u/AirportVast9401

My girlfriend and I broke up and she moved out 2 weeks ago after 7 years together, and I honestly feel emotionally shattered right now. I’m looking for outside perspectives because I feel trapped between grief, guilt, attachment, doubt, loneliness, and confusion.

What makes this so hard is that this was not some toxic relationship where we hated each other. She genuinely loved me deeply. She would have absolutely married me if, instead of me choosing to separate, I had proposed. We built our entire adult lives together and there was real love, loyalty, friendship, comfort, history, and support there. That’s what makes this feel so devastating and confusing. For additional context, I'm in my early 20s.

The difficult part is that despite loving her deeply, I chose to leave because for a long time I had growing concerns about long-term compatibility and the direction our lives were heading. It wasn’t one giant issue. It was more a deep accumulation of differences in values, lifestyle, mindset, communication, and future vision that I kept trying to ignore because I loved her so much and didn’t want to hurt her.

Over the last 1-2 years, I’ve changed a lot as a person. I’ve become very serious about my faith and genuinely want to follow Jesus wholeheartedly. That has become the center of my life and the lens through which I view my future, marriage, family, habits, purpose, and the kind of life I want to build. The problem is that, although she never condemned me for it, and even acted at times like she would consider being open to it, she was never really part of that walk with me and honestly had little interest in it. In some ways, she was even resistant or hostile toward certain changes I wanted to make because of it.

Beyond that, I increasingly felt like we were moving in different directions in life. I care deeply about growth physically, mentally, financially, spiritually, and personally. Health, discipline, peace, purpose, and building a stable future matter a lot to me. Meanwhile, she was still very tied to habits and environments that I no longer wanted for my life long term, like daily weed smoking, partying/drinking culture, unhealthy routines, negative influences around her, and social circles that I honestly felt were harmful. It also became very difficult to have productive conversations about change or growth without things becoming defensive or shut down. She would say things like "I'll change those things when I'm older, I want to enjoy my young years".

I also slowly started realizing that although we loved each other deeply, we didn’t always truly understand or relate to each other at a deeper level anymore. Over time it almost felt like the relationship was being held together more by emotional attachment, comfort, history, and love than genuine long-term peace and alignment.

Even while we were together, whenever conversations about marriage or kids came up, I often felt uneasy deep down. I kept hoping that feeling would eventually go away because I loved her so much and wanted things to work. But the feeling never fully left. There was always this lingering sense that something wasn’t fully right long term, even though there was no lack of love.

This is the part really getting to me now:

Now that we’ve broken up, my brain suddenly wants to mostly remember the good parts. I miss her constantly. I cry almost every day. I feel lonely and emotionally destroyed. I keep wondering if I made a horrible mistake by leaving someone who loved me so deeply.

At the same time, I’m realizing how much of my emotional world became centered around her. Toward the end of the relationship, she had strong support systems outside of me — close friends, family, coworkers, social momentum, people she talked to constantly. Meanwhile, without realizing it, I had slowly made the relationship my primary emotional support system and biggest source of connection.

Now I feel completely wrecked while she seems to be handling things surprisingly well. She’s made it clear she’s not sitting around crying or sulking, and outwardly she already seems much more detached than I expected only 2 weeks later. Her own friend group even said they're very surprised at how well she's taking it, because they knew how much she was invested and cared about me. This is a huge shock to me because I know without a doubt she really loved me, and before the breakup we had talked calmly and lovingly in person about still caring about each other, staying friends, checking in on each other, and it not turning cold between us.

But since the breakup, it feels like she emotionally switched gears much faster than me. I mean, it's literally only been 2 weeks. She’s posting very revealing/attention-seeking things online, and I haven't tried reaching out much, but when I have, she's acting much colder and like she wants nothing to do with me. I stupidly gave in and reacted emotionally to one of her posts because seeing that stuff hurts and makes me feel like what we had was easy for her to let go, and she's already looking for attention from someone new. She basically told me she can post whatever she wants and blocked me from viewing it, which is probably for the best anyway.

I know logically she has every right to live however she wants. Emotionally though, it hurts badly because I’m still grieving heavily while it feels like she’s already emotionally separating and adapting much faster than I am. I also think subconsciously, even after making the decision, I had a small sense of hope that there was a chance we might reconcile at some point, and things could change, but maybe I just need to accept that I need to fully move on, because that seems to be what she's doing.

I guess my questions are:

• Is it normal to leave someone you genuinely love because of deep compatibility/value differences and then feel overwhelming grief and doubt afterward?
• Is my brain idealizing the relationship now that it’s gone?
• Is it common for one person to emotionally detach this fast after a breakup even after a deeply loving long-term relationship that they didn't choose to leave?
• And how long does it usually take to stop feeling completely emotionally destroyed after a breakup like this?

I genuinely still love her and care about her deeply. That’s part of why this hurts so much.