A
female
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:Recently, I met a guy at school. We met in early April and traded emails back and forth. They were short but we averaged nearly 200 emails a week and would email from before classes started each day until one of us went to bed. We didn't discuss previous relationships but I found out later that he was in the midst of ending a relationship that had lasted for over a year. When we did speak out about it, it was after he had broken it off and before anything other than emailing/getting to know each other had happened. When he told me, he was extremely sorry about the way that things ended with the other girl and that he was just trying to wait until after finals so he didn't dump his ex a day before she walked into a final that determined her entire grade for the semester. That probably wasn't the best decision but I can see how he was trying to help.After this, our holiday break began. With him being newly single, we texted every day. That slowly escalated to phone calls and eventually some skype. He never mentioned his previous relationship or their problems/why they broke up and I was attempting to respect both his and her privacy by not prying, especially since I didn't know her personally but we would all be at the same school when school began in August. Things went very well. He made several comments while we were talking such as "I love how comfortable and easy things are with you. I've never felt this way before." and "I'm scared by how much I like you but I also think it's exciting," and "I never thought I would be with someone as beautiful as you are." I visited him in the city he's working in this summer and we had a great time. One time over the visit, he accidentally referred to himself as my boyfriend and blushed, but we didn't discuss it. I think the unspoken understanding was that we were waiting to become official until we were in the same city for school again.Things lasted this way from May - July. Out of the blue, last week he pulled away a bit and was a little hard to contact like I normally did. His replies were short but still friendly and he scheduled a lot of hang outs with friends (all guys, he doesn't appear to hang out with many girls on a regular basis) so our conversations at night were short because it was late. I put a high value on maintaining personal identities in relationships and he had seemed so happy with me before that week that, while I wasn't 100% happy with it, I wasn't worried.We spoke about it yesterday. He said that he still had lingering guilt over his last relationship and he was having trouble coping with it. He hasn't spoken with her since the break up. He said that the reason his last relationship failed was because he didn't want to abandon his ex in the middle of a personal crisis she was having with school but that he no longer had feelings for her, so he stayed with her out of a sense of obligation. According to him, there would be times when he still liked her but where he pulled away from her and distanced himself but he didn't know why and couldn't act normally. He said he sensed a little bit of that in this last week and was worried about it. He admitted he thinks he has a "hero complex" where he wants to save everyone. He also appears to be going through a small career crisis himself, as he is positioned to work for an elite employer but would be expected to work about 8am - 8 pm on a regular basis and he's not sure that's what he wants. I'm wondering if the personal crisis is also stressing him and making him pull away. Since this relationship is so new, I don't blame him for not turning to me but I'm unhappy his reaction is to break up with me.He said that he feels as though he has a lot of unanswered personal issues to deal with in the upcoming months and that he needs to be alone to do it. He told me over and over again how much he liked me and that it has nothing to do with our relationship. He said that it's been like a dream come true to be with me and that he wishes he had taken time to deal with these things before we began so that this didn't need to happen. He has plans to begin visiting a counselor or a personal acquaintance of his that he views as a mentor. We discussed the fact that I would not wait around for him, as there is no way to tell how long this will take or what the result of it will be. I told him I would like to stay together but when we discussed the logistics of it and the fact it would add pressure for him to want to fix it "quickly" instead of "correctly," it didn't seem like it would work. He cried a few times during the course of our conversation and everything he was saying seemed genuine. I never cried. I asked him outright if it was just a case of the physical attraction wearing off and he said it absolutely was not, he was still incredibly attracted to me and that because we had spent so much time getting to know each other, he liked me for my personality and not just my physical appearances. I think he's a good person and I gave him plenty of chances to just agree with me and say he didn't like me but he kept saying that he really cared and wanted to be with me. Our plan for now is just to go "no contact" and to be polite but not friends at school. (The "not friends" was per my request. As a person, I typically need time to heal after a relationship and it doesn't work for me to jump back in to a friendship with no time apart.)You can respond to anything but here are my questions:1) Do you think people ever leave relationships that they're genuinely happy in just to work out personal issues and better themselves? I feel like if he genuinely cared about me, he would do anything he could to stay or at least not willingly walk away.2) How do you go about getting over a relationship where you both still care and aren't just ending things because you "want something better" but instead for a reason completely unrelated to the relationship?3) Is this kind of thing even repairable? I worry that I would always wonder if he was staying with me because he felt obligated like he did with his ex or that he was hiding a problem. (Ex: when I had no idea he was about to dump me and thought that he was just busy.) Can people fix those types of trust issues? I know he's a kind person but even good people make mistakes.
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
female
reader, Dorothy Dix  +, writes (20 July 2013):
Hi. Sorry, it was slow sending, and it accidentally posted twice.
A
female
reader, Dorothy Dix +, writes (20 July 2013):
Hi. It isn't an easy thing to cope with, that he needs his space, and it can feel a bit like rejection.
Don't feel that way though, this is a journey that he must take alone.
And as I was mentioning before, he is simplifying his life so that he can do that unimpeded.
And don't take that negatively either.
What I mean, is that by distancing himself - including from all relationships - it's the easiest way for him to be able to make decisions about his life, which WILL NOT be influenced by anything else.
I guess that all you can do now, is to be patient.
One thing you must NOT do though, is DO NOT put your whole life on hold because of it.
Because, the truth is, you don't know how long he's going to take to work out where he is going.
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A
female
reader, Dorothy Dix +, writes (20 July 2013):
Hi. It isn't an easy thing to cope with, that he needs his space, and it can feel a bit like rejection.
Don't feel that way though, this is a journey that he must take alone.
And as I was mentioning before, he is simplifying his life so that he can do that unimpeded.
And don't take that negatively either.
What I mean, is that by distancing himself - including from all relationships - it's the easiest way for him to be able to make decisions about his life, which WILL NOT be influenced by anything else.
I guess that all you can do now, is to be patient.
One thing you must NOT do though, is DO NOT put your whole life on hold because of it.
Because, the truth is, you don't know how long he's going to take to work out where he is going.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (18 July 2013): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThank you so much, Dorothy Dix. I really appreciate your answer. I think that I'm slowly starting to be able to believe the sentiments that you shared. Everything just happened so quickly that I was shocked and unable to even process the break up for about a week. I'm slowly starting to become okay with it but I'm dreading seeing him again in September.
Right now, I'm just combating the hope that he'll see me and immediately want to be back together. I know that's not a realistic hope and that I need to manage my expectations.
Thank you for your support! I really appreciate it and your insight. You're right; I really don't have many options other than trying to be the happiest self I can be: alone.
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A
female
reader, Dorothy Dix +, writes (11 July 2013):
Hi there. Sometimes when there are issues in our lives that remain unresolved, the only real way to work things out properly, is to distance ourselves completely.
It is nothing against you, and nor is it anything you have said or done.
Nor is it anything - as he already stated himself - to do with the relationship not working.
This is all about HIM.
And no-one else.
The issues in his life he is trying to figure out, he clearly needs time to be just by himself for a while, so that he won't be distracted by relationships and any problems that could also occur there.
What he is doing, is removing himself completely from anything at all that could get in the way of him making some very important life decisions.
And I honestly believe, that this is where he is coming from right now.
And so don't take it personally, as it is nothing whatsoever to do with you - or even his ex, for that matter.
This is all about HIM.
And so as a consequence of that, he really does need some time to be alone, and work this all out.
And to work it out once and for all.
Unfortunately, you can't help him with this in any way.
And it is clearly something that he feels is important enough to take this action, by distancing himself from everyone in his life.
It probably won't be for as long as you might imagine.
It might be a few weeks.
Or it might be a couple of months, or up to 3 or even 6 months, for him to have some sense of where he is heading in his life - as far as the future is concerned.
The best thing you can do now, is to allow him this space that he needs, and to NOT pressure him into making any kind of decision, until he is ready.
The one thing he DOES NOT need right now, is pressure from anyone to decide something, that he is CLEARLY just not ready to make.
He just isn't at that place yet.
And so it is going to require some patience from you.
And in the meantime, remain friends - but let him contact you - and just let things happen the way they are meant to.
And go out and see your friends and socialize in the meantime, and just see what happens as time goes by.
There really is very little option, other than to do this.
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