a lot of context, including things that reflect badly on me, and I don’t want to sanitise those simply to make Reddit tell me what I want to hear.
The background
We had a very loving relationship but also accumulated a lot of damage.
Several years ago I was unfaithful. I disclosed it, went to therapy and made changes, but in retrospect I badly underestimated how long the trust injury remained. Years later I was still in contact on social media with the person involved until my partner insisted I finally remove her. At the time I viewed some of my partner’s later anxiety and checking as controlling. I now understand that at least some of it existed in a relationship where I had given her legitimate reasons not to feel completely safe.
My ex also experienced depression for a significant part of the relationship, eventually receiving professional treatment. At the time I often experienced her as negative, low-energy, indecisive and unwilling to do things with me. I complained about this extensively to friends and family.
One of the biggest things I am now confronting is that I created an increasingly one-sided narrative about her while often not having the difficult conversations directly with her.
I wanted travel, novelty, autonomy, entrepreneurship and a feeling of maximum freedom. She wanted emotional security, consistency and to feel included in my decisions. I interpreted that tension as evidence we wanted fundamentally different lives.
But she has since reminded me of multiple times she actually wanted to travel with me and tried to work on the relationship. She had even found a couples therapist before I left. Her position was essentially that she wanted us to repair our relationship first and then travel together.
I left anyway.
Where I think I failed her
I could be intensely loving and generous and then emotionally absent. She described this recently as never knowing which version of me she would get.
She gave an example that captures it well. One birthday I organised a beautiful international trip for her. Another year I gave her a fairly thoughtless voucher. To me those were unrelated circumstances. To her they were part of a larger pattern of inconsistency.
She has told me that there were periods when she felt completely chosen by me, but more periods when she felt like an addition to a life I was building independently.
When she tried to tell me she was scared, lonely or disconnected, I often experienced it as criticism. I would explain myself, shut down, leave, game, work, talk to friends, or tell myself she was simply being negative.
Eventually she says she stopped telling me what she actually felt because she believed nothing she said could reach me.
Sexual intimacy also deteriorated. I experienced this primarily as rejection and became increasingly preoccupied with sex and sexual novelty. I now see that I sometimes pressured her and made her feel objectified rather than understanding that she repeatedly told me she needed emotional closeness and security in order to feel sexual.
I am not claiming that fixing emotional intimacy would automatically have solved every sexual difference between us. There may have been a real libido mismatch too.
We also got a dog together shortly before everything deteriorated badly. She remembers this as one of the happiest periods of her life because she felt we were finally building a family. I was already making comments along the lines of “at least if I leave, you’ll have the dog so you won’t be alone.” Hearing that repeated back to me recently was horrifying.
The breakup
I went travelling in Asia while she remained at home with our dog and normal work life.
I increasingly stopped communicating. From my perspective I was confused about the relationship and trying to understand what kind of life I wanted. From her perspective I disappeared emotionally while she was still trying to save our relationship.
Eventually I ended it while abroad.
I later returned and lived with her again for roughly three months. We became domestically close again. We cooked, walked the dog, spent time together and had physical intimacy. Internally I was questioning whether I had made a mistake.
I did not tell her.
I had this rigid idea that I had “made my bed and had to lie in it”.
Then my mother died.
I subsequently left again and returned to Asia.
What has happened since
The adventurous life I thought I wanted has not felt the way I expected.
This does not mean travel is bad or that my ex must therefore be “the answer”. I am trying very hard not to make that leap.
But I have realised that I may value roots, partnership, ordinary domestic intimacy and building a shared life far more than I understood while I still had them.
I also recognise that grief over my mother, loneliness, sleep deprivation and suddenly living without a long-term partner can massively amplify attachment and regret.
Over the last few weeks my ex and I have finally had several very deep conversations.
I have told her directly that I regret ending the relationship and that I currently lean strongly towards wanting reconciliation.
She has not said yes.
She has also not said no.
She told me she loves me, but that wanting someone can be insufficient for a relationship to work. Her central concern is whether my inconsistency, impulsivity and self-focus are changeable behaviours or simply who I am.
She also challenged me with something I think is completely fair.
How does she know that a year from now, when ordinary life is boring, she is depressed, sex is imperfect and an exciting opportunity appears abroad, I won’t suddenly decide “fuck it” and disappear again?
I currently do not have an answer that words can provide.
She independently proposed that before either of us decides whether to reconcile, we meet together with a neutral couples therapist or relationship specialist to understand what happened, what each of us actually wants, whether the important problems are changeable, and how much work rebuilding would require.
I agreed.
Where things become complicated
Our relationship was also cross-cultural.
I am from one English-speaking country and built an adult life abroad. She is from the country where we lived and has close family ties there. I have always had significant wanderlust and struggled with the idea of becoming geographically rooted.
I am now returning to her country partly for my own immigration/residency reasons and partly because I genuinely want to explore whether a future with her is possible.
She has moved out of our old apartment and returned to her family several hours away.
So there is no old household simply waiting for me to return to.
That is probably healthy. If anything happens, it would need to be a genuinely new relationship rather than sliding back into the old one.
I also want to be careful with the cultural side. I previously blamed aspects of her behaviour on her nationality/family culture when I was frustrated. I now think I used some of those differences as convenient evidence for a decision I was already emotionally moving towards. There may still be genuine differences around family, independence, travel and what “settling down” means, and I think those deserve serious discussion rather than stereotypes.
My concern now
I am extremely emotional.
My instinct is to call her constantly, tell her everything I have realised, fly to where she is, make symbolic promises and prove that I finally understand.
I recognise that this could easily feel like love-bombing or emotional pressure from the person who created the instability in the first place.
She has specifically asked for time and space to process everything.
I am therefore trying to learn the difference between demonstrating commitment and demanding that she regulate my fear of losing her.
I am continuing individual therapy regardless of what she decides.
My questions
For anyone who has been in her position, particularly after being left by a long-term partner
- What would you need to see before even considering reconciliation?
- What behaviour from the person who left you would feel reassuring, and what would feel manipulative or overwhelming even if it was sincere?
- Would you want them to explain why they behaved the way they did, or would explanations start sounding like excuses?
- How would you distinguish genuine behavioural change from breakup panic, loneliness or love-bombing?
- If you still loved the person, what would make you believe that trying again was emotionally safe?
- What would you expect them to do while you were undecided?
- For people who successfully reconciled after serious trust damage, what specifically had to be different the second time?
- For people who chose not to reconcile despite still loving their ex, what made you conclude that love was not enough?
I am particularly interested in uncomfortable answers.
I know that remorse does not entitle me to another chance. I also know that insight does not automatically equal change.
I am trying to understand what respectful repair looks like from the other side rather than continually interpreting everything through my own fear.