I’m having a really hard time moving on from my breakup. I thought she was the one for a long time but due to different directions in life we separated in mid May. When I met her, I felt like home. I have had other relationships before, but she was something else. We had the same humour, same values, amazing physical connection, similar intrests and just wanted to spend our time together the same way. I thought I would marry her one day.

At the time, I was also sure I wanted to move to Australia for some time and told her that from the very beginning. She didn’t support my dream. Another problem in the relationship was that as an artistic person, I sometimes need to spend time alone, painting etc and sometimes she felt that I wanted to do stuff alone too much. I still can’t understand how, we never lived together, but I didn’t buy any shamppoo for a year – that’s how much time I spent with her at her apartment that felt like home more than my own.

Another thing that was worrying me was that I assumed she wanted to have kids, from what I’ve heard from our common friends, but when I asked she always said that she wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I think she just didn’t want to admit that it was her biggest dream, because that was the main reason why we eventually broke up. She never asked if I would like to consider starting a family with her one day. At the time I wanted to move to OZ for a while, wanted her to come with me and was honest that I’m not sure whether I want kids in the future. I always asked what she thought about my dream of Australia and suggested that if she didn’t want to go with me, maybe I could fullfill my dream by going there for 4-6 months or so. I had just graduated and starting a family wasn’t in my near future plans. Most of my friends don’t have kids. Hers on the other hand do have kids and many of her closest friends got pregnant in the beginning of the pandemic, early 2020.

Before the Covid hit, we had been travelling for one month together in January and everything had been great. Then we came back, she took time off from work and was left un-employed without much of savings and way too much free time. She had panick attacts and couldn’t explain what was wrong. We argued a lot. I was the one to iniate breaking up, because I felt that nothing I did made her happy. I suggested we’d go and talk to a therapist, make dream plans or took more time to think, but she felt so stuck that she couldn’t see any solutions for our problems. In the end, she was the one to make the decision, even though we said that it was a common decision.

She wanted to take things slow with the break up and that led to a two month period where we acted like a couple in love, without hope for a future. I still asked her if we really wanted to do this, because she was even more crazy about me and leaning on me than before. It gave me false hope and eventually in July she said she didn’t see a future for us. We both agreed that we needed to do no contact for some time. She wanted to call it a break, without any epectations for us. But I didn’t want to do that, because if we weren’t a couple anymore, we wouldn’t have a break, but a breakup. She asked if no contact would mean that I would not even wish her happy birthday in early September but I didn’t know what to asnwer.

A month after our breakup she called me drunk, begging to come over, missing me desperately. She lied to me that she was actually in my front yard, testing if I’d let her in and how she lived for her fantasies about us. I stayed strong and was firm, I needed time to recover. But after the phone call I started hoping even more. I wasn’t going to go to Australia because of Covid and had been thinking about kids a lot. Maybe I actually wanted them in the long run and had been going to a therapist to figure out my goals in life. When she called, I thought that I needed to have an answer for whether I want kids or not so I decided that I’ll think about my life and then contact her.

A month after that her birthday came and we were in contact. She had met someone and fell in love a couple of days after the drunken phonecall in August. She admitted that she had downloaded Tinder a week after our final separation in June. I was devastated. She said that we had our moments, that I would find someone else, how she only had one life and she didn’t want to spend it by crying over our breakup, how they had similar goals (even tho later I heard that the new girl had just moved back from abroads only due covid) and she was happy and in balance with her life.

From the beginning of our breakup my depression has gotten deeper and this threw me even deeper. I think my breakup is one reason for my depression at this point, but there are other reasons as well. Before I have had two relationships, in both of which we have been broken up once, gotten back together and I have been cheated on once per a relationship. Both of occasions my exs have been the ones to initiate getting back together. It seems that everyone I love eventually leaves me and soon finds a more suitable match that they are going to have a long relationship with. This last girlfriend was different in a way that she never cheated on me, even tho she was in a hurry to find someone new.

I miss her terribly, every day. Months go by and I don’t feel any different. I have never been in such a dark place in my life.I feel that I have been replaiced while she has such a special place in my heart that sometimes I caught myself up thinking that “hmm, I’d love to tell this to her, I wonder when she’ll be home”. As I was the akita inu from the japanese train station, waiting for her to come back, not being able to understand that she actually didn’t want to be with me, even tho she really loved and adored me for so many months. She is in love and I’m crying after her, feeling phatetic that I’m still mourning and dreaming of her.

I have tried everything: I have been on dates, been to a yoga retreat, started a new hobby, met old friends, made new friends, gotten a puppy, which has been my biggest dream through my whole life , gone to therapy, talked to friends and then limited talking to friends about the breakup.  But I’m stuck. Nothing helps, I just miss her in my life and I feel like no-one will ever be as good to me as she was, even tho she had her faults as we all do. One of the hardest parts is that I feel like she won the breakup and I’m left alone with the memories of us. I know breakups are not a competition but it still feels like that. It feels like our relationship couldn’t have been so special to her than it was to me because she could fall in love with someone else so easily. I’m stuck with the idea of us being the right people for each other even tho obviously, she didn’t agree. And neither did I at some point. I blame myself for not being able to let go every day and I count the months and the days that go by, feeling more and more phatetic.

Do you have any practical advice for me that could help?