u/BirthdayAny4041

My long distance ex broke up with me two months ago. While living far apart we made a lot of effort to spend time together, mostly me traveling to see them. We spent many holidays and birthdays together, things seemed serious and generally positive.

Towards the end of our relationship a very close, but troubled friend of my ex returned to their life after months away. They had only known each other for a couple years, but very quickly hit it off.

Earlier in our relationship, we’d spent a special day with the friend, and another mutual friend. The entire day my partner was cuddling and in physical contact with their friend. As a long distance partner, and a deep needer of touch, this bothered me. Everywhere we went, they were physically and metaphorically attached at the hip. Hours and hours of the day. As the day dragged on and i was more ignored and lonely, I got really bummed out.

Eventually I’m too tired and drained to stay up and I go to bed. Hours later my partner comes in. I’d struggled to fall asleep, struggled to put away these feelings, struggled to think they would take me seriously. When they come in, i tell them i felt ignored and jealous. I wished they could have made time to cuddle with me. This was the wrong thing to say. I was quickly informed in every way that i was wrong. I should have spoken up sooner. I should have joined them?? I was crazy and wrong. I felt like shit.

Rather than communicate with me further about it, have any sympathy for how i felt, they went to their friend to get their side of the story validated and affirmed. I had been vulnerable and they workshopped ways in which I was in the wrong. That they had been totally fine excluding me.

Well the friend returned into their life after months of me supporting my ex through missing their distant, troubled friend. And shortly after, my ex becomes distant, irritable, unavailable to me.

Finally when they break up with me they inform me that they were still upset about this interaction from nearly a year ago. With no mention of it anywhere prior.

I loved my ex, and really cared about their friend, encouraging them to keep up hope and reach out to them while they were away. I enjoyed getting to know them. Somehow speaking up this one time about my feelings, and how my ex had hurt me had left an indelible scar greater than all the support Id provided with them and their friend.

Break ups suck.

My long distance ex broke up with me 1.5 months ago. I've not gone a full hour not thinking about them. Even when I sleep, I wake up regularly tossing and turning over the person I lost. The connection we had when it was good.

The month and a half before we broke up were rough. We'd had some special occasions together, Christmas, New Years, some family trips, they weren't perfect, but I didn't sense the end was coming. I didn't sense that they were this unhappy in the relationship. But early in February something changed.

I couldn't access them no matter what I tried. We used to talk every day for two to three hours, playing games, reading, supporting each other with odd tasks in and around the house. But they started to become distant. Every attempt I made to reach out, to talk more, to play some silly phone game, was denied. Promises were made to take a call, to do something, but they never showed up, and would get defensive and upset when I would ask about it. The rejection and neglect really wore on me.

This stood in stark contrast with their seemingly endless energy to interact and support everyone else in their life. Telling me how much fun they were having with other people, how busy they were, how they made heavy full day plans with others, but would only show up with scraps for me. I was happy to see their joy living their life, I encouraged them in everything they were doing, but I needed them as well. When they would show up for me they were irritated, tired, a migraine was coming, distracted with other things, calling for a temporary distraction or some shitty sense of obligation.

A few instances stand out in my mind as particularly difficult.

As the distance and loneliness grew, my last living grandparent died. The one I was the closest with, the one who has influenced so many of my decisions and who I am today, the one I'm still struggling to picture life without. Sadly, I had not seen my grandparent for at least a year before their death because I live far from home. I reached out to my friends and family looking for support, a shoulder to cry on, someone who could share this moment with me and help me process the reality of death so far away. It is a truly surreal and depressing experience. I was able to talk with these people, but I really wanted to talk with my partner. When I reached out to them, falling apart from the death, and feeling ignored and denied the previous weeks, it was not a pretty sight. I told them how I felt, that I was lonely, that I wanted to talk about my grandparent, that I was sad about their passing. It kept coming, I told them I felt this distance between us, that I didn't know what was going on in their life, and that even if we didn't talk about the death, just talking with them, videocalling them would help. I cannot properly articulate how they responded. I was asking something deeply upsetting, that I wasn't their partner, that I was clingy, demanding and manipulative. Not a second of empathy for how I was feeling. I asked please can we make time to call. Please just say you will call. I felt like shit. I was an intruder, invasive, shitty and had to suffer with this death alone. I still am.

I had made a plan to see them shortly after my grandparent's death, and as the date approaches, they call me to tell me they made plans with someone else the night I will arrive. In fact, while they refused to make any plans with me, they had somehow made these plans weeks in advance, and they stubbornly needed to respect that friend's time. I was devastated. All of these things piling up, and they couldn't see me? What is even going on? I got frustrated, and tried to make plans so that I wouldn't be stuck with my luggage in the rain, and they were just blank. It was my fault. I should have been more careful when showing them the calendar and discussing these dates. Somehow I hadn't been clear enough. They explained away all of my feelings with expert deflections, and made me feel further like shit for wanting to see my partner. I called up later and apologized that I had gotten worked up, and looking back I wish I hadn't. They were happy to receive my shouldering of all the accountability. My feelings of isolation built.

Lastly, and more representative of the whole build up period, they had squeezed me in one evening for 30 minutes. The most I could possibly hope for at this point. They were tired, drained after a long day, after talking to everyone else, and I read to them. I thought this would be an easy way for us to feel close, low effort for them, I was till making excuses for every way in which they refused to show up. While at one point in our relationship they found my reading very charming, this was nails on a chalkboard to their ears. They laughed at my attempts to read the book, they snapped at me when didn't same the names correctly, provide the right intonation and feeling as I read the text for the first time. I was extending myself and trying to comfort them with an activity I knew they liked, and I felt like shit until they finally gave up and hung up on me.

I tried not to let all of this weigh on me, I wanted the trip to see them to work, I wanted us to be able to talk and reconnect, but we couldn't. From the moment I walked in and got a welcome hug, I was an intruder in their house. They wouldn't look at me, touch me, sit close to me, covid rules were back and social distancing was in full effect. The previous month was not a glitch but the new rule, and honestly it felt better than being there and physically seeing them reject me. Repulsed by me. Seeing how much joy they could have when I was out of the room, but how it would drain from them in my presence.

The second evening I was there, it was too much. I regularly went to bed earlier than them, but when I did, I couldn't sleep. When they eventually joined me I needed to talk with them. I asked, is something wrong? I feel like you won't look at or touch me at all. I feel alone. After this month of rejections and deflections, justifications for why they weren't available, why they couldn't see me, they finally said they were depressed. I didn't know what to say or do. They had hid this from me. Not that they had put on a happy face, but they refused to tell me how they were doing, and actively defended and justified all their depression symptoms as personal preference, low energy, etc. I still don't know how to process this. I was in so much pain, and now again when I try to voice it, to understand what's gong on, they open up about their depression. I try to be respectful of this, recognizing they need distance from me, from them telling me they sleep really badly because I'm there, I offer to sleep elsewhere in the flat. I wanted to give them space, to respect their boundaries that I felt I had crossed, but this too was the wrong thing to say. They internalized it as punishment, despite all of my attempts to suggest otherwise. There was nothing I wanted more than to lay next to them, for our thighs to lightly graze each other, but they had only given me indications that they couldn't handle this. I listened to them and stayed in bed with them, and so did the 10 centimeter border line between us.

A couple days later, after more silence and rejection, after a painfully awkward movie, they opened up to me about how anxious talking with them had made them. How it had been the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong way, that I shouldn't have tried to leave. I listened to them, I apologized that I had hurt them, and tried to explain where I was coming from, that I had stayed with them. I didn't know what to say, I was so alone and scared, every attempt to reconnect or address some issue was wrong, they actively did not want to hear or understand what I was saying. I had never felt so shitty in my life.

The last couple days there were no better, eventually before I went to leave, I asked them how are you doing? How are we doing? They quickly told me it wasn't working, that I was a bad partner, and decided that was sufficient, the conversation was over. I awkwardly waited another 20 minutes before leaving early as I couldn't stay any longer where I was so clearly not wanted. We had not broken up, but only not in name. The journey back home was devastating. I took on all the words they had said, the words I hadn't said because I wanted to stay connected, they were clearly too vulnerable for me to express my feelings, as everytime I did, things went to shit.

Roughly a week later, with no clear timeline, they finally agreed to a call. They go through a list of ways in which I had been a bad partner. I had no more energy to fight them, to attempt repair. I was drained of all of my energy, when my grandparent died, when they dodged my calls, when the stupid phone games ended from neglect, when they snapped at me while reading, when they refused to listen or even act like they were trying. I think they wanted me to fight, they wanted me to should the accountability again, whether to maintain the relationship or just to see me attempt it, I don't know. But I couldn't do it.

I've never felt so alone in my life. There are hours where I can do other things, but in the background they are always on my mind. I always wish I had been better for them. I wish that I had been able to communicate and they had been willing to listen. I wish that I hadn't lost who I was when they quietly, slowly removed themselves from the relationship.

I don't know if it was only depression or other stuff going on, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't handle the highs and the prolonged, devastating lows. For you and your depressed partners or exes, I'm proud of you for trying, and remember to take care of yourselves. Your partner won't always be able to.