I was in a same-sex relationship with a girl for 4 months. From the start, I knew she was going to leave to a continent on the otherside of the world for her postgrad studies at an Ivy League university. She’s a very driven and focused person who values academic accomplishments very highly. I expected it to be a casual dating/friendship thing, however it got emotionally intense from the start, with her talking about the pain of seperation 4 months down, sending me songs that reminded her of us. We spoke everyday and met often, talking about our families, our past, or dreams. 1.5 months before she left, we had a talk about us and decided not to pursue a long distance relationship (actually, I suggested that because I suspected it’s what she might want. She agreed.) We decided to move towards being friends as the we wanted to maintain the friendship we had formed.

The following weeks were a blur of distance followed by closeness, and distance again as she kept re-drawing the boundaries and I went along with it. We spent the last few days before she left together, and she wrote a lovely letter about how she felt about us, and again, with the hopes that the closeness would stay. I felt sad but with a good sense of closure when she left, knowing that we had made the best of our time together. I’ve let my guard down with this relationship as I’ve never done before, been more open with my thoughts, feelings and insecurities. I was looking forward to our friendship to come as she still meant a lot to me. We talked daily when she went there and she said it was hard to let go, and that it’ll hurt if I pulled away. A few days later, she said that I meant a lot to her, but that she might be going quiet in the coming weeks to focus on her work, but she would still be thinking of me and that she wanted to still be a part of my life. As her classes started the following week, we were texting and talking less. Our last conversation on the phone was still warm and affectionate, but by the next day, she started sounding very distant and with very short, flippant responses. And then nothing for a week. I decided to give her space since she was probably busy. Within a week, I received a short email informing me that she was unsharing a calendar she had previously shared with me, and that the longer she stayed there, the less she wanted to come back. I didn’t reply. And after a few weeks, I deleted her from Facebook because I wanted to stop checking her FB page, as it was not helping. I’ve not contacted her since the week she went quiet.

It’s been 2 months and while the relationship was short, I feel wounded by what had happened. I’ve always been big on keeping myself safe in relationsips. But with one so intense in which opened up so much, it hurt to feel the other person pull away, and not even gradually. I had made my peace with the relationship ending (or so I thought), but I can’t help wondering what happened. We went from being so close, to so distant so quickly. Whether my own fear of being hurt and insecurities made me pull back, and then get hurt when she was still not reaching out. I’ve been reading quite a bit on learning to love without fear, and without expectations. I’m wondering if I failed to do that – that I had loved with expectations, and got disappointed as a result when her tone and approach changed. I don’t have it in me to talk to her or write her an email because I dont think I could handle the possible response, or lack thereof. How do I move on? Was it my insecurities that caused this change in our dynamic?