Hi all, first of all I want to apologise that I don’t post here that often and when I do it’s only about my own issues, I guess when I have a period of feeling ok I tend to stay away because I don’t want to think about sad stuff, therefore it’s only when I’m feeling down that I come here. I’m gonna try to visit more often, even when I’m feeling good, because I think that’s healthy, but for now I’m feeling terrible and I need to post about it.

Since I last posted I’ve started a new job and actually started seeing a new girl and for a bit there things were going ok, but now after the initial excitement of those wore off I’m feeling worse than ever. It feels like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do but none of it is helping, at least not permanently. It’s like I’m stuck in this awful pit of pain and I can’t see any way out. I actually (and this is something I’ve only shared with one close friend) googled suicide techniques, not because I want to kill myself exactly, just because I wanted to know that if I really really can’t take this pain any more then there is a way out. But I read that only 1 in 30something suicide attempts is actually successful and more often than not the person just ends up giving themselves some sort of horrible injury and making their life worse. So now I feel like even that isn’t an escape from this pain.

I just want my ex back, I want our life back, I want to live in our house again, with our cats, planning our wedding, watching films on the weekend and talking about how each others day went etc. She ripped all of that away from me with no warning. She was my best friend and the person I trusted with my life and I never expected this to happen.

Maybe if I’d at least slightly seen it coming I would be able to deal with it, but as far as I was aware everything was fine, better than ever even (we had got engaged 3 weeks prior, after all), then suddenly one night my world came crashing down. People keep comparing it to if she had suddenly died, but y’know what? It may be selfish but I think this is worse (for me) than if she had died. If she had died I would have kept the house (it was bought for us by her grandparents), I would have kept the cats (I can’t have one where I’m living now), I would have been able to stay in contact with her family (whom I love), her family and friends also would have been grieving so I wouldn’t been alone in all of this pain and most of all I wouldn’t have to deal with the thought that despite all the love I feel for her she just didn’t want to be with me. Like I say, I know that is a very selfish way to feel because obviously for her/her friends/her family etc. her dying absolutely wouldn’t be better, plus if I truly love her I should want her to be happy even without me etc. etc. etc. but that’s just how I feel at the moment.

But despite how much she’s hurt me, I just want her back. I want to work on whatever issues we had and get back to our life, but unfortunately she would need to want to do that too, which clearly she doesn’t, and that kills me.

Apologies for the ramble there, I hope the rest of you are doing better than I am at the moment.

Michelle – Thank you for that, I guess that’s exactly what happened: we got to that crunch point, I decided on a resounding ‘yes’ and unfortunately she went the other way. And yea it’s good that I know what I want now, I just can’t imagine at the moment having it with anyone but her, but I suppose that’s probably to be expected right now.

Kkasxo – Yea that’s a good point, I’ve often heard that women mature faster than men anyway and if you throw in the woman being one year older then I can definitely see how that would become an issue. But then I keep coming back to why did she spend those years waiting for me to be what she wanted then break up with me at the point that I started to become it? But I suppose that relates back to Michelle’s point that for whatever reason when it got to the “ok this is serious now” point she realised she didn’t want it. And I guess that’s the part I’ll never get an explanation for, and (based on the few conversations I’ve had with her since) I don’t think she even knows the reason herself, other than “it wasn’t right”.

I’d also like to add, for anyone who comes across this, I’ve found the app ‘Headspace’ very helpful. It’s created by a guy who used to be a Buddhist monk but he realised that lots of people wanted to learn meditation without the religious aspect. It just gives you daily exercises to practice meditation/mindfulness. Unfortunately for me it was actually my ex who put me on to it so I stopped doing it after we broke up as it reminded me too much of her, but I’ve gotten back into it recently and I’ve found that the ‘grief’ sessions on there are really helpful for what I’m going through and the regular sessions had been helping my anxieties greatly before I stopped.

Hi all, hope you don’t mind me posting in here. I’m new to the site and I was going to start my own topic but this one is exactly what I wanted to talk about.

So first of all, I’m male, I feel I should point that out since it appears most of you posting here are ladies. But even so I’m in the same situation as you all.

Essentially my girlfriend of 6 years had always been sure she wanted kids and a family whereas I’d never been quite sure. I think because of that neither of us we’re 100% committed as there was always this lingering feeling that we might have to break up at some point. However, after our friends told us they were pregnant (that was probably about 9 months ago) it made me think really hard about that stuff and I came to the conclusion that yes I did want kids. I told my girlfriend and she was ecstatic and we decided we’d start trying around the end of 2019 (to give us chance to get in a few more holidays etc.).

Around 6 months ago I asked her to marry me as a symbol of our new 100% commitment to each other, she said yes and everything was great. But 3 weeks after that she told me she’d be staying with some friends while I find somewhere else to live as she’d had an ‘epiphany’ and realised that I wasn’t the person she wanted to spend her life with.

I was absolutely blind sided, she’d shown no indication that this was coming and in fact things had been better between us than they had been in years. Her parents are divorced and I know the whole situation was quite traumatising for her and her brother as children so I sorta chalked it up to her being scared of marriage. She was adamant that that’s not what it was and she’d just realised that we weren’t right for each other, but none the less I assumed if I just went along with it that at some point she would change her mind.

But here we are 5 months later and I’ve just found out that she’s in a new relationship and I’m absolutely devastated. I think this is the first time I’ve actually realised that she was serious and it wasn’t just cold feet. I’ve missed her for these 5 months but it’s been more in the way that I would have missed her if she went away for work or something, i.e I’m sad to be without her but I’ll make the best of it until she’s back. But now I’m realising that all the stuff I miss and the life we built together is gone forever, so the breakup now feels totally fresh despite the fact it’s actually 5 months old.

I’ve spent the last few days in tears, struggling to even do the simplest things like shower or eat and the pain is unbearable. I just can’t understand how she went from wanting to marry me to being with someone else in the space of 5 months. And the kicker is that I’m 110% sure I want kids/a family now and I can’t imagine having it with anyone else but her.

So yea, hope you all don’t mind me joining in on this conversation, but maybe an added male voice might be helpful?