Hi all,
I've been reading the previous posts and it has given me a tremendous amount of comfort to see how others may have been going through something similar and I'm not the only one feeling this way.
This is my story: I was in a year-long relationship with my partner and his dad's cancer got really bad like in the middle of when Covid was at its peak where I live. We were in lockdown. For context, I do have some anxiety issues which I didn't really know how to deal with at the time as I wasn't even aware of how bad my anxiety was or that I even had anxiety. I had alot of childhood wounding that I hadn't processed which also made me a little insecure. So when lockdown came and we couldn't see each other, and when his dad started getting sicker and he pulled away - i got really anxious and as a result the relationship suffered. We were fighting alot and were in a really rocky place till for a couple months till his dad passed suddenly (earlier than expected) in August last year.
It was at this time that we kind of hit the reset button and i was there for him throughout the process and tried to do as much as i could for him. Eventually we did decide to try again to work on the relationship but he was rather distant and he would always say that he couldn't really feel anything and he wouldn't express any feelings or talk to me about what he was thinking. He seemed ok to the world, he would act like his was fine, still smiling and happy and wanted to be strong for his family but i knew deep down he was still grieving and it was really hard for him. I think he distracted himself from the pain alot with video games.
Naturally with my anxiety, this started to get to me too after he became more aloof and eventually he ended things because we didn't seem to be able to get along anymore and it became clear to me that he was staying in the relationship because he felt like he owed it to me, not because he really wanted to be in it and this made me sad. After he did i started going to therapy to learn how to manage my anxiety and also manage my guilt. I've been so overwhelmed with guilt feeling like I should've done better or i could've saved the relationship if i hadn't been so insecure or anxious. If i hadn't taken things personally when it was more about him than me. Deep down i just wanted to do whatever i could to support him but my anxiety sometimes made me act in ways i couldnt really control then i would shame myself after. We were in no contact for abit but for the first 3-4 months post break up he would still reach out to me once in a while just to send me a funny post or something. We would just speak casually here and there.
Then 5 months in, out of nowhere he blocks me and this like really threw me off. After some time about 6 months after the break up i reached out to him to let him know that i have been working on my anxiety and to ask if he would be open to just speaking again and seeing how things go. Like I always thought if i worked on myself maybe he would've been open because we did have an overall happy relationship if not for the circumstances and where I was at at the time. Today he responded and said he didn't want to and told me it'd be best for me to move on.
It was the push I needed to really decide to move on but it doesnt make it any easier. I'm still struggling even though it's been six months on - particularly with my guilt around the whole situation and feeling like i could have done better to save the relationship because i do feel like we were very in love and the relationship is worth saving but I guess it isn't up to me and he probably doesn't have the emotional capacity as he's still healing.