Dear Katie:

Less than two months ago, in your first thread, you wrote: “I have always had depression.. Last year I moved abroad to work.. and I found myself in the deepest depression I had ever been in.. I ended up quitting halfway through my program but still carried a lot of the depression I had felt back home. Now I am in a place where I so strongly want to move out of this depression”.

In your new thread, you present yourself as having been happy during your one year relationship: “We were so genuinely happy, going on adventures and always laughing together… we were not only lovers but also each other’s best friends”.

In your previous thread you indicated depression that preceded the coronavirus pandemic, but in your new thread, you presented a depression  as a result of the pandemic: “the world changed recently, aka Coronavirus… I had no job, I had to go and live back with my parents again.. I fell into this depression”-

Looking at the two threads as the bigger picture, I guess you were depressed for many years, had better times as a student perhaps, feeling good and alive from time to time, then you felt depressed again in France, and depressed back home, and then even more depressed as the pandemic progressed. Is my understanding accurate?

He said: “‘I have a lot  of love for you but I am not  in love with you.’ This was so hard for me to hear but I accepted it. I didn’t want him to hurt or feel confused anymore so I said ‘Thank you for being honest..’ .. When I left I told him that I still cared about him and just wanted him to be happy”-

– how kind of you, to care for how he felt while he was breaking up with you. Having had such a kind, considerate girlfriend, I understand why he told you that his relationship with you “was the best relationship he had ever had”!

“I am now stuck in a big limbo. I feel so confused…. he  is leaving for LA in two months. I was planning before on maybe going out there too so we could be in the same city and living with a friend.. Do I wait it out and see if he messages, or do I message him”?-

– if he wasn’t moving to LA, I would have said: do contact him and have another conversation, but because he is moving to LA, better you don’t contact him and suggest to go to LA with him or otherwise resume a relationship because seems to me that he needs a new beginning.

He broke up with you, so I assume he wants to  move to LA alone.

anita

Dear Katie:

You are welcome. This is my thinking on the matter: he broke up with you, and he is about to stay with a friend of his in LA. I am guessing that he knows that you too plan to move to LA, or that you have been considering moving to LA. If you contact him to talk, he may feel pressured to take you along with him to LA, to arrange for you to live with his friend as well, and/ or combine his LA plans with yours otherwise.

And that pressure will be counterproductive to what you want to achieve by contacting him.

Maybe there is information I don’t have which will make all the difference and contacting him may be a good idea. Is there such information?

anita

Dear Katie:

“I don’t think I am really trying to contact him to necessarily try to get back together right away, just to establish that there is still something there between us”- I think that it was already established that there is something between the two of you. Problem is that he told you what is not there between him and you, and that’s the spark he mentioned (“I don’t feel like the spark is there”)-

– you can’t argue about the absence of a spark, and you can’t bring it back with a conversation, no matter how logical and wise the conversation, on your part.

It is clear to me that you do want to resume a relationship with him, or that you are very close to want that. And I think he will figure it out too, that you want to get back with him.

anita