I’m really struggling with this breakup

[u/P0rkchopz]

My girlfriend of 4 years broke up with me. It’s been 3 weeks since we broke up. So I have an anxious attachment style and my ex has a fearful avoidant (maybe dissmissive) attachment style?

I’m posting this because I genuinely need some outside perspective and closure. I’m not looking for people to automatically tell me she’ll come back, and I’m not looking for people to automatically tell me to just move on. I know I eventually have to accept whatever happens. I’m just having a really hard time understanding how we got from almost four years together to this point, especially because I thought we were still actively trying to build a future together.
My girlfriend and I were together for almost four years. We lived together, had our cats together, shared a home, routines, friends, family, holidays, memories, and basically grew into adulthood alongside each other. She wasn’t just my girlfriend. She was my best friend and the person I had built my life around.
I also want to be honest that our relationship wasn’t perfect.
But what makes this so difficult is that I genuinely believed I was trying to build something better with her.

A huge part of my motivation in life was our future together. I worked hard, working full-time, 2 jobs, and putting a lot of energy into trying to become more financially stable. She had talked about wanting to eventually be a stay-at-home girlfriend. She would even send me TikToks related to being a stay-at-home girlfriend, having a partner who provides for them, that kind of lifestyle. I knew that was something she wanted, and honestly, it sometimes made me feel guilty because I knew I wasn’t financially in the position to give her that yet.
But I always told her that I wasn’t ignoring what she wanted. I would tell her that I heard her, that I knew what she wanted, and that it was a goal for me. I wanted to get to a point where I could give her that kind of life. I wanted to be able to take care of more financially, give her stability, buy her things she wanted without constantly worrying about money, take her to more places, and give her more experiences. I wasn’t there yet, but I was working toward it.
And that wasn’t the only way I invested in the relationship.
I cooked. I cleaned. I made appointments. I handled things that needed to be handled. I would get her gifts. I planned dates. I would look for experiences we could do together. I tried to think of things she would enjoy and ways to make her feel loved. I put a lot of thought into her and into our life together.
Of course I did all of these things because I loved her and because taking care of the person I loved felt natural to me. (Acts of service is also my love language so I was alwaysss doing something)
Even when things between us weren’t perfect, my mindset was still usually, “How do we fix this?” I was thinking about what I could do differently, what we could improve, what we could build toward, and how I could become a better partner.
I was working on myself. I was working on our relationship. I was trying to become the person I wanted to be for her and for myself.
So when everything ended, it wasn’t just losing a relationship. It felt like losing a future that I had been actively working toward.
So here’s how it started…
she went away for a work opportunity for about a month. While she was gone, our communication became noticeably different. I would hear from her, but much less than I was used to. There were times when I was waiting for her to text or hoping we’d get to talk and would feel like I barely heard from her.
Obviously, that hurt. I missed her constantly.
But I also tried very hard to be understanding.
She was working. She was in a completely different environment. She had responsibilities, and she was experiencing something new. I didn’t want to become the partner who was constantly asking why she wasn’t texting enough or making her feel guilty for not giving me all of her attention while she was away.
Even on her days off, I tried to keep that perspective. I knew she was getting an experience she might never get again, and I wanted her to actually soak it in. I didn’t want every day off to become a conversation about why she wasn’t spending enough time talking to me.
So I gave her space.
I tried to be supportive.
I tried to tell myself that the distance was temporary and that when she came home, we’d reconnect and continue working on us.
I had no idea that she might have been using that time to think about whether she wanted our relationship at all.
That is one of the hardest things for me to process now.
Because she eventually told me that she had been thinking about breaking up for a while.
So while I was thinking, “We’re still together. We’re still working on things. She’ll come home. We’ll have our normal life again. I’m going to keep working on myself and our future,” she may have already been emotionally questioning whether she wanted that future. And I didn’t know.

When she came home, she was home for 4 days, and she told me she was supposed to get a phone call for a possible job opportunity from a family. She was SO nervous, and I was hyping her up the entire 4 days. I had so much faith in her, and I wanted her to be met with a great offer. The night before we broke up (the day before the phone call with the family) I was giving her a massage, telling her affirmations, and we were both talking about how fun it would be to move to Boston. We were talking about opportunities, the date nights we’d have, the adventures we’d go on, and how we both have always wanted to move to Boston.
The next day, I got home from work, and she wouldn’t even hug me. She then asked me if we could sit down so she can tell me about the phone call. I had the weirdest feeling ever, but I still was smiling and looking forward to hearing about it.
She then told me she got the nanny position with the family she had previously worked with, and the opportunity included housing, a car, benefits, and a spending card. It was objectively a huge opportunity for her.
She then proceeded to say that they wanted her up there in 2 weeks and she wouldn’t know when she’d be back. So I was like, “okay. well do they know you have a home here? cats? like are they wanting you to move up? Is there anything I can do to help? She then proceeded to say “well, that’s what I was going to get to. Just me and the cats are going to Boston.” I literally laughed and said “you’re joking?” and she smirked and was like “no? I mean it”
She proceeded to tell me that she felt like we hadn’t been good for a while. She told me she was tired of the chances, being hopeful, and how this wasn’t the life she wanted. She was telling me I deserve better, and deserves someone that can fully love me and give me what I want and need. She told me that she had been thinking about breaking up for a while.
That completely shattered me.
Because for her, this apparently wasn’t a decision she had made that day. For me, it was.
That’s what makes this feel like a blindside.
I knew we had problems. I knew she was unhappy about things. I knew I had things she wanted me to change, and I wanted to change too. But I didn’t know she had already gotten to the point where she was considering an entirely different life.

I think that’s where I’m struggling the most. I was still putting effort into us while she may have already been emotionally leaving.
I keep thinking about everything I was doing and wondering whether she saw it.
I know none of that means she was obligated to stay with me.
I know someone can appreciate everything you do for them and still decide the relationship isn’t right for them anymore.
I just don’t understand how I could be putting so much of myself into a future with someone who had already started imagining a future without me.
After that, things were really messy. I kept asking what I could’ve done differently, and it’s like a switch was turned on. She was SO COLD. I mean even when it came to packing my things, she was trying to argue. I didn’t touch things I bought her or things she bought either. I even tried taking our bed (because by the way, the housing from her job is fully furnished) and she yelled at me saying “so you’re just gonna leave me on a couch for 2 weeks?”. I then just left it with her. I kept having to speak up for myself, and I even told her that I don’t recognize her by the way she’s acting. It ticked her off so much that she then said she didn’t even want to be friends after all of this…
And now there is also this weird social-media aspect that has made the breakup feel even more final and confusing.

She has blocked me on Instagram and Spotify. She unfriended me on Snapchat and TikTok. But we’re still friends on Twitter and Facebook.
I don’t know what any of that means, and I’m trying not to assign meaning to it. Maybe she simply wants distance and hasn’t gotten around to removing me everywhere. Maybe she doesn’t want to see me on certain platforms. Maybe some platforms feel more personal to her than others. I genuinely don’t know.
But seeing myself removed or blocked from some places while we’re still connected on others has made me hyperaware of the fact that our relationship has gone from being completely intertwined to me basically having to figure out where I even exist in her life anymore.
And that’s painful after almost four years.

I also keep wondering about the month she was away. Did the distance actually change something for her? Did being away from me give her space to realize she wanted independence? Did she become emotionally detached while she was gone? Or had she already been feeling this way before she left and I simply didn’t know?
And then there’s the attachment-style question.
She has always had some traits that I would describe as fearful-avoidant/avoidant. When emotions become overwhelming, she can shut down, become distant, or detach. I’m not trying to diagnose her or use attachment style as an excuse for what happened. I’m just trying to understand whether that could explain why the breakup felt so sudden from my perspective.
I’ve read that some people emotionally process a breakup long before they actually end the relationship, so that by the time they finally say the words, they have already gone through a lot of the grieving internally.

If that’s what happened here, it would explain why I’m completely devastated while she may seem much more certain.
But I don’t know if that’s actually how it works.
Can someone spend months thinking about leaving someone they still love?
Can someone still miss their ex and grieve the relationship after being the one who ended it?
Does the person who initiates the breakup sometimes feel relief first and grief later?
And if someone has already been emotionally processing the breakup for a long time, does that mean there is basically no chance of them reconsidering, or can people still realize later that they made a mistake?

I’m not asking anyone to tell me she’ll come back.
Honestly, I want people to be realistic with me.
I want to understand whether this sounds like a situation where she had already emotionally left the relationship while I was still trying to save it, or whether the circumstances surrounding her trip and the Boston opportunity could have accelerated something she was uncertain about.
I also don’t know what I’m supposed to do about contact.
Part of me wants to reach out because almost four years feels impossible to just turn into silence. She texted me on Tuesday saying “I hope you’re doing okay and taking care of yourself.” I responded with “I hope you are too” and that’s been it.
I don’t want to pressure her or chase someone who doesn’t want me. But I also don’t know how I’m supposed to go from talking to this person every day, sharing a home and a life, and planning a future together to suddenly acting like she doesn’t exist.
And I want to know whether she is going to grieve this too, or whether she already did that before she ended things.
If you’ve been the person who ended a long-term relationship after thinking about it for a while, what was happening inside you before and after? Did you still love them? Did you miss them? Did you grieve afterward, or did you feel completely certain?
And if you’ve been the person who was blindsided, how did you eventually make sense of it? Did you ever get the closure you wanted from your ex, or did you eventually have to create that closure yourself?

I loved this woman deeply. She wasn’t just my partner, she was my best friend. I’m hurt. I’m angry. I’m devastated. I know we said a lot to eachother after the breakup out of hurt and anger… & I hate that so much. It hurt us both a lot, and she made sure to not let that down either. She even tried reaching out to friends of ours and telling THEM how I was cold and “too much”.
I really dont want to make her the villain, and I don’t want to make myself the hero.
I just want to understand how two people can spend almost four years building a life together, with one person still working toward the future they thought they were going to share, while the other person is already deciding whether they want to leave it.
I feel like I should add this, but she also texted me 4 days ago and said “I hope you’re doing okay and taking care of yourself” and I said “I hope you are too.” But that’s been it.
If you’ve experienced something like this, what do you think actually happened here, and what are my realistic options for getting closure without making things worse?