5 Weeks No Contract…What Next?

Hello all,

So my ex and I dated for about 3 years, and she had accepted a job abroad teaching for a year with a significant time zone difference. We’d already spent a lot of time long distance with me going abroad for 5 months and her at school after I graduated. This made it a bit hard for me to accept more distance. Nevertheless, I was happy for her and never would’ve asked her not to go.

I felt her starting to distance herself before she left and a month into the LDR she said she felt we didn’t want the same things in life, that we both needed to do some soul searching separately, that she still loved me but wasn’t IN love with me, and other breakup lines. She said she was enjoying her job, felt it was where she was meant to be and that she maybe wants to stay longer than a year. I told her that the breakup is not what I wanted but that if that’s how she feels then I would respect her decision, and that I hope she changes her mind. We wished each other good luck in the future and said goodbye.

The breakup caught me off guard, I knew the distance would be hard but she always said that she knew we could make it through anything. We often talked about marriage and kids and whatnot. I was becoming more comfortable with the idea of marriage and kids because I knew it meant a lot to her and therefore it meant a lot to me too. I wanted to have kids with HER, not just for the sake of wanting kids. I saw a future with her and was building a life with her, so the breakup was very hard to accept.

That was a month ago with no contact from the start. She’s deleted all pictures of me from Instagram and changed her FB status from “no info” to “single” (we always thought FB relationship statuses were dumb). These made me sad, but I assume it’s her way of trying to accept the breakup. She also reached out to my parents via email telling them how much I/they meant to her and how she is sorry for hurting me in this way (they had a very close relationship). She also said in this email that I was everything she looked for in a man (smart, joyful, caring, intelligent, etc.) and so I was very confused why you would let someone go who is everything you want.

I’m just not sure what to do now after a month NC. I think about her everyday, but with the long distance for another year or more what good will it do contacting her? I will admit that she was not the best at long distance relationships and I have accepted that I don’t want the same relationship, but I would want a better one. I feel contacting her may just prolong my pain. I also think that maybe a month isn’t enough time for her since it seems she is really trying to figure out what she wants in life. Our breakup may have been a partially due to my insecurities with more long distance, but I also think its a a lot due to her own internal conflict on what she wants in life. I feel that she needs to figure herself out and I don’t know when that will be.

Looking for any helpful advice. Thank you.