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Hi, my name is Nikka. It feels strange to be typing all of this out since it is personal but sometimes you have to let it out and get a strangers opinion and support. About 2 weeks ago, my boyfriend of almost 2 years and I made the harsh mutual decision to break up after months of repetitive arguments and a failed attempt at a month long break. These have been the longest 2 weeks of my life and my (now) ex and I have not been able to hault communication for more then 2 days even when we both agree in order to find ourselves we need to stay apart. Let me back up a bit. In April of last year, my boyfriend lost his sister in an incredibly sudden fatal car accident. All his life, he resented her and said nothing but hateful things about her. At one point he told me he wanted to cut communication with her completely and said he hated her. He never had a concrete reason other then she was a trouble maker and was pretty unreliable. I only met her twice before she passed so I did not create a solid feeling about her. I figured it was meaningless sibling rivalry and told him one day he might change his mind. We had a wonderful relationship which shared its fair share of trouble in 2 years. We were our first loves and went through familial hardships, depression, and growing up together and thought we could overcome anything. At first, when his sister tragically passed, he pushed it away. He told me he was fine and needed to stay strong for his parents. He said he was the only one who could keep them afloat. He turned to me for distraction and I didn't want to pressure him into talking about things since at home, that was all he heard about constantly. He didn't want pity or for anyone to look at him any differently so I gave that distraction and comfort to him. But, summer hit and things took a turn. He started fading away. He stopped caring about things he normally would care about and in the midst of a pandemic it was hard to find any excitement. I stayed by his side and tried to slowly get him to talk about things but eventually it became too much. Around November, I started feeling this overarching fear that he was falling out of love with me but anytime I tried to bring this up it resulted in a fight. He would blame me for the fights and say I asked too much of him. I believed it and worked really hard to give him space but after months of us having this same fight, something in him snapped. One day, he told me he didn't know if he wanted to be with me and didn't know himself anymore. We decided to take a break for a month after a long conversation full of tears and hugs and after a week, we got lonely and got back together. We tried to go on break one more time in this same span of a month until 2 weeks ago, I broke up with him. It was mostly mutual but, I got fed up with him avoiding me and blaming me for everything. I asked and begged him to take me out on a date and took him out on multiple and did everything in my power to help him find happiness but ultimately realized he couldn't love me, if he couldn't love himself. Long story short, we still talk. And after these 2 weeks he has apologized for being so distant and avoiding me. He didn't wanna keep disappointing me and wants to find himself but doesn't know how to. I just don't know what to do. All I want to do is be with him and I am terrible at giving him space. Multiple times we have both said we should not talk for the better but then end up talking anyway. I know we can't find ourselves if we don't spend time apart, but I just don't want to be without him. It is a tricky situation and I just needed an outlet to tell my story in a long winded way. He has lost so much; his sister, his aunt, and now his grandma is looking to be heading in that direction. So much death for someone so young is a lot and it is reason enough not to know why you want to live anymore. I just wish he knew how loved he was and how much he means to me. I can tell him time and time again but he will never understand until he figures it out himself.

Greetings Everyone, I stumbled upon this site while searching for answers to my current situation. I perused various topics and it feels like a safe place to share my grief. I apologize in advance if it takes me a while to respond as I'm only online 2 or 3 times a week but I feel it's time to share my story...I suppose its an exorcism of sorts...so here goes... My significant other (sigot) have been together for almost 6 years and we're both in our early 50's now. He is the love of my life and until recently it kept getting better and better over the years. When we met, he had been living alone for almost 2 years after being divorced. I’ve been divorced since the late 1980's and had been single for over 6 years when we met. He has a teenage daughter and I have 2 grown sons plus a beautiful grandson. About 1½ years after we fell in love, my sigot made the decision to move in with his mother because she was beginning to get very frail and was concerned about her living alone; she was in her early 80's at that point. She lived in the same town as him and lived near his daughter, too. Before he moved in with his mother, we had talked about living together eventually once his daughter was old enough to drive ands graduated from high school. Through the years that followed, his mother had various health problems and also started to have trouble walking. My sigot lives about an hour away from me and up until recently we would see each other almost every weekend and would talk several times a day, but all that changed this past May when his mother passed away from failure to thrive due to complications with a broken hip. I loved and adored his Mother and she loved me, too. We had a wonderful relationship and I miss her so much. She made me promise her that I would take care of him after she passed and I promised her I would. I would go and visit them through this period as often as I could and offered emotional support to them both. She passed and he was by her side when she passed. After she broke her hip, she had to go to a rehab facility and a week later she refused to stay so he brought her home and then took short term disability from his job to care for her 24/7. This went on for almost 3 months and she slowly stopped eating, became very hostile towards him (dementia set in) but not towards me or her granddaughter. The grieving was hard for both of us and his daughter. About a month after she passed, he said he wanted to “slow things down with us and take a break” all of a sudden. He says he still loves me and cares for me but needs time to “figure things out”. We now talk only 2 or 3 times a week versus 2 or 3 times a day and I haven’t seen him in person for almost 2 months! I am so confused and feel like I’m being punished. He tells me that “I deserve a better boyfriend” and that he “just has to be alone for awhile”. I have expressed to him repeatedly that I am unable to give up on our love and that I am a fighter, not a quitter and that I will give him all the space he needs. I’ve even suggested that we both go to counseling together to work through this difficult period in our life. He just insists that he needs to be alone right now. I want to offer comfort to him and unconditional love but he doesn't want it. My family and friends are just as devastated as I am and they all say to just give it time. I just don’t know how long I can go on like this, it feels like I stuck in a time warp spinning out of control in grief and loss. I promised his mother that I would take care of him after she passed, so how I am to go on like this and not break her promise? Sorry for the long post! It does feel better to just write this all down and share with a group that is going through the same or has gone through the same. Thanks for taking the time to read this xox