I pushed away the love of my life because of my ignorance.

Hey guys, this is my first time posting here (just registered bc of the circumstances haha) so bear with me.

I’m a 20 year old junior in college, and was dating my ex-girlfriend who goes to the same college and is a sophomore for 2.5 years. We met in high school, when I was a senior, she was a junior. It was like love at first sight, I remember talking to her while she was dating someone else at the time and we instantly had a spark that even her friend mentioned to her later. A year later, I actually started talking to her. Within 2 months we saw how compatible we were with each other. Same cultural background, similar values, similar sense of humor, love, appreciation, care and honesty for each other. I asked her out within 2 months, and within a month after we said “I love you” to each other. This was my first relationship, her second. Her ex before was emotionally abusive and she was very fragile and even hesitant at times due to fears from her past. I devoted myself to being the best boyfriend ever, loving, caring, appreciative, supportive, always there for her. We were best friends and boyfriend/girlfriend.

This continued everlastingly, and our relationship grew for months as strong as ever I’ve seen. However, within a month into college (6 months into dating) in, our relationship felt the stress of long-distance (she was a senior in high school, i was a freshman in college). I became distant, and conversely so did she. It wasn’t unintentional – we just really didn’t realize how much work needed to be done long-distance until we were there. At one point, she said she wanted to break up due to us being distant, and also that she wanted to be independent for once and experience life on her own, and also let me live college. I wasn’t about it really – I was so in love with her, and she expressed it to me. But I also was not that attached and respected her decision – she was very amicable and understanding.

I went no contact, and within a week she started texting me like a friend. At some point though, I told her “we can’t be friends I’m sorry but I still see myself in a relationship with you when I talk to you.” She just said “I understand” and I thought it was done.

Within a few days, she texted me saying “I miss you”. We ended up basically rehashing the entire relationship that night, and otok things slow. We didn’t get back together, but we started saying “babe” and “I love you” that day and every day after that was like the old us. Within a month, we were back together. In a long-distance relationship. The next 2 years were so beautiful. We grew our love, and by the time she came to college we were so happy. We were free and independent to be ourselves and both coming from Asian families, we had strict upbringings in high school and could see each other fully and freely. It was awesome

But then, I went through some really difficult periods of mental illness. I realized I have ADHD, alongside anxiety and also have had depression in the past (due to lack of treatment for ADHD). She supported me everlastingly through the year of rocky issues I had, and we grew even closer from it. This girl literally sabed my life, as at one point I became suicidal due to my depression. It was the only time I threatened it, and she was there for me.

However, I didn’t realize how these illnesses were so far reaching. A year after I suffered, I felt like I was in a good place mentally the past few months. Thing is, my anxiety has been increasing for some reason over the past few months. I know it’s not her, and I never blamed her for it, but my anxiety some times bled into our fights over the past few months. I would get delusional and get very upset at her and express how hurt I am but I would never take it out on her, yell at her, etc. She just had to witness my anxiety in full form and sometimes I would make big deals out of small things. I would never have bad intentions, and I would never say things that would hurt her. I would just lose control of my emotions and break down crying at times even. It’s sad looking back.

It happened occasionally over the past few months, and I’m a ing for not confronting my problems with therapy or taking full steps. Each time it happened, I apologized profusely and we loved each other hard and she always forgave me – most times she wouldn’t blame me for it. But then, I would control it well for a few weeks, think I’m doing it well… and then boom, I start giving into the paranoia. And I’m so mad at myself. Because I didn’t confront it, the past two weeks of this semester were very bad for our relationship.

We fought more often and more intensely, mainly because I let my anxiety go unchecked and was very ignorant of it these past two weeks, and also due to communication issues on her side. She would have trouble keeping up contact with me due to her busy schedule at times, and I would become anxious of it. But, looking back, I was stupid to be anxious. It was just a little more time that I needed to give her to live her life and I was worried she was becoming distant or something. But, really, even she explained muktiple times “I love you, I’ve just been busy with school and sorority stuff so we have to adjust our schedules, it won’t be like this for long.” But I barely gave her a chance to change her communication, and instead kept letting my anxiety get in the way.

Finally, after a really bad weekend of fights, she called it quits last Sunday. I was shocked. I had no idea this was coming but also was blind to all the issues that I was blowing up. Yes, we had some issues arise. But I turned them into a big deal enough to threaten our relationship. She talked about how the fighting got too unhealthy, we are different people now, we’re more unhappy than happy, “we can’t get married like this”, at some point she said “I love you but I’m not in love with you.” All of this tore my heart apart. I begged her to stay, and embarassingly so for the next two hours while she didn’t budge. Finally, when I let her leave, I begged one more time “Please, let’s take a break and think this over”

She agreed. We decided to take a 5 day break. On day 4, she texted me asking to meet up. She came over, we got on the elevator to my apartment and we smiled at each other. And she started tearing up and crying when she was smiling. That’s how I knew. It was over. We came back to my room and I laid out what I learned over the past few days – that I’ve become lazy in dealing with my anxiety, that our fighting will never be like this again because I will get this treated, that I wil lchange, that we can work this out, basically resetting our relationship with new expectations and a goal on fixing the issues that blocked us from loving each other. Because the thing is, we never became distant in the past two years, we didn’t lose love for each other. Yes, we may not do the same lovey dovey thing as we used to as often. but, I’m prepared to do that too. I love this girl so much and over the past year we were constnatly planning marriage ideas, long term goals, family, etc. I know we love each other so strongly and I feel like the emotional toll I took on her the past two weeks, reflected back to the past times it happened in the summer, have made her decide it’s too much and needs to end.

But, I know I can change. The break was the greatest introspection and character development stage of my life. Ironically, I haven’t broke down in anxiety once during this breakup – bevause I actively know I need to control it and I can’t let it be an excuse for my actions ever. But, I feel like I lost her.

It was a very amicable breakup. We recollected memories the whole time, cried – she wrote me a beautiful note expressing her love for me. But it was over.

Now, over the past 4 days (thursday) She’s been texting me about some serious health concern she had on Friday. She called me breaking down worried of symptoms of a heart attack/stroke and I could hear she was in a debilitaing state. I was there for her the entire time, I honestly felt like her boyfriend again. She kept texting me the rest of the day and even double texted me when I stopped responding. Saturday, we didn’t tect but she texted me in the middle of the night clarifying one of her messages. I ignored it. yesterday, she told me she got her period to let me know shes not pregnant. Today, she texted me asking how to go about getting her issue from Friday checked out. Now she says she will let me know when she goes to the doctor and “keep me updated the entire time idec if u wanna hear it or not”. She also asked me to go to the doctor with her because she was scared, I refused. We saw each other today and she was laughing to me about how I was dancing to my music (we have class at the same time in the same building), and it literally felt like we were flirting.

I don’t know what to do. I want her back so badly. I feel like I’ve lost her, but maybe her reaching out and the fact we loved so hard equally for so long will make her ong for me and rethink working things out. I’m ready to change, I’ve already begun the process. And I’m willing to wait this breakup period for her to see it. I just don’t want her to move on. We planned our marriages together, we’re both Indian, everything was supposed to be perfect.

I know we can make this work. But I feel like she just wants me as a friend and not as a boyfriend from these messages, and I just need to go full NC.