TLDR: Clingy guy and girl with commitment fears together since 15 break up after seven years due to her feeling suffocated and him being fed up with her lack of dedication, but had a ton in common and a strong friendship. What to do?
I’ve been with this girl for seven years. We met in high school when we were fifteen. She comes from a conservative family and was emotionally and sexually a little ****ed up. At first she wasn’t sure if she ever wanted a relationship but I convinced her we give it a try. Soon she fell in love with me, and we had a nice time, though no real sex until four years in. It became rocky and abusive after both of us got depressed due to a variety of factors, but we pulled through, and by the time we moved to college, we had built a strong, trusting relationship.
We have a ton of things in common, almost every interest. We’re both musicians, singers, writers and love to debate, we’re both interested in academia, languages. We like the same genres of music, TV shows, we like playing video games. We like going to the theatre, the opera. We both like quirky humour. We had an incredible ability to understand what we were thinking and saying, we were both a little socially anxious, awkward, didn’t quite fit into the mainstream. She is aware of all that and has expressed to mutual friends that she’s afraid she’ll never find someone like me.
However, she continually had commitment issues, a fear of getting tied down since she heavily prizes her independence. Consequently I felt she was too withdrawn and cold, which made me bitter. Meanwhile she felt I was too clingy and controlling, which is probably true given my personal history of bullying and family issues and the resulting neediness and attachment issues. In our sixth year, she went on a student exchange to Paris for a year, and I waited it out by finding new friends. When she came back, she really wanted the relationship and we finally moved in together against her parents's wishes.
At first, we did great, but waiting for her a year made me very resentful and cold, and she was changing a lot personally, having become vegan and very leftist and somewhat intolerant of different views, and so we argued constantly about this kind of stuff and also everyday stuff. To top it off, she had to get a job to pay her share of the rent, and she took on way too much, in addition to joining a choir with a rather abusive environment. She started feeling suffocated, the arguments didn’t stop, and we spent less and less time together, and the sex dried up too, since I got turned off by her attitude. We were on the verge of breaking up several times, with mostly me initiating in a fit of anger and then backing down.
Eventually I got fed up of her anxiety issues and lack of energy for the relationship, and said we needed a break. She grieved through it, then I realised what I was losing and changed my mind. However, she now insisted on a break, while I found the idea of waiting around for her humiliating, so I said we're over, and if she changes her mind and I’ve not moved on, we can get together later.
She seemed to have moved on in a short time. And then I panicked, chased her, tried to convince her we're still a good match, she resisted, avoided, ignored, moved out of the apartment coldly, until I finally convinced her to meet up so we could clear things up face to face. When we met, she started crying without me even saying anything. We talked about everything, built up a warm rapport immediately, I thought she still desired me, but concluded she needed time alone and can’t imagine honestly wanting the relationship at this point in her life. We said we might be open to a friendship later on. We said goodbye amicably, hugged, I even kissed her. Next day I texted her what train I’m going home with so we wouldn’t meet. She responds thanking me for the meeting the day before and for being constructive. The day after I sent her a final email, saying what I’m willing to improve and what I want her to change if we should get back together. It’s been about two weeks since then that we’ve been on no contact.
Now, I’m slowly suffering through the loss. A substantial part of me still desperately wants her back for the security, friendship and likemindedness I had with her. While two months ago, I was absolutely fed up with her being an emotional, nagging wreck, it’s hard to remember those negative feelings in light of all the memories that I’m remembering.
As for me in general: I’m not particularly good looking, but I’m not hopeless. I’m a successful musician, writer and do very good at school, and I have reasonably good prospects of employment in graphic design and teaching singing. I’m fairly charismatic in conversation, have a witty, a little unusual sense of humour which seems to make the girls I’m attracted to laugh quite a lot, and I like to think I’m pretty intelligent. However, I have difficulties establishing sexual, physical rapport with girls. I’m also not too good at making friends, partly because I’ve not had a reason to for seven years, and partly because I’m socially anxious.
I like this girl. I’m emotionally and physically very attracted to her, and would go for her again. I don’t like her lack of commitment and passion, I may once want a kid while she doesn’t, I want to marry while she’s reluctant, I want a more settled life while she wants to be on the move. She is terribly demanding and bitchy in arguments because she constantly oscillates between mothering and bitching, between self sacrifice and neediness. She’s grown increasingly intolerant of opposing views. She has self esteem issues which have exhausted me, and gets jealous of my success. She never put quite enough energy into the relationship. She rarely set things up, she rarely gave ideas for activities or backed away the minute I raised any thoughts about her suggestions whatsoever, was mostly boring in sex (but I’m not too demanding so I didn’t mind that much, being a nice guy), didn’t initiate a lot of romance ... she also very rarely visited me at my family’s home, despite my having made it clear I’d like to include her in my family.
Meanwhile I’ve been going from being too needy to distant workaholism. I had pretty severe issues with control in high school but I’ve pretty much got over that. However, she still felt assaulted whenever I tried to stand my ground in terms of asking for time together. In retrospect I demanded too much on several occasions, especially with her work demands. My resentment of her absence and bitchiness also made me get quite angry and I frequently stonewalled.
I still feel like she’s a challenging but good match for me, and I don’t want to focus on chasing girls in my life, but instead be able to focus on my career with a reliable partner. I don’t think she’s completely over me. I think her currently busy lifestyle and my chasing has kept her from fully processing the breakup and that she may in time change her mind as she realises her feelings of suffocation have passed but that she still wishes she had my companionship and love. However, she is stubborn and proud. I don’t feel like she has a boyfriend in her sight, given her commitment issues and her pretty extreme dislike of the majority of men, but obviously this is all just my self-consolation as she may discover someone who’ll fit her better soon and surprise me.
I’m sorry for this overlong tractate, but I wanted to give the whole picture because I don’t want cookie cutter advice. She definitely isn’t some average girl or a hoe. However, I don’t know whether I should keep any eggs in this basket, or whether I’m not seeing something obvious here. I’m suffering from fairly severe oneitis, even though I’m consciously aware she wasn’t anywhere close to perfect and know there are women out there who may be able to express love to me much better. It’s obviously difficult to move on despite this. I’m terrified of having to leave all our nice memories behind, and of growing old knowing "she got away". Seven years and growing up together means our identities essentially formed with the relationship. I had dreamed of staying with her for the rest of my life. I feel like these seven years together would be wasted if I didn’t try to make something of this and fix it, and that I’d never be able to think of this big part of my life because it’d remind me of her.
What course of action would you suggest to me? What I’m trying to do right now is to put myself together slowly, focus on my career and hobbies, find friends and meet new girls, but I relapse every so and wake up anxious that she’s no longer a part of my life after so many years. I'm not as completely wrecked as I feared I would be, partly because I’m trying to help myself with Buddhism and meditation, but what if I’m going to break down one day, and I’m just in denial? I definitely got excessively attached to this girl and invested everything into her, neglecting my social life and losing my independence. I’m afraid of melting down once the realisation truly hits me. I’ve not been crying since the first week, though I’m not actively trying to repress feelings.
Any kind of thoughts or advice would be very helpful so I can get some perspective.
I’ve been with this girl for seven years. We met in high school when we were fifteen. She comes from a conservative family and was emotionally and sexually a little ****ed up. At first she wasn’t sure if she ever wanted a relationship but I convinced her we give it a try. Soon she fell in love with me, and we had a nice time, though no real sex until four years in. It became rocky and abusive after both of us got depressed due to a variety of factors, but we pulled through, and by the time we moved to college, we had built a strong, trusting relationship.
We have a ton of things in common, almost every interest. We’re both musicians, singers, writers and love to debate, we’re both interested in academia, languages. We like the same genres of music, TV shows, we like playing video games. We like going to the theatre, the opera. We both like quirky humour. We had an incredible ability to understand what we were thinking and saying, we were both a little socially anxious, awkward, didn’t quite fit into the mainstream. She is aware of all that and has expressed to mutual friends that she’s afraid she’ll never find someone like me.
However, she continually had commitment issues, a fear of getting tied down since she heavily prizes her independence. Consequently I felt she was too withdrawn and cold, which made me bitter. Meanwhile she felt I was too clingy and controlling, which is probably true given my personal history of bullying and family issues and the resulting neediness and attachment issues. In our sixth year, she went on a student exchange to Paris for a year, and I waited it out by finding new friends. When she came back, she really wanted the relationship and we finally moved in together against her parents's wishes.
At first, we did great, but waiting for her a year made me very resentful and cold, and she was changing a lot personally, having become vegan and very leftist and somewhat intolerant of different views, and so we argued constantly about this kind of stuff and also everyday stuff. To top it off, she had to get a job to pay her share of the rent, and she took on way too much, in addition to joining a choir with a rather abusive environment. She started feeling suffocated, the arguments didn’t stop, and we spent less and less time together, and the sex dried up too, since I got turned off by her attitude. We were on the verge of breaking up several times, with mostly me initiating in a fit of anger and then backing down.
Eventually I got fed up of her anxiety issues and lack of energy for the relationship, and said we needed a break. She grieved through it, then I realised what I was losing and changed my mind. However, she now insisted on a break, while I found the idea of waiting around for her humiliating, so I said we're over, and if she changes her mind and I’ve not moved on, we can get together later.
She seemed to have moved on in a short time. And then I panicked, chased her, tried to convince her we're still a good match, she resisted, avoided, ignored, moved out of the apartment coldly, until I finally convinced her to meet up so we could clear things up face to face. When we met, she started crying without me even saying anything. We talked about everything, built up a warm rapport immediately, I thought she still desired me, but concluded she needed time alone and can’t imagine honestly wanting the relationship at this point in her life. We said we might be open to a friendship later on. We said goodbye amicably, hugged, I even kissed her. Next day I texted her what train I’m going home with so we wouldn’t meet. She responds thanking me for the meeting the day before and for being constructive. The day after I sent her a final email, saying what I’m willing to improve and what I want her to change if we should get back together. It’s been about two weeks since then that we’ve been on no contact.
Now, I’m slowly suffering through the loss. A substantial part of me still desperately wants her back for the security, friendship and likemindedness I had with her. While two months ago, I was absolutely fed up with her being an emotional, nagging wreck, it’s hard to remember those negative feelings in light of all the memories that I’m remembering.
As for me in general: I’m not particularly good looking, but I’m not hopeless. I’m a successful musician, writer and do very good at school, and I have reasonably good prospects of employment in graphic design and teaching singing. I’m fairly charismatic in conversation, have a witty, a little unusual sense of humour which seems to make the girls I’m attracted to laugh quite a lot, and I like to think I’m pretty intelligent. However, I have difficulties establishing sexual, physical rapport with girls. I’m also not too good at making friends, partly because I’ve not had a reason to for seven years, and partly because I’m socially anxious.
I like this girl. I’m emotionally and physically very attracted to her, and would go for her again. I don’t like her lack of commitment and passion, I may once want a kid while she doesn’t, I want to marry while she’s reluctant, I want a more settled life while she wants to be on the move. She is terribly demanding and bitchy in arguments because she constantly oscillates between mothering and bitching, between self sacrifice and neediness. She’s grown increasingly intolerant of opposing views. She has self esteem issues which have exhausted me, and gets jealous of my success. She never put quite enough energy into the relationship. She rarely set things up, she rarely gave ideas for activities or backed away the minute I raised any thoughts about her suggestions whatsoever, was mostly boring in sex (but I’m not too demanding so I didn’t mind that much, being a nice guy), didn’t initiate a lot of romance ... she also very rarely visited me at my family’s home, despite my having made it clear I’d like to include her in my family.
Meanwhile I’ve been going from being too needy to distant workaholism. I had pretty severe issues with control in high school but I’ve pretty much got over that. However, she still felt assaulted whenever I tried to stand my ground in terms of asking for time together. In retrospect I demanded too much on several occasions, especially with her work demands. My resentment of her absence and bitchiness also made me get quite angry and I frequently stonewalled.
I still feel like she’s a challenging but good match for me, and I don’t want to focus on chasing girls in my life, but instead be able to focus on my career with a reliable partner. I don’t think she’s completely over me. I think her currently busy lifestyle and my chasing has kept her from fully processing the breakup and that she may in time change her mind as she realises her feelings of suffocation have passed but that she still wishes she had my companionship and love. However, she is stubborn and proud. I don’t feel like she has a boyfriend in her sight, given her commitment issues and her pretty extreme dislike of the majority of men, but obviously this is all just my self-consolation as she may discover someone who’ll fit her better soon and surprise me.
I’m sorry for this overlong tractate, but I wanted to give the whole picture because I don’t want cookie cutter advice. She definitely isn’t some average girl or a hoe. However, I don’t know whether I should keep any eggs in this basket, or whether I’m not seeing something obvious here. I’m suffering from fairly severe oneitis, even though I’m consciously aware she wasn’t anywhere close to perfect and know there are women out there who may be able to express love to me much better. It’s obviously difficult to move on despite this. I’m terrified of having to leave all our nice memories behind, and of growing old knowing "she got away". Seven years and growing up together means our identities essentially formed with the relationship. I had dreamed of staying with her for the rest of my life. I feel like these seven years together would be wasted if I didn’t try to make something of this and fix it, and that I’d never be able to think of this big part of my life because it’d remind me of her.
What course of action would you suggest to me? What I’m trying to do right now is to put myself together slowly, focus on my career and hobbies, find friends and meet new girls, but I relapse every so and wake up anxious that she’s no longer a part of my life after so many years. I'm not as completely wrecked as I feared I would be, partly because I’m trying to help myself with Buddhism and meditation, but what if I’m going to break down one day, and I’m just in denial? I definitely got excessively attached to this girl and invested everything into her, neglecting my social life and losing my independence. I’m afraid of melting down once the realisation truly hits me. I’ve not been crying since the first week, though I’m not actively trying to repress feelings.
Any kind of thoughts or advice would be very helpful so I can get some perspective.
